NEW PORTRAIT UNVEILED TO MARK CORONATION ANNIVERSARY
By Niamh Roberts: Royal News Correspondent
The Marble Palace has released pictures of a specially commissioned portrait of Empress Serenity to mark her first year on the throne. The portrait painted by Sẹnaid Hastings was commissioned earlier in the year, however recent circumstances around the Empress and her partner recovering from surgery delayed certain aspects of its production, the Empress commented on the painting expressing her happiness at the result saying "It's a little weird to see that sort of portrait about you for the first time, the gallery wing at the Palace has all the pictures of all the Emperors before me and of course the only other Empress before me and you have the reproductions of all the swords of mark as well. I look back at the coronation and I can't remember half the day because there's a lot of stress involved and you're thought process is on so many other things than enjoying the day, even though I tried to. Seeing this portrait which is beautifully crafted and Ms Hastings is a fine artist it's a reminder and helps me remember a little bit more about it. But it also marks a year since the coronation, the settling in period is over, my feet are under the table now so it's time to get down to work."
As for the artist Ms Hastings commented saying "To be asked to do this painting was a great honour, I thought I was being scammed when I got called and told 'we'd like you to take a Royal Commission' they're the words you dream of hearing but you never expect it and then yeah you find yourself taking pictures of the Empress and then going and painting the portrait. It's been challenging and I've redone sections more than once because I wanted to do it justice but I'm happy with how it's come out."JOLT POD GETS LONG AWAITED TEST OUTING
By Penny Noble: Defence Correspondent
The Jolt Pod has been one of the most talked about projects for the last few years that it at times has appeared to take on some sort of mythical status. The project was first theorised in 2016 however wasn't actively pursued until late 2019, theories to do with this have presumed that the development of the Rokkenjiman Akuma sparked the surge in development. The Jolt Pod is a counter drone device working on the same principle as the Chidori missile already fielded by the Achkaerinese military. The Jolt Pod was given a test run during the latest series of LTTE's (Lateral Tactical Training Exercises) Deputy Sky Marshall Raymond Holman spoke about the project and the exercises in general saying "These are the exercises that the military does regularly to be as ready as we can be when a curveball gets thrown at us, it's exercises like this that put us on a solid footing in the Lodjan crisis, both early on and when our military and the Aostan military found themselves combatting the Morelander. The Jolt Pod is a niche bit of kit and has scored at 65% by no means is that ideal, but it's where we expected the pod to be on the first run considering what this actually is. We've got another test for it in a few weeks if it comes up to scratch the Air Force is likely to add this pod to its toolbox."