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Reuters/Sergei KarpukhinAbdulrahman Al-Rassi, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Russia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Tuesday, a group of countries that include Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed in principle to freeze oil-production rates. On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. But it’s really just a bunch of bull.
As regular Growth Stock Wire readers know, oil prices fell from more than $105 per barrel in mid-2014 to about $30 per barrel now. That’s a 70%-plus fall in just 18 months.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”), the world’s oil supply rose from 91 million barrels per day in 2013 to 96.3 million barrels per day in October 2015 (the latest data available). That’s a 6% increase in supply in just two years.
Meanwhile, demand isn’t increasing as fast as supply is. World oil demand was 91.2 million barrels per day in 2013. The latest EIA estimate puts it around 92.8 million barrels per day as of September 2015 — an increase of less than 2%.
That means the “surplus” oil (supply minus demand) went from about -200,000 barrels per day to 3.5 million barrels per day. That’s why oil prices collapsed.
Many folks in the oil industry want this production-freeze deal to make a difference in the oil price right away. But it won’t. Here’s why... The deal is important because Saudi Arabia and Russia make up 24% of the world’s oil production. These two oil titans agreed to stop increasing production... except that the agreement is coming while we’re near all-time record volumes of oil.
In other words, these countries couldn’t really produce that much more oil anyway. You can see what I mean on the chart below:
The problem is, the one country that could massively increase oil production — Iran — hasn’t agreed to the deal yet. The deal is contingent on Iran’s agreement. And if you know anything about Iran and Saudi Arabia’s relationship, you know this deal is already in doubt. Saudi Arabia and Iran’s relationship is terrible, and Iran isn’t about to agree to restrict oil production right now after 35 years of sanctions.
Iran plans to increase production between 500,000 and 1 million barrels of oil per day. That will add much-needed foreign currency to Iran’s economy. If the deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia hinges on Iran, it’s dead in the water already.
The only way for oil prices to rise from here is if world demand increases and we’re able to consume the oil surplus. Oil-production freezes like this are useless political baloney. They don’t fix the fundamental issue... and that’s what really matters.
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Post-war Iraq: 'Everybody is corrupt, from top to bottom. Including me' by Martin Chulov in Baghdad
A corrupt political class has led a 13-year pillage on public money in the pursuit of power. As oil prices fall, further jeopardising the country’s revenues, there is little hope that governance will improve
Iraq’s anti-corruption chief sat in his office, waving his hands in exasperation. “There is no solution,” he said. “Everybody is corrupt, from the top of society to the bottom. Everyone. Including me.”
Coming at the start of a conversation about Iraq’s ailing governance, and what was being done to turn things around, Meshan Jabour’s admission was jarring. “At least I am honest about it, he shrugged. “I was offered $5m by someone to stop investigating him. I took it, and continued prosecuting him anyway.”
Continue reading...Turkey Blames Kurdish Militia for Ankara Attack, Challenging U.S. by By TIM ARANGO and CEYLAN YEGINSU
In blaming a Syrian Kurdish militia supported by the United States, Turkey added urgency to a question its president asked about American support.Belgium Finds Video of Nuclear Official at Home of Terrorism Suspect by By MILAN SCHREUER and ALISSA J. RUBIN
The footage indicated that the terrorist network involved in the Paris attacks on Nov. 13 may also have wanted to obtain radioactive material.
February 19, 2016, 10:00 AM (IDT)
Iran’s Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan arrived in Moscow this week at the head of a large military delegation and laid before President Vladimir Putin and his Defense Minister Gen. Sergei Shoigu a $14 billion check. Now, make our Revolutionary Guards Corps and regular forces into an up-to-the-minute modern war machine, the best in the region, he said. The plan was approved by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to be funded from moneys released by lifted sanctions.
In Putin’s Shadow by Aaron MacLean
Ever heard of the Republic of Gagauzia? I hadn’t, as I’m guessing is the case for most of us in the United States. Then again, before 2014 I was not aware that there existed enough sectionalist sentiment in eastern Ukraine for something like a ‘People’s Republic of Donetsk’ or its neighbor, the ‘Luhansk People’s Republic,’ to spring into existence in the Donbass; or that, according to some old maps conveniently re-promoted at the time in Moscow, all of the region (and much beyond) had long fallen under the cultural-political complex of ‘Novorossiya,’ at least up until the unfortunate Ukrainian interlude that had begun after the fall of the Soviet Union.
All of which is to say, don’t count the Gagauz out! A region in the southern part of Moldova, Gagauzia is the kind of place where, when you visit (as Robert Kaplan discovered while researching his latest book, In Europe’s Shadow) you encounter men who present you with business cards describing them as “chief of the general department of economic development, trade and services of Gagauzia,”—a minister with a broad portfolio, if, as yet, without a country. “We are deeply engaged in the Turkic and Russian worlds, but we have no emotional links whatsoever to Romania and Moldova,” this man told Kaplan over lunch at a dingy hotel, later noting that “forty-thousand Gagauz are stranded” right over the border in Ukraine.
Stranded. This disconcerting exchange occurs in the finest chapter of Kaplan’s book, ‘The Pontic Breach.’ As a stand-alone work of reporting and analysis it ought to be required reading for Westerners looking to opine about “the ultimate marchland” and key terrain of southeastern Europe, Romania—to which Moldova once belonged, before being chopped off by Stalin. (This is a book best read with a terrain map of Eastern Europe open in front of you.) The Pontic Breach, a term of Kaplan’s invention, refers to the wide coastal plain between the Carpathians and the Black Sea, connecting the Ukrainian steppe with the Danube valley—a southern counterpart to the natural invasion route between Russia and central Europe over the Polish plains.
Geography may not be destiny, but it sure can give you a hint—as can history, which in Romania has very often been grim. Because the existence of the Internet provides both marvels and horrors on demand, anyone who likes can call up the video of the claustrophobic show trial and swift execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu in 1989—the angry, frail, somewhat doddering old man accusing the court of a lack of patriotism; his birdlike, also elderly, but obviously sharper wife refusing to be taken out separately to be shot, getting her way, then shouting ineffectually as the two are tied up and executed together moments later.
It’s almost enough to cause sympathy, until one dwells on the immense human suffering for which those two were responsible, including many an execution (no one really knows how many—thousands, and many more dead from starvation) far crueler than their own. Before the Ceaușescus, who after a trip to North Korea borrowed their leadership style from the Kim family, there was Gheorghiu-Dej, who borrowed his from Stalin. To get to anything like a breather, you still have to pass through the horrors of the Second World War, when Antonescu sided with the Nazi’s, helping them to exterminate hundreds of thousands of Jews and other innocents only to meet his own demise in front of a firing squad after Romania flipped to Stalin late in the war.
Before that was the so-called interbellum period, about which Kaplan hears much during his journeys. Indeed, when Romania figures in the post-war English canon—as in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travel memoirs or Olivia Manning’s novels—these years often feature, and the device of choice tends to be dramatic irony. An open question for Kaplan, and for the pro-Western politicians he interviews in Bucharest or Chișinău, is whether the current years of relative peace and prosperity (in Romania at least, if only to a lesser extent in Moldova) will one day be written of in the same tragic tone.
Romania, for its part, has aligned itself firmly with the West, supporting the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as joining NATO, the EU, and looking to join the Eurozone within the next decade—assuming there is still such a thing to join. It faces the Russian threat not only to its east, with destabilization in Moldova and Ukraine, but also, potentially, to its west, in the historically more bourgeois direction of Hungary. There, the government of Viktor Orbán has taken a noticeably Putinesque turn, and (by the way) there are many thousands of ethnic Hungarians in Romania’s west. Hungary is, of course, also a member of NATO and the EU. Wouldn’t it just make Putin’s day if sometime soon Orbán started to speak of this population as “stranded”?
Conservative—and, uncomfortably, fascist—Romanian nationalists have tended to look west for their identity and to see their country’s special destiny in serving as a sort of Latin shield in the face of Slavs, Turks, and other threats to a European cultural project. Kaplan muses at length on the shortcomings of such a historical vision, not to mention the potentially toxic employment that it can be put toward, but effectively endorses a housetrained version—a benign nationalism.
As is Kaplan’s way such musings are often personal, and this book is as much memoir as reportage—but it can’t go unnoticed that here his elegiac tone is often directed by Kaplan at himself. He spends much of the book reflecting on his youth, on the craft of journalism, and on his regrets: his support for the Iraq war and the fact that his book Balkan Ghosts kept the Clinton administration out of the former Yugoslavia when Kaplan believed that American intervention there was desperately needed. Relitigating that case with an eye towards Eastern Europe’s present situation, he writes here:
But, I repeat, it is only the darkest human and political landscapes where intervention is ever required in the first place. Therefore, you should never have to romanticize a landscape—or shade your analysis in any way—in order to take action on its behalf. And you should know the worst about a place before you craft even the boldest and most humanistic policy toward it.
Who knows what the United States will do in the face of the threat to liberal democracy posed by Putin? However it falls out, our luck continues in having Kaplan as our correspondent.
The post In Putin’s Shadow appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Bloomberg |
Secret Memo Details U.S.'s Broader Strategy to Crack Phones
Bloomberg But while the companies may have thought that was the final word, in fact the government was working on a Plan B. ... The approach was formalized in a confidential National Security Council “decision memo,” tasking government agencies with developing ... and more » |
U.S. airstrikes target Tunisian operative at ISIS camp in Libya: reports by Robert Burns, Maggie Michael
WASHINGTON (AP) — American warplanes struck an Islamic State training camp in Libya near the Tunisian border Friday, and a Tunisian described as a key extremist operative probably was killed, U.S. defense officials said. Local officials estimated that more than 40 people were killed with more wounded, some critically.
One ...
Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news.
ANKARA BOMB ATTACK
Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu said there is clear evidence that the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG was responsible for Wednesday’s suicide attack in Ankara that left 28 people dead. Davutoglu has vowed to retaliate in both Iraq and Syria. [Reuters’ Ercan Gurses and Humeyra Pamuk]
Officials identified the suicide bomber as Saleh Najjar, a Syrian refugee who registered in Turkey in mid-2014. [Wall Street Journal’s Dion Nissenbaum et al] Turkish authorities have arrested 14 people in connection to the attack, as a YPG leader denied involvement. [NPR’s Bill Chappell]
Davutoglu also directed a warning at Russia, saying in a televised address that: “If these terror attacks continue, they will be as responsible as the YPG.” Moscow denies any link to terrorism related activities. [Financial Times’ Mehul Srivastava and Funja Guler]
The United States was quick to condemn the attack and express support for Turkey but cautioned against prematurely attributing responsibility to the Kurdish militia. [New York Times’ Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu]
Turkey’s foreign minister has today accused the US of making a “mistake” by relying on “groups like the YPG” in the fight against ISIS, saying that above all it is a “sign of weakness.” [Reuters]
IRAQ and SYRIA
Comments by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “do not chime with the diplomatic efforts that Russia is undertaking,” said Moscow’s envoy to the UN, commenting on a statement from Assad in which he said that he intended to re-establish control over all of Syria. [Reuters]
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are considering heightened intervention in Syria, though both are “deeply wary of acting without US consent” while at the same time are “angry at what they see as a US failure to take a more muscular stance” against Russia, report Sam Jones et al for the Financial Times.
Moscow agreed to an American request not to target US special operations forces in northern Syria, the Pentagon revealed yesterday, a previously undisclosed cooperation between the two nations. [The Hill’s Kristina Wong]
Tensions between the US and Turkey, heightened now in light of Wednesday’s attack in Ankara, threaten to “jeopardize their alliance in the Syria conflict,” writes Rick Gladstone, providing a Q&A on the dynamic between the US, Turkey and the Kurds. [New York Times]
More than 20 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives in two airstrikes targeting ISIS-held towns in Anbar province, sources say. It was not immediately clear whether the strikes were conducted by the US-led coalition. [Al Jazeera]
US-led airstrikes continue. The US and coalition military forces carried out seven airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on Feb. 17. Separately, partner forces conducted a further 12 strikes on targets in Iraq. [Central Command]
“In the Syrian nightmare, even small steps forward are notable.” David Ignatius explains why now is a “critical moment” in the civil conflict, concluding that it is “never too late for the United States to do the right thing – which is to build, carefully, the political and military framework for a new Syria.” [Washington Post]
The Economist writes: “Syria is a nasty complex of wars within a war,” describing the “perils of inaction” and setting out steps which the west ought to take now.
SURVEILLANCE, PRIVACY and TECHNOLOGY
Facebook and Twitter have pledged to “stand with Apple” and “aggressively fight” attempts to weaken encryption, as the tech company’s battle with the FBI continues. [The Guardian’s Danny Yadron]
Apple’s decision to defy the court order to unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters “was over a year in the making,” report Matt Apuzzo et al, citing a drug case in a Brooklyn federal court last year which marked a shift in the tech company’s policy on assisting law enforcement to unlock phones. [New York Times]
Further, Apple had for weeks been refusing the FBI’s requests that it unlock the phone of Syed Rizwan Farook, with the Justice Department going as far as considering filing court papers against the tech giant. [Wall Street Journal’s Devlin Barrett and Daisuke Wakabayashi]
Neither Democratic presidential candidate will pick a side between the FBI and Apple, both Sanders and Clinton attempting to occupy a middle ground, one which Jenna McLaughlin argues doesn’t really exist, at The Intercept.
“We are a country of laws, and this charade has gone on long enough,” writes Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Richard Burr in an op-ed at USA Today expressing concern that they are not permitted to act above the law.
The media weighs in. The New York Times editorial board makes the case for “why Apple is right to challenge” the court ruling ordering it to assist the FBI, citing the “Constitution and the nation’s laws” which “limit how investigators and prosecutors can collect evidence.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board suggests that “the reality seems to be more complicated than either Mr Cook or the FBI allow,” concluding that a “mature democracy – if America still is one – ought to be able to work out these crucial matters of national security through legislative deliberation.” And the Washington Post editorial board expresses hope that “Apple will fight … hard to safeguard its users’ privacy from authoritarian abuse.”
“Crime, iPhones and encryption.” The New York Times “Room for Debate” asks whether tech companies should provide access to law enforcement where a crime has been committed.
SOUTH CHINA SEA
Australia and New Zealand have urged China to avoid further exacerbating tensions among those countries disputing sovereignty in the South China Sea. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated that “it is absolutely critical that we ensure that there is a lowering of tensions.” [Reuters’ Colin Packham]
The New York Times editorial board situates China’s decision to place missiles on a disputed islandin the South China Sea in the context of a “series of provocative acts that is fueling regional tensions.” While, in theory, defense of its naval bases 273 miles away on Hainan Island would be a legitimate reason for the missiles, the timing of the deployment, and the way it was done, makes it “impossible to blindly accept” this rationale.
RUSSIA
Russia’s next strike could be “anywhere in the world.” Poland’s foreign affairs adviser, Krzysztof Szczerski, has warned. He told Patrick Wintour that Russia’s intervention in Syria demonstrates that it has the capability of transporting large amounts of military equipment at speed while remaining undetected, allowing it to set “new challenging fronts around the world.” [The Guardian]
Islamic State is focusing activity in the Northern Caucases, reports Anna Nemtsova, recruiting from the local population and “exacting retribution for what happens on the faraway battlefields of Syria.” [The Daily Beast]
PARIS ATTACKS
Confirmation that video footage depicting a senior Belgian nuclear official was recovered from a Paris suspect has sparked uproar among lawmakers, who are protesting that they and the rest of the country have been misled about the extent of the threat to nuclear facilities and the ambitions of those responsible for the attacks. [New York Times]
A main suspect wanted in connection with the Paris attacks successfully hid inside an apartment in Brussels for three weeks, those investigating have reportedly confirmed. [Reuters]
Encryption assisted the Paris attackers to hide from authorities in the run-up to their November assault, director of the NSA, Michael Rogers has said. [The Hill’s Cory Bennett]
AFGHANISTAN
Afghan security forces raided a hospital in Wardak province, Afghanistan on Wednesday night, killing three. There are reports that NATO advisers may have taken part in the attack, which is being presented as a violation of humanitarian law. [New York Times’ Mujib Mashal; Washington Post’s Tim Craig and Sayed Salahuddin]
Five Red Cross staff members have been kidnapped by an armed group while travelling in the Afghan province of Ghazni. The Red Cross has confirmed that it has halted operations there and is working to secure the release of its employees. [Reuters]
ISRAEL and PALESTINE
Two teenage Palestinians have fatally stabbed an Israeli soldier and wounded another man in an Israeli supermarket in the West Bank. Civilians subsequently shot the attackers, wounding them. The incident comes just after Israel’s top general addressed Israeli students on the issue of the appropriate degree of force to use in confrontations with Palestinian attackers. [New York Times’ Isabel Kershner]
Violence between Israel and Palestine is showing “no sign of relenting,” according to the UN, urging both sides to act to shape the future of their relations. [UN News Centre]
Bill Clinton has lent his voice to his wife’s promise to give “even greater support” to Israel if she is elected, meeting secretly with leaders of South Florida’s Jewish community on Monday. [The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald]
NORTH KOREA
President Obama has approved new sanctions against North Korea after the Senate’s unanimous approval of the bill last week. The new measures are supposed to cut off money that North Korea needs to develop its nuclear weapons technology. [AP; BBC]
US and South Korean fighter jets flew alongside each other on Thursday, in what the Department of Defense said was a show of the nations’ collective capability to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula in the face of recent provocations by North Korea. The importance of US-South Korea coordination in responding to North Korea was reaffirmed during the discussions between Deputy Secretary Antony Blinken and North Korea’s Deputy National Security Advisor, in Washington, saidthe Department of State.
OTHER DEVEVLOPMENTS
More than 30 Islamic State militants have been killed in a US air strike near Sabratha, west of Tripoli, Libya. Many of those killed are believed to have been involved in two major terrorist attacks in Tunisia last year, including Noureddine Chouchane, a “major facilitator” for the Islamic State, although reports of his death are yet to be confirmed. [New York Times’ Eric Schmitt and Declan Walsh]
Scenes from the Hollywood movie “Zero Dark Thirty” have been screened at the 9/11 pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo Bay’s Camp Justice. Defense lawyers are arguing that the CIA gave more access to evidence to filmmakers than it did to lawyers involved in the case. [Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg]
“Significant breakthroughs.” The head of the House Benghazi Committee reports “enormous progress” in its investigation into the terrorist attacks on a US Compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, following interviews with top governmental officials this month. [The Hill’s Julian Hattem]
The US Marines has placed tanks, artillery and logistic equipment inside caves in Norway as it stations itself close to the NATO-Russia frontier. Colonel William Bentley has stated that the intention in doing this is to reduce cost and speed up the Marines’ “ability to support operations in crisis, so we’re able to fall in on gear that is ready-to-go and respond to whatever that crisis may be.” [CNN’s Ryan Browne]
A UN Mission in South Sudan has been burned to the ground following an eruption of violence there on Wednesday evening, which continued overnight and has resulted in the deaths of at least 18 people. [The Daily Beast’s Justin Lynch; CNN’s Catherine E Shoichet and Pierre Meilhan] UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the attack and urged all parties to abstain from any actions or comments which could cause the situation to escalate. [UN News Centre]
Kenya’s military claims to have killed the head of intelligence of al-Shabaab in an airstrike in Nadris camp in south Somalia, ten days ago. Al-Shabaab denies the death. [AP]
Egyptian human rights organization, the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence,is to challenge the government’s “politically motivated” decision to shut it down, intending to begin its resistance with “a lawsuit in the administrative court.” [Wall Street Journal’s Dahlia Kholaif]
Cultivating “a generation of school-age militants.” Islamic State’s newest “shock tactic” is to use children on suicide missions, reports Greg Miller. [Washington Post] At least 89 children were killed in the year up to January 2016, a report published by the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point’s CTC Sentinel has confirmed. [The Daily Beast’s Katie Zavaski]
“Terror disruptions.” Jenna McLaughlin reports on the FBI’s new categorization of its own performance measures, which she suggests is vague, lacks transparency and appears to be an attempt to wrongly suggest that the FBI is exceeding expectations in the fight against terror. [The Intercept]
Following the release of the National Commission on the Future of the US Army’s report on Jan 29, Andrew F Krepinevich mourns the Army’s “declining ability to wage the kind of protracted irregular wars that America’s enemies increasingly prefer to fight,” a problem he says has its origins in the post-Vietnam war decision to drop the draft. [Wall Street Journal]
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BERLIN (AP) - European intelligence agencies plan to boost their fight against Islamic militants by creating a virtual network to share information among up to 30 countries, officials said Friday.
The Counter Terrorism Group - a discreet and informal grouping of domestic spy agencies from the 28 European Union countries, ...
There were at least 89 cases over the past year in which the Islamic State employed children or teenagers in suicide missions, according to new research that indicates the terrorist group is sending youths to their deaths in greater and greater numbers.
Business Insider |
Russia and Saudi Arabia's deal to freeze oil production is 'a bunch of bull'
Business Insider Reuters/Sergei KarpukhinAbdulrahman Al-Rassi, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Russia, andRussian President Vladimir Putin. Tuesday, a group of countries that include Saudi Arabia andRussia agreed in principle to freeze oil-production rates. On the ... Despite Stillborn Deal, Saudi-Russian Petrodiplomacy Could Reshape The Future Of OilForbes Russia Sees Oil Output Slump in Worst Case Amid OPEC TalksBloomberg all 1,163 news articles » |
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Первый канал |
На город Кировск в Мурманской области сошла лавина
Первый канал Обстоятельства схода лавины на жилые кварталы выясняют в городе Кировске Мурманской области. Масштабных разрушений удалось избежать, но последствия более чем серьезные. Есть погибший и пострадавшие. До сих пор не ясно, было это стихийное бедствие, или тысячи тонн ... Губернатору Мурманской области доложили о сходе лавины в КировскеРосбалт.RU Сход лавины в Кировске: в заваленных снегом гаражах могут оставаться людиНТВ.ru Гибель мужчины под лавиной: версияВести.Ru Правда.Ру -Amic.ru -Петербургский дневник Все похожие статьи: 191 » |
Here are five questions about the Kurds and their role in the rapidly evolving events in Syria and Turkey.Obama’s Asia Pivot Increases US Influence But Fails to Stop China by webdesk@voanews.com (Brian Padden)
Five years after U.S. President Barack Obama committed to a strategic rebalance to Asia, shifting diplomatic and military resources to the globe’s economic engine, critics say the move was oversoldand, so far, it has under delivered. At a time when Beijing’s assertive moves to claim territory in the South China Sea draw headlines and worried responses from regional countries, some say China appears to be outmaneuvering its rivals in the race to assert claims over the vast strategic sea. “As somebody sitting in the Asia Pacific region and observing the U.S. presence in the Asia Pacific, we’ve only seen glimmers of the rebalance,” said William Choong, a Shangri-La Dialogue senior fellow for Asia-Pacific Security in Singapore. For decades, the U.S. Navy has protected key shipping routes in the Pacific. The U.S. Navy is still the supreme ocean power, but China has moved to enforce its claims and expand its presence in the South China Sea – without putting its official military forces in the foreground. “China’s cutting edge has been through a gray area of Coast Guard, paramilitary forces, and even the construction on the artificial islands is being masked as serving the public good, search and rescue, scientific activities, oil exploration, fishing,” said Southeast Asia security analyst Carlyle Thayer with Australia's Defense Force Academy in Canberra. Reclaims land In the last two years China has reclaimed at least 1,170 hectares of land in the South China Sea, building upon small reefs, shoals and islets. This week came another reminder of their efforts to fortify their existing outposts: the U.S. said China appeared to have deployed HQ-9 surface-to-air missile batteries on Woody Island in the Paracel chain. Thayer said China already has more coast guard ships than all the other nine ASEAN nations combined. With the weapons and military infrastructure Beijing is stationing on the man-made islands being built in disputed waters, some more than 800 kilometers from the mainland, China is gaining both a quick strike capability and naval superiority over other countries in the region. ASEAN’S muddled response The U.S. military has built closer ties with ASEAN nations, in particular Vietnam and the Philippines, which have contested China’s territorial claims. That has not meant, however, that ASEAN has banded together to address the South China Sea issue. ASEAN, with its emphasis on consensus building and non-interference, has been reluctant to publicly stand with the U.S. to support any meaningful action against China. "ASEAN countries haven’t really asked of Uncle Sam what they want Uncle Sam to do," Choong said. Still, American influence in the region has increased as a result of Obama’s commitment to more fully engage with Southeast Asia and to personally participate in annual forums like the East Asia Security summit,Southeast Asia security analyst Thayer said. “Obama is leaving a legacy that a new American president would ignore at their peril,” he said. US buildup In recent years, Washington has been moving more troops and military assets into the region and strengthening security alliances with a number of ASEAN members. Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said the Navy has already brought its “newest and most capable” military equipment to the area, like the P-8 surveillance airplane, the Littoral Combat Ship, the Virginia-class submarine, and new amphibious ships such as the USS America. In Australia last year, over 1,000 U.S. Marines were deployed to the city of Darwin to join in exercises with Australian Defense Forces. By 2017, the number of rotational deployments will increase to 2,500. The Philippines’ Supreme Court recently endorsed a bilateral security cooperation agreement that will station U.S. troops and weapons on a rotational basis at five Philippine military airfields and two naval bases. The return of the U.S. military to the Philippines is seen by supporters as a significant deterrent to China and comes 25 years after Manila voted to close U.S. military bases in the country at the end of the Cold War. Washington is also providing maritime assistance to other ASEAN nations, including Vietnam, which is receiving several refurbished U.S. Coast Guard patrol ships. These increased capabilities in Southeast Asia are complemented by extensive U.S. military bases and deployments in Guam, Japan and South Korea.WATCH: President Obama Seeks to Solidify U.S. as Leader in Southeast Asia
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Daily Beast |
How ISIS Takes Revenge on Russia
Daily Beast CHERKESSK, Russia — On a recent morning, armed and uniformed policemen patrolled nearly every block in downtown Cherkessk, the capital of Karachay-Cherkessia, one of six republics inRussia's Northern Caucasus. Every so often, they had to break ... |
Reuters Blogs (blog) |
When it comes to Russia, it's Munich all over again – again
Reuters Blogs (blog) At the time, Putin insisted on a three-day buffer to give his proxies in Ukraine a chance to overrun the transport hub of Debaltseve; this year Russia demanded a one-week deadline to give its Syrian allies the upper hand in their assault on Aleppo. A ... Russia warns Assad Obama wakes up to see Russia as major military powerPravda Russia warns Assad on vow to retake all of Syria Yahoo News European Divisions Drive Munich Conference, While Russia CirclesDefenseNews.com Russia warns Assad against trying to achieve total victoryTelegraph.co.uk Reuters-International Business Times all 2,042 news articles » |
RT |
Russia suspects Azerbaijan of re-exporting banned Turkish tomatoes
RT "During the inspection to check whether Azerbaijan and Iran are fulfilling their obligations to prevent the export of plant products from Turkey, we found that in January Azerbaijan increased deliveries of tomatoes to Russia five-fold," the head of the ... |
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Putin's Syria campaign has drawn US focus back to Europe, says Polish official by Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
Adviser to the Polish president says US realises ‘pivot to Asia’ was a mistake as he urged west to be alert to Russian expansion
Vladimir Putin’s new geopolitical ambitions have led the US to realise it made a strategic mistake turning away from Europe and making a pivot to Asia, the foreign affairs adviser to the Polish president has said.
Krzysztof Szczerski urged the west to recognise that the Russian president is no longer simply seeking to restore his country’s dominance in former Soviet states such as Ukraine, but to adopt a more dominant military posture across the globe.
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Правда.Ру |
СМИ: Саудовская Аравия и Турция могут ввести войска на юго-восток Сирии
Росбалт.RU Саудовская Аравия рассматривает вариант наземной операции на юго-востоке Сирии, сообщает Financial Times со ссылкой на высокопоставленных саудовских чиновников. По их словам, операция может пройти при поддержке Иордании. «Некоторые официальные источники заявляют ... СМИ: Саудовская Аравия и Турция рассматривают вариант ввода войск в СириюТАСС FT сообщила о желании Эр-Рияда провести операцию в СирииLenta.ru США боятся, что Турция и Саудовская Аравия разожгут конфликт с РФ. The Financial Times, ВеликобританияNews Front - новости Новороссии, ЛНР, ДНР Правда.Ру -NEWSru.com -Век - ежедневная газета Все похожие статьи: 195 » |
Washington Post |
Russia says international meeting for Syria cease-fire cancelled
Washington Post BEIRUT — A meeting of the international coordinating group charged with implementing a cease-fire in Syria was cancelled Friday, Russia's foreign ministry said, delaying any reduction of hostilities and raising further questions about the workability ... Syria Cease-Fire on Agenda at Russia-US TalksNBCNews.com Russia warns Assad on vow to retake all of SyriaRTE.ie 'Are you kidding us?': Moscow reacts to Ankara's allegations that sided Russia with ISISRT Reuters -Pravda all 1,903 news articles » |
РБК |
Умер глава Северной Осетии
РБК Глава Северной Осетии Тамерлан Агузаров скончался во время лечения в Москве от пневмонии на 53-м году жизни. В должность главы республики он вступил только 13 сентября 2015 года. Глава Северной Осетии Тамерлан Агузаров скончался в пятницу, 19 февраля, на 53-м году ... Названа причина смерти главы Северной ОсетииРоссийская Газета Источник: тело главы Северной Осетии доставят в республику вечеромРИА Новости Скончался глава Северной Осетии Тамерлан АгузаровТАСС ИА REGNUM-Комсомольская правда-Дни.Ру Все похожие статьи: 263 » |
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the Russian defense industry, ranks the Russian army lower than U.S. President Barack Obama does.
Kremlin officials insisted the "foreign agent" label did not mean an organization should automatically close its doors, but the moves this month would seem to suggest that position is changing.
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CNN |
Russia wants to modify Cold War missiles to destroy asteroids
CNN Its 2016 threat assessment says that Russia continues "to pursue weapons systems capable of destroying satellites on orbit." The assessment notes that "the Russian Duma officially recommended in 2013 that Russia resume research and development of an ... Nuke a 60-megaton asteroid? Russian plan may target ApophisThe Weather Network all 80 news articles » |
Дни.Ру |
Европу предупредили о крупных терактах
Дни.Ру Количество боевиков в Европе постоянно увеличивается. Вместе с этим показателем растет уровень террористической угрозы. По данным полицейских, в ближайшем будущем члены "Исламского государства" и других группировок могут совершить серию нападений, целью которых ... Глава Европола предупредил о планах ИГ совершить масштабные теракты в ЕвропеТАСС Глава Европола предупредил о возможности новых терактов в Европе со стороны ИГГазета.Ru Ющенко: Украина находится в самом безнадежном кризисе с начала 90-х годовФедеральное агентство новостей No.1 BFM.Ru -РЫБИНСКonLine -Новости 24 часа - MyNewsOnline24.ru Все похожие статьи: 76 » |
At least one person was killed by an intentionally triggered snow slide in the Russian town of Kirovsk in Murmansk Oblast.
Exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky: I have no obligations to Putin by Shaun Walker Moscow correspondent
Outlining plans to back Russian opposition groups, Khodorkovsky – pardoned in 2013 – says he never agreed to stay out of politics
The exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said he has “no obligations” to Vladimir Putin as he outlined his plans to take on the Russian government in London.
Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia’s richest man, said it was a “propaganda myth” that he had promised the Russian president he would not get involved in politics after he was pardoned and released from prison in 2013.
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Western Libya Airstrike Kills 40by webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
U.S. warplanes have carried out airstrikes on an Islamic State training camp in western Libya near the country's border with Tunisia, according to U.S. officials. The strike early Friday destroyed a building in the town of Sabratha, west of Tripoli, in a region where the extremist group has a known presence. Local officials have said at least 40 people were killed. Western officials told the The New York Times more than 30 IS recruits were killed. The paper quoted a Western official as saying the target was a "senior Tunisian operative" linked to two major terrorist attacks in Tunisia last year. The U.S. has acknowledged carrying out airstrikes on at least two other occasions in Libya in recent months, including taking out the head of the Islamic State in Libya in a November attack in the city of Derna. Libya has been in chaos and political uncertainty since dictator Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown and killed in 2011. Islamic State has taken advantage of the upheaval to expand its presence there.
With Russia’s HIV infection rate continuing to spiral, activists say the state can no longer drag its heels over improved treatment and prevention measures
Taking shelter briefly from the 20-degree cold in an activist group’s van near the outskirts of Moscow, Ivan, 26, recounted his closest call with HIV. He was shooting heroin with a group of people and didn’t have his own syringe, so the next man over offered him his own. Ivan was about to take it when an acquaintance warned him the man was “sick” – that he was HIV positive.
“That’s how people I know got infected, they shared syringes or slept with someone,” Ivan said. “Not everyone says that they are ill. Some don’t say anything so they won’t diminish their self-esteem.”
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Channel News Asia |
German exports to Russia set to fall to 10-year low
Channel News Asia BERLIN: German businesses are expecting to see a further drop in exports to Russia this year to their lowest level in 10 years, even if companies continue to regard it as a market with enormous potential, a specialist trade organisation found on Friday ... and more » |
This week saw an historic meeting between the heads of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Then, Patriarch Kirill went to visit some penguins.
A prominent Russian political analyst known for his critical stance toward the Kremlin has left Russia "fearing possible persecution," his lawyer said.
The attached video is one of the most shocking and outrageous videos we have ever seen. YWN has not been able to verify where or when this was taken, but you will probably be just as outraged as everyone else who ...
Cyber-security is one of the hot topics at Asia's biggest airshow, currently underway in Singapore.
Polish Hero Lech Walesa Denies Being a Paid Communist Informant by Monika Scislowska / AP
(WARSAW) — Lech Walesa, the legendary anti-communist leader who played a historic role in bringing down communism in Poland and across Eastern Europe, had served as a paid informant in the 1970s for the same communist regime that he later fought, according to documents revealed publicly Thursday.
It is not yet clear how damaging the revelations will be to Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his defiant opposition to the communists and who became Poland’s first democratically-elected president after the 1989 fall of communism.
