The US has figured out, correctly, that Russia's president only respects force. But after the revelations of US cyberattacks against Russian targets, Vladimir Putin will surely retaliate, says DW's Konstantin Eggert.
According to The Washington Post, the recently established US Army Cyber Command completely blocked internet services to the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg — better known as the Kremlin's troll factory on the day of the US Midterms in November.
The agency is said to be financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a billionaire businessman believed to be close to Vladimir Putin. He is also thought to be the main backer of Russian mercenaries in eastern Ukraine, Syria and Africa. The agency — reported to be behind Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election as well as a host of other malicious activities in Western cyberspace — was, the paper reported, completely blocked which triggered confusion and panic among its management.
Fierce fighting underway as US-backed Syrian forces advance on last piece of territory held by Islamic State group, @seldeeb reports. https://t.co/vL8mOlGJFo
AFP charts comparing the top 15 military budgets for 2018, according to data compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies@AFPgraphicspic.twitter.com/CZWGqvCaPD
Working together to get the job done! Special Forces soldiers from @USArmy 🇺🇸 and Spain 🇪🇸 pose together after an exercise during Flintlock 2019. Flintlock involves 32 countries working together in Mauritania and Burkina Faso 🇧🇫. #KnowYourMilpic.twitter.com/eKMfYvF5Kg
— U.S. Dept of Defense (@DeptofDefense) March 3, 2019
A U.S. Army Soldier, assigned to the 10th Mountain Division and East Africa Response Force, maneuvers on the range during squad live fire training in Djibouti, July 17, 2018. Photo: Tech. Sgt. Larry Reid Jr./ U.S. Air Force
A static display of intercontinental ballistic missiles at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., front gate the evening of April 4, 2012. From left are the Peacekeeper, the Minuteman III and the Minuteman I. The planet Venus is visible in the sky above the Minuteman missiles and Jupiter is visible to the left of the Minuteman I. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)
The United States and Russia have ripped up a Cold War-era nuclear missile treaty, leaving analysts fearing a potential arms race with global ramifications.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the US wanted one, referring to the 1962 standoff that brought the world to the edge of nuclear war.
Decades later, tensions between the two nations are heating up again.
Mr Putin warned that Moscow would retaliate if the US placed new missiles closer to Russia, telling local media that Moscow could deploy hypersonic missiles on ships and submarines outside US territorial waters.
The two sides resumed talks this week after making significant progress in an earlier round of discussions in January.
Negotiations between the Taliban and the United States officials in Qatar entered the fifth day in an attempt to end the 17-year war in Afghanistan.
The talks mark the highest level negotiations between the two sides since the US ramped up peace efforts last year.
Cofounder of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has joined the talks as the new head of the Taliban team. He met the US special representative, Zalmay Khalilzad, for the first time on Monday.
* House Judiciary Committee chair plans to issue the document requests Monday * Rep. Jerrold Nadler says it's 'very clear' that Trump obstructed justice * His committee is in charge of impeachment in the House of Representatives * But Nadler declined to call the investigation an impeachment inquiry yet
Declaring it's 'very clear' President Donald Trump obstructed justice, the chairman of the House committee in charge of impeachment says the panel is requesting documents Monday from more than 60 people from Trump's administration, family and business as part of a rapidly expanding Russia investigation.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said the House Judiciary Committee wants to review documents from the Justice Department, the president's son Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
A Venezuelan national guardsman who defected to Colombia is escorted by a Colombian policeman near the Simon Bolivar bridge between Venezuela and Colombia, in Cucuta, Colombia, February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Marco Bello
* 567 Venezuelan soldiers defected to Colombia, according to Colombian officials, amid a spiraling political crisis in Venezuela. * The military is a vital power base for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, which his rival Juan Guaidó is trying to chip away at. * Amanda Lapo, a defense analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Business Insider that the defections show that military loyalty "is not unanimous any more."
More than 500 Venezuelan soldiers have fled President Nicolás Maduro's crumbling regime for neighboring Colombia, the Colombian migration authority reported Thursday.
The wave of desertions comes as opposition leader Juan Guaidó continues to seek support from the armed forces, which are one of the foundations of Maduro's authority.
Colombia has counted 567 defectors since violent clashes between security forces and activists trying to bring US aid to Venezuela, according to CNN and Colombia's El Tiempo.
The four men in green walk calmly down the street, to gentle clapping from the people around them. They appear to be defectors, shown on a video posted to social media from Wednesday in the town of Herran, Colombia. While CNN has not been able to verify the video, the scene is now a common one in Colombia, from a steady drip of Venezuelan soldiers that have given themselves over to Colombian immigration officials over the past week. As of Thursday, an astounding total of 567 had defected.
This is perhaps the most enduring sign of change since the world was startled by clashes last weekend, when Venezuelan opposition protesters tried to force humanitarian aid into the country over border crossings, past Venezuelan riot police and pro-Maduro gangs.
Spokesman for ailing Abdelaziz Bouteflika says he will stand down after next election
Algeria's ailing president has promised to step down after the next election and enact reforms, as the nation's elite moved to consolidate its power in the face of historic mass protests.
"I've heard the heartfelt cry of the protesters," said Abdelaziz Bouteflika in a letter read out on national television on Sunday night. Addressing the uprising against his rule for the first time, he promised that, if re-elected in April, he would hold a national conference to implement political reforms and set a date for a second election where he would not be a candidate.
The US and Russian military chiefs are to meet Monday in Vienna to discuss operations in Syria, where the US has decided to leave a residual force to protect its Kurdish allies.
General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will represent the US side in the meeting with General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs.
"The two military leaders will discuss the deconfliction of coalition and Russian operations in Syria, plus exchange views on the state of US-Russia military relations and the current international security situation in Europe and other key topics," Ryder said.
BAGHOUZ, Syria (Reuters) - Islamic State unleashed car bombs against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) assaulting Baghouz, in a last-ditch effort to stave off defeat in its final patch of territory, fighters from the U.S.-backed force said on Sunday.
Capturing the besieged village in eastern Syria will be a milestone in international efforts to roll back the jihadists, whose self-styled "caliphate" covered roughly a third of Syria and Iraq at its height in 2014.
But it is universally accepted that the group, which has been in territorial retreat since then and suffered its major defeats in 2017, will remain a security threat as an insurgent force with sleeper cells and some remote pockets of territory.
Lawmakers are lining up to reject the U.S. Navy's proposal to prematurely decommission, as a cost-saving measure, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman .
The Navy likely anticipated the widespread opposition, observers pointed out, underscoring that the sailing branch apparently floated Truman's early retirement as a ploy to secure additional funding in the 2020 budget.
The ploy apparently is working.
There is "zero" chance the House Armed Services Committee will approve the decommissioning, said Rep. Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat and the chair of the HASC seapower subcommittee.
WNU Editor: The original Pentagon/Navy budget proposal was to only allocate $17 million for the Truman overhaul, a sign that the U.S. Navy may retire the USS Truman .... Pentagon Plan to Sideline Carrier Truman Will Net Just $17M in FY 2020 (USNI News). And the reason for this low budget allocation was because of an agreement between former Secretary of Defense Mattis (who believed the age of the aircraft carrier was over), and the U.S. Navy's desire to buy 2 Gerald Ford-class carriers in one contract.... Mattis and the Navy got into 'a mini civil war' over the future of aircraft carriers, and the Navy could still lose (Business Insider/Foreign Policy). Secretary of Defense Mattis is gone, and the U.S. Navy will get it's two new Gerald Ford-class carriers. And if Congressional reaction is any indication, they will also keep the USS Truman.
Being the first recorded F-16 (up) kill by MiG 21 (down) in history, you'd think it would send ripples across the world of aviation. But curiously, Western defence experts maintained complete silence.
MIG 21 vs F-16 Fighter Jet – How does the Russian/Indian MIG-21 Bison compete against Pakistani/US F-16 Fighter Jets? India insisted that its MIG-21 Bison fighter jet shot down a 4th generation Pakistani Air Force F-16 which raised many eyebrows. How do experts compare the India MIG-21 Bison vs Pakistani F-16?
The IAF claimed that one of its MiG-21 fighters downed a PAF F-16 after Pakistan said that it had shot down two Indian jets as tensions continue to mount between India and Pakistan. The Pakistan Air Force has denied any losses adding that they did not use an F-16 during the engagement.
ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - The United States said on Sunday it was trying to find out if Pakistan used U.S.-built F-16 jets to down an Indian warplane, potentially in violation of U.S. agreements, as the stand-off between the nuclear-armed Asian neighbors appeared to be easing.
Pakistan and India both carried out aerial bombing missions this week, including a clash on Wednesday that saw an Indian pilot shot down over the disputed region of Kashmir in an incident that alarmed global powers and sparked fears of a war.
A Pakistan military spokesman on Wednesday denied Indian claims that Pakistan used F-16 jets.
The rumor isn't new and there is certainly some highly relevant logic to back it up, but is it actually true?
After a fairly amazingly well documented week of F-117 Nighthawk action over desolate Death Valley, the Facebook page of an established aviation enthusiast's website from the Netherland's featured a post that has raised a remarkable amount of attention. In it, they state that the F-117 Nighthawk—an aircraft that had supposedly been retired from operational service for over a decade—was sent back into combat as recently as 2017, albeit in very small numbers. This claim was quickly parroted by military aviation websites around the globe, leaving many asking what they should believe.
WNU Editor: While there is no proof that the F-117 operating in the Middle East, the above post by Tyler Rogoway gives a very convincing explanation on why such an aircraft would be valuable in the current terrain of the Middle East.
The "retired" stealth jet has been photographed in the air once again, but this time while ripping around down low over Death Valley in California.
It's far from a secret, the F-117 is still flying over a decade after it was officially retired from service and put into storage at Tonopah Test Range Airport—its first operational home. The F-117's unique status is something I have been reporting on and explaining in detail for years. Just as recently as last July, we got some video footage of an F-117 operating over the Nevada Test and Training Range. That same encounter also resulted in some great radio traffic that gave us new insights as to what the handful of flyable F-117s are up to. Fast forward seven months and we are blessed with absolutely the best photo of an F-117 in flight since the type's retirement 11 years ago.
The image comes to us from our good friends over at my favorite magazine on the planet, Combat Aircraft. And there are more where this one came from. Make sure to check out the whole set on their website.
The United States may or may not be getting a Space Force, but while President Trump is all-in on the creation of a new branch of the U.S. Military—and blowing up the military bureaucracy—it's worth keeping in mind other countries have their military space programs. A recent DIA report shines a light on how the U.S. views these programs, particularly those of Russia and China, neither of which seem particularly threatening—for now anyway.
This week President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 4, ordering the Pentagon to stand up the Space Force as a new branch of the U.S. military. The Space Force, which still requires the blessing of Congress, is miles from being able to put moon boots on the ground, and its existence—let alone usefulness—is still a puzzle to many. To look at how supporters justify the Space Force, it's useful to look at America's potential adversaries, particularly Russia and China, and what the U.S. government claims they're doing in space.
WNU Editor: The Russian military space program is limited by resources. And while it has a lot of expertise when it comes to space, its scope and future objectives are not threatening (for now). China is a different story. They may not have the expertise, but they are learning fast, and their long term objective is to be the dominant power in space.
The database includes detailed, but "de-identified," information about people's lives culled from conversations between police, social services, health workers, and more.
Police, social services, and health workers in Canada are using shared databases to track the behaviour of vulnerable people—including minors and people experiencing homelessness—with little oversight and often without consent.
Documents obtained by Motherboard from Ontario's Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services (MCSCS) through an access to information request show that at least two provinces—Ontario and Saskatchewan—maintain a "Risk-driven Tracking Database" that is used to amass highly sensitive information about people's lives. Information in the database includes whether a person uses drugs, has been the victim of an assault, or lives in a "negative neighborhood."
WNU Editor: I live in Canada and I am stunned to be reading this. I know people in Montreal who are currently conducting pilot projects with its Police Department on how to use behavioural analytics and other recognition software to identify crimes in real time (I am providing some technical advice). From these projects I know that the rules/laws/and privacy protections in Canada are very extensive, and such a program would not be permitted. But apparently the police departments in two provinces have found a way to run such a database, and I am sure they are implementing policies based on the results of these programs. I will update this story when I get more information.
Militant Islamist fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of northern Raqqa province, Syria, June 30, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State looks about to lose its last foothold - on the banks of the Euphrates near the Iraq border - but while its era of territorial rule may be over for now, there is near universal agreement that IS remains a threat.
WHAT HAS ITS TERRITORIAL DEFEAT ACCOMPLISHED?
Islamic State's possession of land in Iraq and Syria set it apart from other like-minded groups such as al Qaeda and became central to its mission when it declared a caliphate in 2014, claiming sovereignty over all Muslim lands and peoples.
The destruction of the quasi-state it built there has denied the group its most potent propaganda and recruiting tool as well as a logistical base from which it could train fighters and plan coordinated attacks overseas.
It also freed its former subjects from summary executions and draconian punishment for breaking its strict laws or, for some minorities, sexual slavery and slaughter.
WNU Editor: ISIS is not the threat that it once was. Losing its territory has crippled it. But it is an ideology that has millions of supporters worldwide, and as long as its radical viewpoint is not confronted directly, it and its many offshoots will continue to run amok when the opportunity arises.
Earlier, the Russian Black Sea Fleet promised to keep a close eye on the USS Donald Cook as it made its way into the waterway last week for a visit to the Ukrainian port of Odessa.
The Tomahawk-capable USS Donald Cook destroyer was caught between two Russian warships shadowing it near the Dardanelles Strait, a military diplomatic source told Russian media on Friday.
The US vessel was said to have left the Strait at about 8 am local time, followed about ten minutes later by Russia's Admiral Essen, a Kalibr-capable frigate normally based in Sevastopol. At the same time, the USS Donald Cook reportedly maneuvered to avoid a collision course with Russia's Admiral Makarov frigate, en route to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea, where it had engaged in military drills off the Syrian coast in January.
EU leaders have angrily hit back at a Franco-German drive to rewrite the bloc's rules in order to combat the growing threat of state-funded Chinese businesses.
AN ANTI-EU Estonian political party saw its share of the vote soar in parliamentary elections that brought a surprise win for the centre-right Reform Party.
SHAMIMA Begum has been blocked from living in the Netherlands after her Dutch husband Yago Riedijk demanded they and their newborn son be granted citizenship there.
MARDI GRAS, also known as Fat Tuesday, is a day which involves carnival celebration and signifies the beginning of Lent. But when is Mardi Gras? When is the New Orleans Mardi Gras carnival?
ALABAMA has been struck by tornados, which have killed at least 23 people. Here are the latest tornado warnings after "catastrophic" damage hits the US state.
TREVOR NOAH has been forced to apologise for comments he made about the India-Pakistan crisis currently ongoing in the Indian subcontinent. What did Trevor Noah say which caused public fury?
MELANIA Trump's former aide has remained defiant of her work on the Presidential inauguration despite being dismissed from working with the First Lady last year.
(NAIROBI, Kenya) — Kenyan police say four Americans and a local pilot are dead after their helicopter crashed on an island in Lake Turkana in the north.
The internal police report seen by The Associated Press says the crash occurred Sunday evening in Central Island National Park as two helicopters took off after a visit to the Lobolo tented camp.
The United States Embassy confirms the deaths of the four Americans and the names of three of them: Anders Asher Jesiah Burke, Brandon Howe Stapper and Kyle John Forti. The embassy refers further questions to Kenyan authorities.
The police report does not say what caused the crash.
Last month three Americans were among five people killed when their plane crashed as they were heading to Lodwar near Lake Turkana.
