• The US Marine Corps has equipped its MQ-9 Reaper drones with a new electronic warfare pod.
• The pod "can mimic things that are sent to it," Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said.
• The announcement follows the drone's struggles against the Houthi Rebels.

The US Marine Corps has equipped its MQ-9 Reaper drones with a new electronic warfare pod that can "mimic" signals to help hide them from enemy sensors, a top US Marine Corps general has said, The War Zone reported.

Speaking at a Brookings Institution forum last week, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said: The pod "can mimic, I'll be careful here, it can mimic things that are sent to it that it detects, turn it around and send it back."

"So it becomes a hole. A black hole. It becomes mostly undetectable," he added.

The 634-pound pod, known as the Reaper Defense Electronic Support System/Scalable Open Architecture Reconnaissance (RDESS/SOAR), will allow the Reaper drone "to somewhat disappear off of enemy radar."

The US first tested the pod, which was developed by General Atomics and L3Harris Technologies, in 2021.

A press release from the time describes the pod as "a broad spectrum, passive Electronic Support Measure (ESM) payload designed to collect and geo-locate signals of interest from standoff ranges."

It says that its addition to the Reaper helps it become "an even more versatile surveillance aircraft given its ability to conduct electronic sensing well enough to provide high quality intelligence but also keep safely away in friendly or international airspace."

The comments from Smith come off the back of the US Navy's intense battle against Yemen's Houthi rebels around the Red Sea.

The 36-foot-long Reaper struggled somewhat against the Iran-backed militant group, which claimed to have shot down a number of the drones.

"The Houthis have gained access to surface-to-air missiles that have the performance to reach those speeds and altitudes against a large, unstealthy aircraft, courtesy of Iran," Peter Wilson, Senior Defense Policy Analyst at RAND, told Business Insider.

And the MQ-9 would face a far sterner test against the air defenses and detection capabilities of an enemy such as China, so the new pod could prove vital in helping keep the drone relevant.

The Marine Corps began operating MQ-9 Reaper drones in 2018.

According to the US Air Force, the Reaper is mostly used for collecting intelligence and "secondarily against dynamic execution targets."

Peter Wilson noted that the drone is in itself "very useful" and "can be honored."

"It was one of the most successful unmanned combat air vehicles used during our protracted counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and in dealing with ISIS and also even in Afghanistan. But there, the locals didn't have the kind of weapons that the Houthis have gained access to through Iran," he said.

• Brittany McAnally and her family left California for Slovenia because of her husband's military job.
• She said kids have more freedom in Slovenia than in the US, and preschool was more nurturing.
• McAnally said she found returning to the US was a "reverse culture shock."

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Britanny McAnally, a freelancer based in Germany, about her experience living in Slovenia and the US. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was a stereotypical American. I'd never left the US until I moved to Slovenia, and I didn't have a passport until I was 28.

I grew up in a small town in Tennessee. I lived near Nashville with my husband and two children until we moved to Monterey, California, in 2015.

I'd never heard of Slovenia

I had an adventurous side. I knew I wanted to see the world beyond the US.

One day, my husband, who is in the military, came home and said: "We're moving to Slovenia," because of his job.

I didn't realize Slovenia was a country. At first, I thought he meant Slovakia. Even though Slovenia is between Italy and Croatia, it wasn't popular with American tourists at that time.

We moved to Ljubljana, the capital, with our two- and three-year-old sons in December 2016. I had a sheltered upbringing in a small town. When we first arrived, I was immediately surprised by how much English people spoke. I thought people would only speak Slovene.

I didn't realize many people speak English in European countries, as well as their own language. It was mind-blowing.

It was great for my kids

Ljubljana is a beautiful city. It's the perfect place to raise kids.

When we lived there, I did freelance social media and website management work, which was flexible around my children's schedules. I worked with US clients, so a lot of my work was late in the evening. It meant I could be around for my children when they came back from preschool.

I was able to be more present for my children.

America has a lot to offer kids too, but I'm so glad my kids experienced a new culture. Here are the main cultural differences I noticed.

It's safer for pedestrians and cyclists

In Ljubljana, we could walk everywhere. It was more pedestrian-friendly than the US, and there are more places where cars aren't allowed.

Often, coffee shops were near playgrounds, so I could have a coffee and watch my children play. I was happy to let my son, who turned four in Slovenia, play independently 200 feet away while keeping an eye on him. It helped him learn boundaries in a safe environment.

He learned how to ride a bike there. I felt more comfortable cycling on roads with him than I would have in the US because I trusted the drivers to look out for cyclists and pedestrians. They're more used to them.