Walesa, now 72, has long admitted that he signed a document in the 1970s agreeing to provide information to the generally-hated communist secret police, although he insisted he never informed on anyone and never took any money. In 2000, he was cleared by a court, which said it found no evidence of collaboration.
On Thursday, Walesa suggested that the newly uncovered papers were fake and vowed to fight to clear his name.
“There can exist no documents coming from me,” Walesa said in a written message from Venezuela, where he is traveling. “I will prove that in court.”
Communism and strong controls by Moscow were imposed on Poland and other Eastern European nations after World War II — measures despised and opposed by most people in the region. The secret service was the regime’s harshest tool for keeping people under its control, using personal information to blackmail and discredit opponents and dissidents.
But the secret police also fabricated information on people, a fact that calls for meticulous confirmation of the authenticity of any compromising documents that emerge. The fate of the files was a major concern after the communists lost power in 1989, with reports saying that secret agents at the time were fabricating new documents and burning or hiding others.
The newly discovered evidence implicating Walesa was found among documents seized this week from the home of the last communist interior minister, the late Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, said Lukasz Kaminski, the head of the National Remembrance Institute, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes.
Kaminski said they include a commitment to provide information that is signed with Walesa’s name and codename “Bolek.” There are also pages of reports and receipts for money, signed “Bolek,” and dated from 1970-76.
Kaminski said the 279 pages of documents on Walesa seem to be authentic and will be made public in due course. He said historians need time to analyze the content of the documents.
Antoni Dudek, the institute’s leading historian and an expert on Walesa, predicted that the impact would not be that great unless some evidence emerged that Walesa continued to be an informant after he had founded the Solidarity freedom movement in 1980.
“Lech Walesa is the symbol of Poland’s struggle for freedom. He is the symbol of Solidarity and nothing can destroy that, unless we learn that he continued that collaboration,” Dudek said.
The papers concerning Walesa came to light on Tuesday, when Kiszczak’s widow offered to sell the institute documents concerning secret informer “Bolek.” She demanded 90,000 zlotys ($23,000) for them. Prosecutors seized the documents the same day because the law requires that important historic or state papers be handed over to authorities.
According to Kaminski, the institute seized five more packets of documents but these have not yet been opened. Prosecutors and police also searched Kiszczak’s summer house on Thursday.
Walesa is the icon of Poland’s and Eastern Europe’s drive for freedom that abolished communism and brought down the Iron Curtain without bloodshed. He founded and led Solidarity from 1980, when it was born out of shipyard worker protests on the Baltic Sea coast, and through communist-imposed martial law. He led Solidarity in round-table negotiations with the communists, Kiszczak among them, in 1989 that ushered in massive democratic and economic changes.
Walesa was democratic Poland’s first popularly elected president from 1990 to 1995, but, following a term of office when his style was perceived as authoritarian, he painfully lost a re-election bid to ex-communist Aleksander Kwasniewski.
Walesa has withdrawn officially from politics, though he comments publicly on current events. He is a sharp critic of Poland’s new conservative ruling party, the Law and Justice party, whose leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is a longtime political foe of Walesa’s.
Walesa has recently accused the new leadership of undermining democracy.
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U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and commended him for passing anti-corruption legislation sought by the International Monetary Fund, the White House said.
Special meeting planned for next month to discuss cooperation in curbing flow of migrants
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(BRUSSELS) — The European Union has called an extraordinary summit with Turkey for early March to coordinate efforts to stem the flow of migrants across the Aegean into Greece.
EU Council President Donald Tusk said early Friday that the EU’s “joint action plan with Turkey remains a priority and we must do all we can to succeed.”
A precise date has not been set for the summit as the meeting still has not been discussed with Turkey but it is likely to take place in the first week of March.
The EU has promised billions of euros, an easing of visa restrictions and fast-track membership for Turkey to persuade it to tighten border controls.
More than two million refugees are on Turkish soil, most of them from Syria.
Scholars say a basic misunderstanding of the geography and history of Vatican City is at the center of criticism that the pope is being hypocritical in his remarks about Donald Trump’s call to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Tristan Stead drops 30ft to safety after being picked up by the lift at a resort in Canada and left dangling for seven minutes.
At least 100 butchered bodies have been discovered in a sewer that runs beneath a major prison in Colombia’s capital Bogotá, during an investigation into a possible epidemic of extrajudicial brutality across the country’s notoriously violent jails.
State prosecutors leading the investigation said that the victims whose dismembered remains were found under La Modelo prison were not only convicts but also visitors to the penitentiary and civilians, reports CNN. Paramilitary leaders allegedly bribed prison guards to turn a blind eye to the killings.
Authorities discovered the bodies amid an ongoing case against paramilitary figures Mario Jaimes Mejía (known as El Panadero, or the Baker) and Alejandro Cárdenas Orozco (known as JJ), who have been charged with the 2000 kidnapping, rape and torture of Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya. Bedoya was at the time investigating violence, corruption and weapons trafficking at LaModelo, one of Colombia’s biggest prisons.
Though the prison investigation is focusing on La Modelo, officials believe that sewers under jails in other Colombian cities may also hold the remains of people who were similarly killed and dismembered, reports CNN.
For five decades, Colombia has been wrought with a civil war between state forces, paramilitary groups, and guerrilla fighters. Some 220,000 people have died in the bloody conflict; 6 million more have been displaced. In October, government and rebel leaders announced a plan to retrieve and identify the remains of the more than 50,000 individuals who have disappeared since fighting began.
[CNN]
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(GENEVA) — Doctors Without Borders said on Thursday that it took the wrenching decision not to formally inform Syria’s government or its Russian allies about the location of some medical facilities such as the one hit by a deadly airstrike this week, amid concerns that doing so could open them up to targeting amid recent violence that has killed many civilians.
