By Phil Stewart and Yara Bayoumy | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON When U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis greeted Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister at the Pentagon last month, the first thing he did was joke about the time “the Iranians tried to murder you.” Mattis’ reference to a foiled 2011 plot, denied by Iran, was a telling sign of how much more aligned President Donald Trump’s administration is with Gulf […]
JERUSALEM Israel’s Patriot anti-aircraft missile system shot down an aerial target over the Golan Heights on Thursday, the Israeli military said. Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards. It was initially unclear whether the target, which media said was an unmanned drone, was shot down over Syria or Israeli-controlled territory. The incident […]
Yoav Galant, the Israeli construction minister, also declined to confirm the strikes but told Channel 10, “Our enemies must know: We will know to use our power to protect our interests by ourselves.” Continue reading the main story Large explosions were heard miles from the airport that serves Damascus, the Syrian capital, and the glow of flames could be seen in the distance, according to residents in […]
By John Irish and Matthias Blamont | PARIS PARIS A top aide of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen raised doubts on Thursday about a French intelligence report accusing Syria’s leadership of a toxic gas attack, a position directly opposed by her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron. A declassified report published on Wednesday showed that French intelligence had concluded that government-backed forces had launched a sarin nerve gas […]
By Michael Martina and Ju-min Park | BEIJING/SEOUL BEIJING/SEOUL China on Thursday welcomed an apparently softer tone by the United States on the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis but stressed its opposition to a U.S. missile defence system being deployed in South Korea. China has long promoted dialogue to resolve the “Korean nuclear issue” as North Korea has repeatedly threatened to destroy the United States which […]
The remarks, in an interview that was recorded Tuesday, came at the end of Ms. Trump’s rocky 24-hour trip this week to Germany, her first official foray since taking a West Wing office last month. Continue reading the main story A spokeswoman for Ms. Trump did not respond to questions about her position on immigration — or about whether her remarks were intended to pressure her father. […]
By Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Trump administration said on Wednesday it aimed to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and remained open to negotiations to bring this about. The U.S. stance, which appeared to signal a willingness to exhaust non-military options in spite of repeated warnings that “all options are on […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. lawmakers want to emerge from briefings by the Trump administration on North Korea on Wednesday with something many think has been absent from the White House so far: a clear strategy for dealing with a major national security threat. As a standoff escalated over the reclusive Asian nation’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, President Donald Trump invited […]
Over the years, we’ve seen technologies push the envelope on reality. When the Iranians shot off a bunch of missiles in 2008, for example, it was quickly discovered that they fired only one missile and just Photoshopped the rest in. More recently, on social media, it can be difficult to know fact from fiction. Now we have Lyrebird, a Montreal-based startup that says it can […]
By Manuel Mogato | MANILA MANILA Southeast Asian nations would adopt a softer than usual tone about South China Sea disputes at a leaders’ summit on Saturday in Manila, and exclude references to militarisation or island-building, according to a draft of the chairman’s statement. Although some Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders will express “serious concern” over the “escalation of activities” in the disputed sea, […]
Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog, “We don’t want a unified Korean peninsula … We [also] don’t want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb.” —Hillary Clinton, 2013, speech to Goldman Sachs Our policy toward North Korea is not what most people think it is. We don’t want the North Koreans to go away. In fact, we like them […]
BEIJING China on Wednesday launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier, which will join an existing one bought second-hand from the Ukraine, amid rising tensions over North Korea and worries about Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. State media said the carrier, designed in China and built in the northeast port of Dalian, is not expected to enter service until 2020. The announcement by the official […]
American officials said Turkey had informed the United States less than an hour in advance that it intended to carry out the bombing raids in the crowded airspace over northern Syria and Iraq. American officials said that they had asked Turkey not to proceed without proper coordination, but that the request was ignored. Continue reading the main story Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said the United […]
SEOUL The U.S. military has started moving parts of the controversial THAAD anti-missile defence system into a planned deployment site in South Korea, Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday, amid high tensions over North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes. The United States and South Korea have agreed to deploy THAAD in response to the threat of missile launches by North Korea but China says it will do […]
The Navy has since 2014 been testing a 30-kilowatt laser on one of its warships, the USS Ponce A sci-fi staple for decades, laser weapons are finally becoming reality in the US military, albeit with capabilities a little less dramatic than at the movies. Lightsabers—the favored weapon of the Jedi in “Star Wars” films—will remain in the fictional realm for now, but after decades of development, laser […]
By Linda Sieg and Tetsushi Kajimoto | TOKYO TOKYO The secretary-general of Japan’s ruling party said on Tuesday he will attend China’s New Silk Road summit in May, a sign Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to improve ties with Beijing amid tensions over North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes. But an adviser to Abe said Tokyo remained cautious about the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), created […]
Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com, Following the money is always the key and crucial element to determining the “probable cause/modus operandi” regarding to globalist actions. Although there are many who believe that President Trump is the panacea to all our problems, even they may perhaps admit that there are forces other […]
TOKYO Joseph Yun, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy, said on Tuesday that all steps to deal with the defiant nation will be taken in coordination and consultation with Washington’s partners. Yun talked to reporters following talks with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts at a meeting in Tokyo that was held amid concern that North Korea may be preparing to conduct a fresh nuclear test […]
Photo Steven Mnuchin, left, the secretary of the Treasury, announced sanctions on Monday in response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria. “The United States is sending a strong message with this action that we will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons by any actor,” he said. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday imposed sanctions on 271 employees of […]
The US Treasury has responded to this month’s gas attack in Syria by launching one of its biggest one-off rounds of sanctions, targeting employees of a Syrian agency it accuses of developing non-conventional weapons. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced that 271 employees of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center were being sanctioned, more than doubling the number of individuals and entities targeted by previous […]
WASHINGTON The U.N. Security Council must be prepared to impose new sanctions on North Korea amid escalating tensions over its missile and nuclear programs, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday ahead of a lunch with ambassadors from countries on the U.N. council. Trump, speaking to reporters, said the council also failed to act in response to a recent Syrian chemical weapons attack, which he called a […]
By Ulf Laessing | ERBIL, Iraq ERBIL, Iraq High on a rocky outcrop, just 50 miles from the fighting that is wrecking historic sites across Iraq, workers are busy laying out floor tiles, determined to save at least one ancient structure amidst the turmoil. The team is rebuilding the last remains of the fortified citadel in the Iraqi-Kurdish capital of Erbil, constructed on top of the world’s […]
By Ben Blanchard and Ju-min Park | BEIJING/SEOUL BEIJING/SEOUL Chinese President Xi Jinping called for all sides to exercise restraint on Monday in a call with U.S. President Donald Trump, as a nervous South Korea and Japan sought to join drills with a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group headed for Korean waters. Reclusive North Korea said at the weekend it was ready to sink the U.S. aircraft […]
COPENHAGEN Russia has hacked the Danish defence and gained access to employees’ emails in 2015 and 2016, NATO member Denmark’s defence minister told newspaper Berlingske on Sunday. The report comes at a time when several Western governments, including the United States, France and Britain, have accused Russia of resorting to hacking to influence elections — allegations Moscow has repeatedly dismissed as baseless. A report from the Danish […]
