The European Union has distributed a confidential document to its 28 member states that contains the draft of a proposal for sanctions to be imposed on Israel if it takes action in the West Bank that could make the two-state solution impossible, European diplomatic sources and senior Israeli officials said. (Read the rest of the story here…)
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned he won’t allow rebels in eastern Ukraine to be defeated by government forces as European Union ministers met to consider imposing more sanctions on the separatists. “You want the Ukrainian central authorities to annihilate everyone there, all of their political foes and opponents,” Putin said in an interview yesterday with Germany’s ARD television. “Is that what you want?
Israel’s economy contracted for the first time in more than five years in the third quarter, as growth was hit by the effects of a war with Islamist militants in Gaza. Gross domestic product fell 0.4 percent in the July-September period, the Central Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday.
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants have an army of about 200,000 fighters, over six times larger than previous CIA estimates, a senior Iraqi Kurdish leader has claimed. “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilize young Arab men in the territory they have taken,” Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, told the UK Independent in an exclusive interview. Controlling roughly one third of Iraq and Syria, Hussein says the 250,000 square kilometer territory has provided IS a 10 to 12 million-large population from which to attract potential fighters.
David Cameron has issued a stark message that “red warning lights are flashing on the dashboard of the global economy” in the same way as when the financial crash brought the world to its knees six years ago. Writing in the Guardian at the close of the G20 summit in Brisbane, Cameron says there is now “a dangerous backdrop of instability and uncertainty” that presents a real risk to the UK recovery, adding that the eurozone slowdown is already having an impact on British exports and manufacturing. His warning comes days after the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, claimed a spectre of stagnation was haunting Europe.
There’s little reason for cheer in Europe. While Germany narrowly avoided a recession in the third quarter, the latest numbers show the $13 trillion eurozone economy is stuck in first gear. High unemployment, high debt and a lack of investment continue to hold the region back.
Japan reported Monday that its economy contracted at a real annual rate of 1.6 percent in July-September, in a second straight quarterly decline that returned the country to recession. A steep drop in residential investment failed to offset a modest recovery in exports, the government reported.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters have issued a new video apparently showing the murder of US hostage Peter Kassig and threatening “slaughter” on Western streets. The 15-minute long grisly video shows the horrific beheading a group of Syrian military prisoners and then the decapitated head of Mr Kassig at the feet of a masked man. The man, who appears to be the same militant known as Jihadi John who has appeared in other beheading videos, says:
In April of this year, the USS Donald Cook was disabled while on patrol in the Black Sea by an unarmed Russian bomber. A Russian Su-24 buzzed the ship and “disabled all radars, control circuits, systems, information transmission, etc. on board the US destroyer.
The report titled Russia Prepares Nuclear Surprise For NATO, claims that Russia was able to amass its massive nuclear power because the U.S. had been dismissive and neglectful of achieving innovations in decades after winning the Cold War.
The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is at least 200,000, seven or eight times bigger than foreign in intelligence estimates of up to 31,500 men. Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said in an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday that “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilise Arab young men in the territory they have taken.
Russia has taken advantage of lower gold prices to pack the vaults of its central bank with bullion as it prepares for the possibility of a long, drawn-out economic war with the West. The latest research from the World Gold Council reveals that the Kremlin snapped up 55 tonnes of the precious metal – far more than any other nation – in the three months to the end of September as prices began to weaken. Vladimir Putin’s government is understood to be hoarding vast quantities of gold, having tripled stocks to around 1,150 tonnes in the last decade.
On September 1, 2014 the US State Department published a report, in which it was stated that for first time since the collapse of the USSR, Russia reached parity with the US in the field of strategic nuclear weapons. Thus, Washington admitted that Moscow regained the status that the Soviet Union had obtained by mid-70’s of the XX century and then lost. According to the report from the State Department, Russia has 528 carriers of strategic nuclear weapons that carry 1,643 warheads.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called over the weekend for the destruction of Israel, stating that the “barbaric” Jewish state “has no cure but to be annihilated.” A plan titled “9 key questions about the elimination of Israel” was posted on his Twitter account Saturday night, using the hashtag #handsoffalaqsa, in reference to the recent tensions on the Temple Mount. The sometimes grammatically awkward list explained the how and why of Khomeini’s vision for replacing Israel with a Palestinian state.
Shalom Aharon Baadani, the teen who died Friday after sustaining critical wounds in a terror attack at the Jerusalem light rail this week, was laid to rest at the city’s Givat Shaul cemetery. Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef spoke at the boy’s funeral and centered his talk on the wave of violence that has swept through the capital. He lashed out at Jews who go up to the Temple Mount, suggesting they played a role in the recent surge in violence, which has raised concerns of a possible third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
French lawmakers will vote on November 28 on a proposal by the Socialist Party urging the government to recognise Palestine as a state, a parliamentary source said Wednesday. The non-binding but highly symbolic vote would follow a similar vote in the British parliament and after Sweden announced it formally recognised the state of Palestine. A draft of the proposal states that the lower house National Assembly “invites the French government to use the recognition of the state of Palestine as an instrument to gain a definitive resolution of the conflict”.