The charity, also known by its French acronym MSF, says repeated attacks against health facilities during Syria’s five-year civil war have led medical staffers to ask the group not to provide the GPS coordinates of some sites. This was the case of the makeshift clinic run by the charity in the Syrian town of Maaret al-Numan, which was hit four times in attacks on Monday, killing at least 25 people.
“Deliberate attacks against civilian infrastructures, including hospitals struggling to provide life-saving assistance are routine,” MSF International President Joanne Liu told reporters in Geneva. “Health care in Syria is in the crosshair of bombs and missiles. It has collapsed. Let me be clear: Attacks on civilians and hospitals must stop. The normalization of such attacks is intolerable.”
Liu’s comments came as the U.N. made new aid deliveries to five besieged towns and said it plans additional deliveries, hopefully to the 4.6 million Syrians living in hard-to-reach and besieged areas, as called for in an agreement by 18 key nations in Munich on Feb. 12. That agreement also called for a cessation of hostilities within a week — which would mean Thursday — but there was no sign of a halt to fighting.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants to see movement toward a de-escalation of violence and a cessation of hostilities as soon as possible.
“What we’ve seen recently goes against that,” he said. “We see very worrying escalation of military developments.”
MSF’s Liu said the group has no certainty about who was responsible for the strikes, but the “probability” was that Syrian or Russian air power was to blame. She said MSF’s policy of not informing Syrian or Russian officials about the location of health facilities has become a “hot topic” inside the organization.
Also Thursday, the head of a U.N. task force on humanitarian aid for Syria said that 114 “big trucks” delivered life-saving supplies over the past 24 hours for 80,000 people in five besieged areas of the country. Jan Egeland called the deliveries a “first step” by the task force that was set up last week following a meeting of world and regional powers known as the International Syria Support Group. He said the supplies are enough to last about a month.
Egeland said the aim is to reach other main besieged areas, or areas surrounded by government or opposition forces, and “hard-to-reach” places within the next week. He also expressed hopes for progress in air-dropping aid to Deir Ezzor, a city which is currently under siege by the extremist Islamic State group.
The U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said from Damascus that the International Syria Support Group is “very encouraged by the fact” that the 114 trucks were able to reach 82,000 people in need and appealed for more such action.
“I must say that this was a difficult test for the United Nations to show they could do it, for the government and for the armed opposition,” de Mistura was quoted as saying in a statement. “Of course, we should go beyond that, we should go far beyond that in order to be able to reach everyone in Syria who is either besieged or in need of being assisted.”
He added that the idea of air drops in areas besieged by the Islamic State group and other factions has become a concrete proposal that the U.N. wants to work on.
In New York, U.N. spokesman Dujarric told reporters Thursday that the World Food Program is considering using a Russian civilian contractor that has been used in the past in South Sudan, and that the contractor would be expected to seek instructions only from the United Nations.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said Russian planes have been carrying out humanitarian air drops in Syria “for a long time,” and he welcomed the “very important” recognition that this may be the only way to supply aid to some areas.
In Brussels, European Union leaders were expected to call on Russia and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces to halt attacks on moderate opposition groups and immediately end all airstrikes.
A draft statement for their summit starting Thursday, seen by The Associated Press, calls on “Russia and the Syrian regime to stop at once attacking moderate opposition groups” and for “an immediate cessation of aerial bombardments in civilian areas.”
MSF said that since the war broke out in 2011, the Syrian government has not granted permission for it to provide medical aid in the country, despite its repeated requests. Because of that, its work has been limited to areas held by opposition forces.
After the latest strikes, MSF operations director Isabelle Defourny said she expects affiliated medical staffers in Syria will now ask that their locations be specified to government officials.
“We gave to the Russian ambassadors in Paris (and) in Geneva coordinates for three hospitals located in very intense conflict zones, but not for all of them, and it was a decision taken together with the medical staff of the health facilities that we support,” she said.
“It was a huge discussion inside MSF and mainly with the medical directors of the health facilities that we support inside Syria,” Defourny added. “The staff of the hospital (and) the director of the hospital didn’t know if they would be better protected if they give the GPS or not.”
She said the Maaret al-Numan hospital was widely known and had already been hit by strikes in the past. “Those are not underground or invisible hospitals,” she said of the medical sites, alluding to the difficulty of the decision not to formally identify its location.
Even giving GPS coordinates is no guarantee of protection, she said, citing a deadly U.S. airstrike in October that destroyed a MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. That hospital had been identified to both Afghan and U.S. forces fighting an insurgency there.
Also Thursday, MSF provided a report documenting war wounded and deaths that draws on information from 70 “makeshift hospitals” and clinics it works with in Syria. While only “a small fraction of the health facilities in Syria,” those medical facilities recorded a total of 7,009 people dead and 154,647 people wounded last year.
The U.N. estimates that more than 250,000 people have been killed and at 11 million displaced from their homes during the war.
___
Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels, Cara Anna in New York and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Two Turkish soldiers and one police officer were killed in an attack by Kurdish militants in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Friday, the armed forces said in a statement.
A 16-year-old boy is critically injured in a helicopter crash in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
A Kurdish fighter in January 2015 in the wreckage of a building in the center of the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's foreign minister accused the United States on Friday of making conflicting statements about the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, and said the use of such groups in the fight against Islamic State was a sign of weakness.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's government is considering cutting spending on defense procurement this year by 5 percent, four official sources told Reuters, a move that would extend the budget squeeze to a sector that up to now has been immune from real cuts.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a day of ceremony and tribute, the casket carrying Justice Antonin Scalia will lie in repose at the Supreme Court where he spent nearly three decades as one of its most influential members....
Hawaii News Now |
Eyewitness: Helicopter fell from sky into Pearl Harbor
Hawaii News Now (Shawn Winrich via the AP). In this image taken from video provided by Shawn Winrich, a helicopter crashes near Parl Harbor, Hawaii on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016. The private helicopter with five people aboard crashed and sunk into the water, leaving a te. and more » |
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