I let him take his bike to a skate park and ride down a barrel. I wouldn't have had the courage to let him do that in the US, but seeing other parents allow it gave me more confidence and pushed me as a parent.

My kids had more freedom to explore the city without worrying about cars, and they became much more confident and independent over the course of the year.

Preschool was cheaper and there was less focus on security

Both my kids went to preschool in Ljubljana.

In the US, preschool was focused on security. When I first went to visit my kids' preschool in Slovenia, I accidentally wandered through the kitchen instead of the admin office. It was no big deal.

That wouldn't happen in the US — there are more security checks, for good reason. But in Slovenia people were less concerned about needing security in daycares and schools.

In the US, it's not uncommon for parents to pay $1,000 or more a month for preschool. In Slovenia, I paid around 300 euros, which is around $320, per child for a month for full-time preschool.

Parents in Slovenia attend preschool with kids for 2 weeks

My three-year-old, who was in the older kids' class, started two days after my first visit. At that point, we didn't even have a house.

In Slovenia, parents attend preschool with children for one or two weeks to help them acclimatize. On my two-year-old son's first day, we went to school for 30 minutes. We'd go for longer each day until we built up to half a day. When he could manage that by himself, we'd work on building up to a full day.

Parents don't do that in the US. We drop them off and say goodbye. There's nothing wrong with that—often, parents don't have the flexibility with work or parental leave to take two weeks off like they do in Slovenia. In the US, we're a busy culture. There, they were more sensitive to their children.

The Slovene approach made starting preschool easier for my son than it had been in the US. It was more nurturing for him. I even started learning a bit of Slovene from interacting with the kids.

My kids got organic food at school

I loved the food. In preschool, my kids got fresh, organic food. In the US, there is a focus on kids' nutrition, but food is more likely to be processed.

My kids tried foods they probably never would have tried if we hadn't moved there.

Moving back to the US was a shock

After a year, we moved back to California, in 2017. The US will always be my home, but I experienced a reverse culture shock.

It bugged me that I couldn't walk anywhere, even to a coffee shop. The pace of life was busier. I'd see people drinking coffee in their car while driving, rather than enjoying it in a coffee shop. I missed the slower pace of life.

In Slovenia, we could go on a vacation to Croatia easily. Back home, we could drive to other parts of California or Nevada, but we weren't experiencing new cultures in the way we could in Europe. That bummed me out.

I'd go to shops and find myself overwhelmed by how many options there were.

We returned to Europe

I got pregnant and had my third child in California.

After a year in the US, we moved back to Europe, again for my husband's job, first to Vilnius, Lithuania's capital in July 2019. I didn't know anything about the country before we moved. But, as soon as we arrived, I realized it was beautiful and clean. I fell in love with it.

Three years later, in 2022, we moved to Garmisch, Germany. We live near Zugspitze, the tallest peak in the country, and my kids have learned how to ski. We're still here now.

• In a move likely to anger the US, Modi is visiting Russia.
• The move signals strong ties between Delhi and Moscow, and shows the world India is pursuing its own agenda.
• Modi is aiming to correct the trade imbalance and address China's Indo-Pacific activities.

In a move likely to anger the US, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting Russia on Monday for his first bilateral trip after winning a historic third term in office.

Modi's two-day visit to Russia — where he is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir Putin — is significant in that it signals strong ties between Delhi and Moscow. It also shows the world that India is not afraid to pursue its own agenda.

Vinay Kwatra, India's foreign secretary, told reporters in New Delhi that issues between Russia and India have "piled up" and "need to be addressed," per Bloomberg.

Russia's relationship with India goes back to the Cold War, and trade between the two countries has grown since Russia started the war in Ukraine. India is a major buyer of Russian oil. Russia is also India's biggest arms supplier.

Kwatra underscored that the two countries' trade relationship has remained "resilient."

Still, Modi's trip will "rankle many Western observers," Ved Shinde, a researcher and contributor to Australia's Lowy Institute think tank, wrote in a note on Wednesday.

"Since the Ukraine war began, India's purchase of cheap oil from Russia has been seen as profiting from troubles in the heart of Europe," Shinde added.

Modi's visit to Russia will make the US look bad

Just like Putin's visit to supply-chain hot spot Vietnam, India's engagement with Russia isn't a good look for the US, as it comes while Washington is isolating Putin's regime.

The US has raised "some concerns" about India's relationship with Russia with New Delhi, Kurt Campbell, the US Deputy Secretary of State, said last month.

However, Washington acknowledges that India's ties with Russia are different from its ties with the US.

"We have many areas of alignment, but it is not surprising that there would be areas where we've had perhaps different perspectives, views, historical ties," Campbell said about America's relationship with India.

India, for its part, is looking to balance its relationship with the world's key powerbrokers — the US, Russia, and China.

"There are different degrees in India's multi-alignment. Make no mistake — the United States and its allies are more consequential for India's future than its relationship with Russia," wrote Shinde.

India needs to leverage its historical ties with Russia to secure its economy and security, so Modi isn't just in Russia for a goodwill trip.

Reducing the trade imbalance

A key agenda item for the visit is to reduce a huge bilateral trade imbalance, said Kwatra.

India imports about $60 billion of goods a year from Russia, but Russia buys less than 10% of this amount from India, per Bloomberg.

Modi may also touch on China's activities in the Indo-Pacific region, said Kwatra.

India is trying to manage its relationship with China, which has been testy since a border dispute in 2020. Modi skipped the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kazakhstan last week.

There's also the matter of Russia's ties with China.

At the summit last week, Putin said Russia's relationship with China is in the "best period in history."

Modi now needs to cozy up to Putin to counter China's advances.

"The reason for the time-tested stability in India-Russia ties is to maintain a continental balance in the Eurasian heartland. That is, to balance China," wrote Shinde.

"Or to put it another way, don't go around making new adversaries when there are already two open fronts — China and Pakistan," Shinde added.

• Joe Biden may have taken a leaf out of Donald Trump's tanning playbook.
• The president has appeared very bronzed in recent appearances.
• He hasn't always been this orange, and certainly wasn't during his disastrous CNN debate with Trump.

If you think President Joe Biden has been looking a lot more orange, you're not alone.

Biden's complexion has changed remarkably since the start of his term, with his skin now emitting a Trump-esque glow.

The orange hue appeared all the more stark in his Friday interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos.

On July 4, he appeared tanner than usual while speaking from the South Lawn of the White House.

The pronounced tan was obvious in multiple photos from the event.

And Biden's orange glow was apparent on July 3 too, when he was awarding the Medal of Honor to two Civil War soldiers.

Same here on July 1, when he was speaking to the media at the White House following the Supreme Court's ruling on charges against former President Donald Trump.

And the change seems recent. The president, aged 81, was not nearly this orange at the start of his term in 2020.

For example, speaking at the COP26 United Nations climate change conference in Scotland in November 2021, his face showed no hint of a spray tan.

Biden has appeared slightly more tan in the summertime, as one does when the sun's out. He was lightly bronzed during a speech in June 2023 about affirmative action in higher education. But super-orange Biden moments have been few and far between.

The change in his visage has sparked memes and jokes on social media, with users on X calling him "BidenPumpkinHead" and "Spray Tan Joe."

"Next time Joe, just let an Alabama sorority girl apply your spray tan," said another X user on July 1.

Moira Coops, an experienced makeup artist and stylist who has worked with numerous politicians and CEOs, told Business Insider that Biden's orange hue was more likely to be makeup than spray tan.

She said that people Biden's age — especially when they are feeling unwell or haven't seen the sun in a while — tend have a sallow complexion. Biden's team probably bronzed him up to make him look "more healthy," she added.

But the makeup was a "little bit too strong" for her taste, Coops said, adding that Biden's makeup crew "could have gone one shade down."

If Biden did get an image adjustment, it was fairly recent. His face was an entirely different color during his debate with Trump on June 27.

On the CNN cameras, his face appeared pale — and that, coupled with his slurred speech and jumbled lines, sparked concerns about his fitness to run for reelection.

Post-debate, anonymous sources told Politico that the Biden family had expressed anger about the president's on-camera appearance, blaming the network's makeup artists for making him appear too pale and drawn.

To be sure, Trump has also been known to go hard with tanning.

"I know exactly what he does to himself — the tanning bed, the spray tan, he wears the goggles and you can see the hyper-pigmentation around his eyes," Jason Kelly, a Cleveland-based makeup artist who was hired to work at 2016's Republican National Convention, told Harper's Bazaar in June 2016.

Trump's intense tan has also been something his critics have used against him. His former fixer turned nemesis, Michael Cohen, once called him a "Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain."

Representatives for Biden didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

• Boeing agreed to plead guilty to defrauding the US on Sunday. 
• In May, the DOJ accused Boeing of violating a 2021 settlement over two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes.
• An attorney for the victims' families said he has filed an objection to the plea deal.

Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding the US, essentially admitting to accusations that it violated an earlier agreement to strengthen its safety measures in the wake of two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019.

