Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com, Conventional wisdom suggests National Front candidate Marine le Pen will make it to the second round in French elections, then lose in a landslide to whoever her opponent happens to be. I believe le Pen’s odds of winning it outright are far better than most think. Current Polls Chart from Wikipedia, with image clips added. Top Five candidates Marine le Pen: […]
A showdown is brewing over the fate of journalists in President-elect Donald Trump’s White House. Several officials from the incoming administration are reportedly considering evicting reporters from their traditional offices inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, sparking concern from the association that assigns journalists seats in the White House briefing room. “The White House Correspondents’ Association Board is aware of the comments from the president-elect’s team regarding continued news […]
By Richard Balmforth | PARIS PARIS Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, long tipped to win the left-wing ticket for France’s presidential election this spring, trailed his rivals after a debate on Sunday where his immigration policies came under fire. In the televised debate, Valls faced six other contenders ahead of a Socialist primary starting on Jan. 22 to pick a candidate who can keep next May’s presidential […]
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Gul Bibi, an Afghan grandmother well into her eighties, never expected to become a fighter. But now she is one of more than a hundred women in Afghanistan’s northern Jawzjan province who have taken up arms against Islamist militants. Nearly all of the women have lost a husband, son or brother to the Taliban or the newly active Islamic State in the […]
ADEN: At least 26 Yemeni fighters died in fresh clashes and an air strike as government forces advanced against Shiite Houthi rebels near a key shipping strait, medics and officials said Saturday.A week-long assault by government forces and their allies aims to expel the Iran-backed Houthis from Dhubab region, close to the Bab Al-Mandab strait linking the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.Twelve bodies of Houthi insurgents were […]
By Lacey Johnson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. civil rights activists vowed on Saturday to defend hard-fought gains in voting rights and criminal justice during the presidency of Donald Trump, kicking off a week of protests ahead of the Republican’s inauguration. About 2,000 mostly black protesters ignored steady rain to march and rally near Washington’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, as speakers urged them to fight for minority […]
KHARTOUM The Obama administration’s preliminary decision to ease sanctions on Sudan came with the full approval of the incoming Trump administration and after months of secret meetings, Sudan’s foreign minister said on Saturday. The United States said on Friday it would lift a 20-year-old trade embargo against Sudan, unfreeze assets and remove financial sanctions as a response to Khartoum’s cooperation in fighting Islamic State and other groups. […]
Thailand’s army opened up some of its military barracks to children on Saturday to let them handle and pose with weapons and other hardware on the country’s annual Children’s Day. The army plays a big role in Thailand’s public and political life. It seized power during political turmoil in 2014 in the 19th coup since absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932. The armed forces traditionally opens up […]
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com, Is there a coup underway, while America is in the transition period, and before Trump swears in as the 45th president of the United States? How real is the clash between the rogue Manhattan billionaire and the intelligence gang behind the throne? Who will win the struggle for power over foreign policy? These are serious times and require serious considerations. The […]
By Stephen Kalin | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq As Iraqi government forces advanced towards his eastern Mosul neighbourhood in November, a group of Islamic State militants stormed Abu Rami’s home, put a gun to his head and told him and his family to get out immediately. The militants, including a local man whose name he knew, brought with them a bearded comrade clutching a sniper rifle whom […]
MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi special forces battled Islamic State militants inside the Mosul University campus on Saturday in a second day of fierce clashes in the complex. “There are still clashes. We entered the university and cleared the technical institute, dentistry and antiquities departments,” Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) told a Reuters reporter in the complex. “In the coming hours it will be […]
BAGHDAD Residents of the Iraqi city of Mosul said up to 30 civilians died in an air strike on a district held by Islamic State this week. Locals said they saw at least three missiles hit the western Mosul al-Jadida area on Thursday, in a raid that appeared to target the house of senior militant Harbi Abdel Qader. He was not in the building at the time, […]
Fact-checkers had a big year in 2016; will 2017 prove as eventful? Below are seven predictions of what the year ahead holds in store for fact-checking. As with the 2016 predictions, I promise to return to these when the year is over and evaluate how they fared. (You can check out last year’s annotated predictions here). 1. Fact-checkers will seek lessons from cognitive science Late last year, […]
Nintendo has finally unveiled the official details of the Nintendo Switch, including the price tag of $299 and the global launch date of March 3. Several games for the upcoming hybrid console have also been shown, with the highly-anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild announced as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch and Super Mario Odyssey revealed as the new 3D Super Mario game. Another high-profile game […]
Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon chief, didn’t get where he is by being nice to China. When Beijing tried to force his company to abandon a gas exploration project in the waters off Vietnam in 2008, ExxonMobil showed it the finger. BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and several others caved to Chinese pressure. ExxonMobil is still there, drilling on a Vietnamese license in waters also claimed by China. Is […]
President of Nintendo Tatsumi Kimishima reacts after his speech during a presentation event of Nintendo Switch in Tokyo, Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. Nintendo Co. said Friday that its Nintendo Switch video game console will sell for 29,980 yen (about $260) in Japan, starting March 3. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara) Nintendo is trying to Switch it up. The Japanese video-game company revealed details Friday about its hotly anticipated Nintendo […]
The slideshow published by the Belfast Telegraph on Monday, juxtaposing photographs from the life of Martin McGuinness before and after the Northern Ireland peace process, eloquently bookended the story of a man regarded by some as a hero and by others as a symbol of the mindless sectarian violence that killed more than 3,500 people and marred the lives of countless thousands more during 30 years of […]
WASHINGTON Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State in Mosul reached the Nineveh province governance building and raised the Iraqi flag there on Friday, a senior U.S. defense official said. Elissa Slotkin, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, also told a Pentagon briefing on the fight against Islamic State that a U.S. liaison team is in talks with Turkey about helping its forces near al-Bab […]
Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich province that borders Iraq, is largely under Islamic State control and has been the focus of American-led airstrikes and other military action. Continue reading the main story Since early 2015, the jihadists have besieged the provincial capital, also called Deir al-Zour, where about 200,000 people live. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls roughly half of the city, while the […]
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 13, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) — Senior Chinese leaders Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang and Wang Qishan met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong in Beijing on Friday, vowing to […]
Throughout the presidential campaign and since Donald Trump’s election, former diplomats, retired generals, and foreign-policy analysts have attempted to decipher, explain, and predict his foreign-policy strategy. Will he pursue the big-stick model of Teddy Roosevelt? Embrace a neo-Nixonian “madman” strategy? Is Trump actually a champion of foreign-policy realism, or perhaps no realist at all? But all those questions make the same mistake — they assume the incoming […]
Photo About 10,000 Palestinians took to the streets in the Jabaliya refugee center on Thursday. Credit Khalil Hamra/Associated Press JABALIYA, Gaza Strip — The nearly two million residents of Gaza have been suffering through a cold winter of crippling power cuts, receiving electricity for only three or four hours a day. The popular anger over the cuts erupted on Thursday in a large protest. In a rare […]
ANKARA: Turkey’s threat to close its strategic southern Incirlik Air Base to US-led international coalition flights seem to have paid off, according to analysts.The US recently announced its decision to provide regular aerial intelligence to support Turkey in its military operation against Daesh around the Syrian town of Al-Bab.Incirlik does not belong to NATO, but is a Turkish base that remains open to the operations of NATO […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Syrian army command said on Friday that Israel fired rockets at a major military airport west of Damascus, the capital, and warned Tel Aviv of repercussions of what it called a “flagrant” attack. Syrian state television quoted the army as saying several rockets were fired from an area near Lake Tiberias in northern Israel just after midnight which landed in the […]