Hackers linked to North Korea continued waging cyberattacks against U.S. companies and other targets while leaders from Washington and Pyongyang met for their second summit last week, the New York Times reports.
Throughout the ongoing, 18-month operation, hackers from Lazarus group have persistently targeted key industries, including energy and telecommunications, as well as government and defense sectors, according to a report California-based cybersecurity firm McAfee published Sunday.
Researchers at McAfee say they discovered the campaign, dubbed “Operation Sharpshooter,” in December 2018, but have evidence that it may have started as early as September 2017.
Working with an undisclosed law enforcement agency, McAfee says its researchers got access to one of the main computer servers used by the hackers. The researcher then watched attacks unfold in real-time.
“[The hackers] are very, very, very active. It’s been nonstop,” Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee, told the Times.
The operation’s attacks have focused mainly on banks, utilities and oil and gas companies, hitting over 100 targets in the U.S. and other Western countries, according to the Times. Most U.S. targets were in Houston and New York City, but other international cities like London, Madrid, Tokyo, Tel Aviv and Hong Kong were also hit. Cities in Russia and mainland China, which maintain good relations with North Korea, did not receive many attacks. McAfee declined to name which companies were hit.
The attacks were highly sophisticated and perpetrated to access computer networks and intellectual property at specific companies, according to the firm.
The new information from McAfee shows that although North Korea has not tested a missile in more than 15 months, it may have continued to wage its cyber war with the West unabated.
North Korea’s hackers gained international attention after the Sony attack in 2014. Many believe the attack came in retaliation for the spoof movie The Interview. Regular cyberattacks began shortly after Trump called Kim “little rocket man” in speech to United Nations in 2017, according to the Times.
North Korea is also believed to be behind the 2017 WannaCry cyberattack, which affected more than 150 organizations globally.
“North Korea appears to be engaging in increasingly hostile cyber activities, including theft, website vandalism, and denial of service attacks,” says a March 2018 report on information warfare compiled by the Congressional Research Service.
In September 2018, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned a North Korean programmer for his role in the Sony and WannaCry attacks.
(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korean President Moon Jae-in says Seoul will actively try to get the nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang quickly back on track.
Moon made the comments on Monday as he led a National Security Council meeting to discuss South Korea’s diplomatic strategy following the breakdown of a high-stakes summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last week in Vietnam.
Moon lobbied hard for the revival of nuclear diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang following a period of tension over the North’s missile and nuclear tests and Trump’s threats to bring down “fire and fury” on the North. But experts say the breakdown of the Trump-Kim meeting in Hanoi has put the credibility of Moon’s role as mediator in doubt.
(DAHUK, Iraq) — Baseh Hammo was 38 when she was enslaved by militants of the Islamic State group. Raped and abused, she was sold 17 times among members of the so-called “caliphate,” and moved from city to city across a vast stretch of territory IS once controlled in northern Iraq and Syria.
Her ordeal came to an end in January in the Syrian village of Baghouz, when an IS member took pity on her as the final battle loomed with U.S.-led Syrian Kurdish forces. He put her on a truck with his own family and allowed them to leave the village. She was picked up by Syrian Kurdish forces and reunited with her two daughters in Iraq a few days later.
Yet many Yazidis, followers of a minority faith, are still missing, five years after IS militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.
Hopes surged last month during a two-week pause in the U.S.-led coalition’s assault on Baghouz that some of the estimated 3,000 Yazidis still unaccounted for would emerge.
But few turned up among the thousands who streamed out of the tiny village. Hussein Karo, who heads the Yazidi Rescue Bureau in Iraq’s regional Kurdish government, said only 47 Yazidis were rescued.
Now, as U.S.-backed forces resume their final assault on Baghouz, Hammo and Farha Farman, another rescued Yazidi woman, told The Associated Press they fear many may never return home and that the offensive endangers Yazidis who are still in the village.
The two said some are refusing to leave their children behind with their IS fathers while others are staying out of conviction, having adopted the jihadi ideology. Many are simply too terrified to flee.
