The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought, the London Zoological Society (ZSL) says in its new Living Planet Index. The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago. The report says populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by an average of 52%.
Last week, an airstrike from the American-led coalition nearly hit a command-and-control facility affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebels the Obama administration says are America’s “boots on the ground,” according to two opposition leaders. They are asking the Obama administration to please coordinate with them in the future before America bombs its only allies in Syria. Since U.
Russia has delivered a behind-the-scenes threat to retaliate if airstrikes carried out by the U.S. or its allies target the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Middle Eastern security officials told WND.
Laws banning incest between brothers and sisters in Germany could be scrapped after a government ethics committee said the they were an unacceptable intrusion into the right to sexual self-determination. “Criminal law is not the appropriate means to preserve a social taboo,” the German Ethics Council said in a statement. “The fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination is to be weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the family.
Over 100 Christians, including children, were arrested during a major house church raid on Sunday in Foshan city in China’s Guangdong Province. Close to 200 police officers stormed in during the service, eyewitnesses said, believed to be part of a large-scale crackdown on Christians in the country. “We don’t know exactly why they raided our church,” a local believer told watchdog group International Christian Concern, which has been keeping track of the rising tide of persecution in China.
After Russia tested a ground-launched cruise missile two months ago to break the its landmark nuclear limitation treaty signed with the US in 1987, Evan Braden Montgomery, a defense expert from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the United States has been debating whether or not to modify the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, reports National Interest magazine. The treaty was a landmark arms agreement which successfully prevented both the US and Soviet Union from fielding surface-to-surface ballistic and cruise missiles carry conventional or nuclear warheads within a range of 500-5500 kilometers. The State Department announced that Russia had violated the treaty to test a prohibited weapon in late July.
The FBI is monitoring a number of US citizens who have returned to America after fighting for the jihadist groups in Syria, including the Islamic State (Isil), the US has confirmed for the first time. An administration official told Time magazine that the US National Counterterrorism Center believes that approximately 100 US citizens have gone on jihad, but declined to specify how many have returned to the US. “It includes those who’ve gone, those who’ve tried to go, some who’ve come back and are under activeâ?
The so called ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria who have received arms and training from the US, have condemned the US led airstrikes on ISIS extremists, underscoring the fact that their fight is against the Syrian government, not the terrorists the Obama administration claims it is funding them to fight. The US-backed Harakat Hazm rebel group in Syria, which consists of an estimated 7000 fighters who have been given US weapons, slammed the US led airstrikes Tuesday, according to reports. “The sole beneficiary of this foreign interference in Syria is the [President Bashar] Assad regime, especially in the absence of any real strategy to topple him,” a statement posted by the group on Twitter reads.
An Algerian jihadist group linked to Islamic State released a video Wednesday purportedly showing the beheading of a French tourist who was abducted on Sunday, a U.S. terrorist watchdog group says.
The army base in Iraq’s western Anbar province had been under siege by Islamic State militants for a week, so when a convoy of armored Humvees rolled up at the gate, the Iraqi soldiers at Camp Saqlawiyah believed saviors had arrived. But this was no rescue attempt. The vehicles were driven by militants on suicide missions, and within seconds on Sunday the base had become a bloody scene of multiple bombings.
ISLAMIC State fighters are reportedly raping thousands of women in Iraq and Syria to mass-produce spawn who’ll follow in their footsteps. Young militants are running wild to the chagrin of their more sophisticated and PR-savvy commanders, an Iraqi official told The New York Post. The motivation of the rapists is said to be twofold:
President Barack Obama has once again flagrantly violated the U.S. constitution by launching air strikes on Syrian territory under the justification of an illegal framework and with no Congressional input whatsoever.
Fake driver’s licenses are flooding our market and could pose a real threat. 2 Investigator Dave Savini reports these bogus licenses are being produced overseas and sold online. State and federal officials say they want to shut down the sales of them.
At what point is a drill more than just a drill? Maybe when it is so massive it could be confused for an invasion force, involving a mindblowing 155,000 troops, more than the armies of most sovereign nations, 4,000 armoured vehicles, 632 planes and helicopters and 84 vessels. Those are the staggering numbers taking [3]part in the Vostok-2014 strategic exercises, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, and whose main priority is ti “demonstrate that the degree of combat preparedness in Russian troops has risen.
Russia is set to renew the country’s strategic nuclear forces by 100 percent, not 70 percent as previously announced, according to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. “The formation of the technical basis for strategic nuclear forces is going at a faster rate, and in fact, we will renew not 70 percent of the SNF, but 100 percent,” Rogozin told Rossiya TV channel. The deputy premier, who’s responsible for the Russian defense industry, also declared that in 2015 the army and the navy are to switch 30 percent of their weapons to “cutting edge” technology, and by 70 percent in 2020.
Obama’s United Nations ambassador Samantha Power told Chuck Todd of NBC on Sunday the real purpose of the fight against ISIS is to overthrow al-Assad and the Syrian government. Power said the “moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) will receive an “infusion of support” in its battle against both ISIS and the Syrian government which is, according to Power and the United States, “backed by Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, etc.” CIA’s Hydra: