China is deploying 700 soldiers to South Sudan to protect the only oil fields “still under control of the central government in Juba.” The soldiers will also protect “Chinese workers and installations.” The soldiers join a United Nations peacekeeping force and “will operate under UN command.
During his prime time speech last night, President Barack Obama vowed that no combat troops would fight on foreign soil in the pursuit of ISIS, an assertion contradicted by NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, who says that U.S. boots are already on the ground in Iraq.
As The WSJ reports, Germany and the U.K. on Thursday ruled out carrying out air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria, a day after President Barack Obama authorized the start of U.
The discovery of North Sea riches in the 1970s planted the seed of modern-day Scottish nationalism as supporters of independence cried “It’s our oil!” Four decades later, nothing will be more important to the economic future of Scotland than the oil industry should the country vote to end the 307-year union with the rest of the U.K.
Yesterday, Barack Obama stated, “Turkey needs to be involved in coalition against ISIS.” On Thursday Turkey said it will not allow the US to use its airbases to fight ISIS. The Daily Star reported:
On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his forces were working with the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate — both U.S.-designated terrorist organizations — near the Syrian/Lebanon border.
Did you know that two Russian bombers practiced launching cruise missiles at the United States from a spot in the North Atlantic just the other day? And did you know that Russia is spending massive amounts of money to build and test new nuclear weapons systems? Meanwhile, the Obama administration is doing absolutely nothing to upgrade the U.
Why would Barack Obama want to give hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons to groups inside Syria that are selling weapons to ISIS and regularly fighting alongside them? Is he really that clueless about what is going on in the Middle East? The FSA and other groups of “moderate” fighters inside Syria do not consider ISIS to be an enemy.
A short walk from Edinburgh Castle, past tourist stores hawking kilts and tartan scarves, a church hall is about to become a patch of Barcelona for the day. As Scotland votes next week on whether to break up the U.K.
Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past on Monday night, when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast. In a report on the fragile cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, Moscow correspondent Bernhard Lichte used pictures of a soldier wearing a combat helmet with the “SS runes” of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps. A second soldier was seen with a swastika on his gear.
In other words, this is only the beginning as Ukraine has clearly made the case that it will plug its gas reserve gap using “reverese flow” of Russian gas in transit to Europe. More importantly, this follows news earlier today from Poland’s PGNiG which said Gazprom lowered supply by 20%-24% in past 2 days. So is this the beginning of the quite literal, ahead of the winter, European cold war?
The Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta, home to much of the country’s oil and gas industry, suffered through a late-summer snowfall on Wednesday that snarled traffic, downed trees and cut power to dozens of neighborhoods. Nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the city of 1.2 million is used to bizarre weather and heavy snowfalls are common in the winter months.
International investors have been warned to pull their cash out of Britain to protect themselves against the ‘cataclysmic’ impact of Scottish independence. Japan’s biggest bank, Nomura, warned sterling could plunge by 15 per cent in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote – amid warnings over a ‘run on UK assets’ threatening savings and pensions of ordinary families. It came as it emerged David Cameron has pleaded with business chiefs to publicly warn against Scottish independence.
Hundreds of people attended the Monday funeral of 16-year-old Mohammed Sinokrot, who died of his wounds sustained during a protest over a week ago in the Wadi Joz neighborhood of East Jerusalem. His death sparked street violence in the area and masked rioters threw stones at police during the funeral as well, leading to the arrest of three. The even that wounded and eventually led to the death of Sinokrot occurred on the 31st of August.
A recent gathering consisting of thousands of supporters of the Islamic State (IS) took place at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, Israel’s Channel 10 News reported on Wednesday. The report was part of a story set to broadcast in full next week, which details how the Islamic State has zeroed in on Israel as its premier target in the near future. The rally, reportedly held on a recent Friday, was organized by the Tahrir (Liberation) party, an organization that seeks to unify all Muslim countries to create one massive Islamic state that is ruled by the barbaric, extreme rules of sharia law.
Israeli officials on Monday enthusiastically embraced reports that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi recently offered the Palestinians an independent state in the Sinai Peninsula in return for dropping claims to the pre–1967 borders. According to the offer, which was reported by the Arab media and by Israel’s Army Radio, Egypt would give the Palestinians land in the Sinai that would effectively expand the territory of the Gaza Strip fivefold. This “Greater Gaza” would be a fully independent state under the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority, and would serve as a homeland for all Palestinians “refugees.