Hammo said her days as a slave were consumed with loneliness and violence.
She was sold 17 times. One of her owners, a Swede, would lock her in the home for days without food while he went to fight. Another man, an Albanian, stomped on her hands in his military boots, after she scolded him for buying a 9-year-old slave girl.
In the Syrian town of Raqqa, once the seat of the caliphate, her nephews, 12 and 13 years old, carried guns and served as guards to a German IS fighter. When she invited them to eat with her, they refused, saying she was an infidel. She snapped back at them, “You’re one of us. You’re infidels, too.”
Hammo’s final months in captivity were especially trying as hunger gripped what was left of the caliphate. Bread grew scarce, and she began making dough for herself out of chicken feed. By the time she was brought to Baghouz, she was eating grass and leaves.
“I cannot even look at anything the color green anymore,” said a frail Hammo, her face gaunt, and her hands scarred from the abuse. She had heard there were still 1,000 Yazidis inside Baghouz, including 130 boys training to become jihadis.
Farman, 21, who arrived in Iraq in early February, feared for her sister and nine young male relatives still missing after being abducted five years ago.
Both Farman and Hammo, now staying in bleak camps for the displaced in Iraq, said international airstrikes had killed some Yazidis living as slaves in the caliphate.
Hammo said she had urged a Yazidi woman married to an Uzbek IS fighter to leave Baghouz with her, but the woman, who has had two children with the man, refused.
“She said she’d blow herself up first,” said Hammo.
Another Yazidi woman in Baghouz, who had been married off to a Saudi man, was forced to give up two of her boys to be trained as IS fighters. “She said she couldn’t leave without them,” Hammo said.
In 2014, when the Islamic State group was at the height of its power and its self-styled caliphate spanned a third of both Syria and Iraq, IS militants stormed Yazidi communities in Iraq’s Sinjar region. The extremists, who consider the Kurdish-speaking religious minority to be heretics, enslaved, raped and killed thousands of Yazidis. Close to 200,000 members of the minority fled their homes.
Farman was 17 when she was abducted by IS from Sinjar. She was sold to a Syrian man who went on to carry out a suicide operation for IS. His family then sold her to a Saudi man who beat her savagely for trying to escape — twice.
The first time she tried to flee, she slipped out with a group of other Yazidi women to the countryside. “But we couldn’t get anywhere, so we gave ourselves up,” she said, speaking to the AP in a tent she is staying in with her aunt. She said she is haunted by nightmares that keep her from sleeping.
IS jailed her for a week after her first escape attempt, then turned her over to her captor who beat her savagely with cables and hoses.
The second time she tried to escape, her parents sent a paid smuggler to bring her to safety, but he was caught and gave up her name under IS interrogation. The Saudi man again punished Farman.
All the while, the militants were losing territory against advancing Syrian government and Syrian Kurdish forces, and she moved from city to city with her abuser along the Euphrates River, until they were finally trapped in Baghouz.
“I got to see half of Syria,” she said, ironically.
Finally, the Saudi man asked if she would flee with him to Turkey. She refused, so he sold her to a smuggler for $10,000, money arranged by the Yazidi community in exile, to help her leave on her own.
Farman made it out, but the Saudi man did not. He was caught by the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces outside Baghouz, and has not been heard of since, she said.
China has its sights on sending a rover to the Red Planet in 2020, the head of the country’s lunar exploration program said Sunday.
“Next year, China will launch its Mars probe which is expected to encircle, land on and explore the Mars,” Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, said ahead of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top political advisory body.
“We hope all the youngsters in our country could devote themselves to this great cause,” he added in a video translated by state news agency Xinhua.
The announcement comes just days after China opened a Mars simulation camp for tourists in Qinghai Province in the country’s northwest.
Beijing has recently made huge leaps in the space race. The announcement of plans to visit Mars comes just a month after China became the first country to land a rover on the far side of the moon, buoying its reputation in space exploration.
“This is a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment,” Tweeted Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s Administrator.
NASA has also announced plans for a Mars mission in 2020.