"The parties have agreed that Boeing will plead guilty to the most serious readily provably offense," the Justice Department said in a court filing on Sunday night.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that federal prosecutors had offered Boeing the choice of either accepting the plea deal or risk facing trial.

Under the plea deal, Boeing will have to pay a fine of $243.6 million. This is on top of the $243.6 million Boeing had already paid as part of the 2021 settlement it breached.

Besides the fine, Boeing will be required to "invest at least $455 million in its compliance and safety programs." In addition, the government will appoint an independent compliance monitor to oversee the company for three years.

"We can confirm that we have reached an agreement in principle on terms of a resolution with the Justice Department, subject to the memorialization and approval of specific terms," a spokesperson for Boeing told BI in a statement on Monday morning.

Paul Cassell, an attorney for 15 of the victims' families, told BI on Monday that he has filed an objection to the plea deal.

"This sweetheart deal fails to recognize that because of Boeing's conspiracy, 346 people died," Cassell said in a statement. "A judge can reject a plea deal that is not in the public interest, and this deceptive and generous deal is clearly not in the public interest."

Boeing had initially avoided a fraud charge related to two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes — one near the coast of Indonesia in 2018 and another in Ethiopia in 2019 — after it struck a $2.5 billion settlement agreement with the DOJ in 2021.

Notably, the 2021 agreement did not impose an independent compliance monitor on Boeing.

The DOJ said in a statement then that a monitor wouldn't be necessary because "the misconduct was neither pervasive across the organization, nor undertaken by a large number of employees, nor facilitated by senior management."

But the DOJ accused Boeing of violating the terms of the agreement in May, just months after a door plug from a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out mid-flight.

The incident, which took place in January, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to order the grounding over 170 such planes.

"The plea agreement will not provide Boeing with immunity for any other conduct, including any conduct that may be subject of any ongoing or future Government investigation of the Company," the DOJ said in its filing on Sunday.

• An Iranian frigate capsized while undergoing repairs at Bandar Abbas, a coastal city in the Strait of Hormuz.
• State media reported that it took on water and lost balance due to a "technical failure."
• Photos show the ship turned on its side amid merchant ships also docked at Bandar Abbas.

Several people were admitted to hospital after an Iranian warship capsized at the port city of Bandar Abbas on Sunday, Iran's state media reported.

The Sahand, a domestically produced Moudge-class frigate, was undergoing repairs when it lost balance and partially sank, per the Mehr News Agency.

The mishap was due to a "technical failure," Mehr reported.

A separate report several hours later by the Islamic Republic News Agency cited the country's military saying water had leaked into the Sahand's tanks, causing the vessel to turn over.

The military added in IRNA's report that the ship had since "returned to balance." Both news agencies are owned by the Iranian government, which described the vessel as a "destroyer."

Photos released by the agencies show the Sahand floating on its side next to several docked merchant ships. Other images on social media appear to show the vessel tipping over.

The lasting damage sustained by the vessel is not immediately clear.

The Sahand was launched in 2018 and is named after another Iranian ship that was destroyed by the US in 1988's Operation Praying Mantis.

The original vessel was one of two Iranian naval ships sunk by the US Navy in retaliation for the mining of the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts.

Iranian media reports said the new Sahand is equipped with torpedoes, anti-air munitions, cruise missiles, a point-defense system, and close-range weapons that can fire up to 7,000 rounds per minute.

Its capsizing on Sunday is the latest in a string of mishaps for Iran's navy in recent years, including a 2020 friendly fire incident involving a ship of a similar class.

The Iranian frigate Jamaran was testing an anti-ship missile when it struck the support vessel Konarak in the Gulf of Oman, killing 19 sailors and injuring another 15.

In late 2021, another Moudge-class frigate, the Talayieh, was videoed capsizing at a flooded dry dock in Bandar Abbas.

In June of that year, the Kharg, one of Iran's largest naval vessels, caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Oman after firefighters tried for 20 hours to save the ship. It had embarked on a training mission at the time, local media reported.

Another Moudge-class frigate, the Damavand, ran aground in 2018 and was damaged beyond repair. It had been launched just three years prior.

In a Sunday report covering the Sahand's capsizing, Iranian state media channel Al-Alalam noted that the US also suffered a capsizing in 2022 involving a ship called USS The Sullivans.

But USS The Sullivans is a museum ship that saw service in World War II and the Korean War, and was retired in 1965.

It nearly sank in April 2022 due to a hull breach, but it was repaired and reopened for visits in August 2022.