A Malaysian official said Sunday that the country is “more than willing” to restart the search for the vanished MH370 plane should any company present a fresh plan to track down the aircraft, Reuters reports.
The renewed interest comes as families of the deceased passengers mark the fifth anniversary of the aircrafts’s mysterious disappearance on March 8, 2014.
“If there are any credible leads or specific proposals…. we are more than willing to look at them and we are prepared to discuss with them the new proposals,” said Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was carrying 239 people when it went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Pieces of debris washing up along the Indian Ocean coastline narrowed previous searches but did not lead to the site of the wreckage. A $141 million underwater effort by Malaysia, China and Australia was called off in January 2017 after it made little progress.
A second, three-month hunt by U.S. exploration firm Ocean Infinity similarly concluded in May last year.
Loke said Ocean Infinity has expressed interest in another search using new technology, but has yet to offer a proposal.
Malaysia offers a “no cure, no fee” agreement, which means that firms will be paid only if they manage to locate the aircraft, Reuters reports.
During a meeting Sunday with a woman widowed by the ill-fated flight, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad also pledged to continue the search for MH370 “as long as there is hope.”
“We intend to continue and nowadays with electronic detection it may be possible for us to find where the plane had come down,” Mahathir said during an interview with 60 Minutes Australia.
(JERUSALEM) — The United States has officially shuttered its consulate in Jerusalem, downgrading the status of its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians by folding it into the U.S. Embassy to Israel.
For decades, the consulate functioned as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians. Now, that outreach will be handled by a Palestinian affairs unit, under the command of the embassy.
The symbolic shift hands authority over U.S. diplomatic channels with the West Bank and Gaza to ambassador David Friedman, a longtime supporter and fundraiser for the West Bank settler movement and fierce critic of the Palestinian leadership.
The announcement from the State Department came early Monday in Jerusalem, the merger effective that day.
“This decision was driven by our global efforts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our diplomatic engagements and operations,” State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement. “It does not signal a change of U.S. policy on Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip.”
When first announced by U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo in October, the move infuriated Palestinians, fueling their suspicions that the U.S. was recognizing Israeli control over east Jerusalem and the West Bank, territories that Palestinians seek for a future state.
Palestinian official Saeb Erekat called the move “the final nail in the coffin” for the U.S. role in peacemaking.
The downgrade is just the latest in a string of divisive decisions by the Trump administration that have backed Israel and alienated the Palestinians, who say they have lost faith in the U.S. administration’s role as a neutral arbiter in peace process.
Last year the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocated its embassy there, upending U.S. policy toward one of the most explosive issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians in turn cut off most ties with the administration.
The administration also has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, including assistance to hospitals and peace-building programs. It has cut funding to the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinians classified as refugees. Last fall, it shut down the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington.
The Trump administration has cited the reluctance of Palestinian leaders to enter peace negotiations with Israel as the reason for such punitive measures, although the U.S. has yet to present its much-anticipated but still mysterious “Deal of the Century” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, announced last month that the U.S. would unveil the deal after Israeli elections in April. The Palestinian Authority has preemptively rejected the plan, accusing the U.S. of bias toward Israel.
WASHINGTON — The family of a dual Saudi-U.S. citizen imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for more than a year are claiming that he has been subjected to routine torture and is on the verge of an emotional breakdown.
After months of quietly trying to secure his release, the family of Dr. Walid Fitaihi is now seeking to publicly pressure both the Saudi government and the Trump administration on the issue.
“There is an American citizen being tortured in a Saudi prison,” said Howard Cooper, a lawyer working with the Fitaihi family. “He has been not only psychologically tortured but physically tortured and he can’t hold out much longer.”
In seeking to publicize the issue, Cooper and the Fitaihi family will have to contend with the extremely tight public relationship between President Donald Trump and powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, popularly referred to as MBS.
Fitaihi gained his American citizenship while studying and working in the U.S. for years. He received undergraduate and medical degrees from George Washington University and a master’s in public health from Harvard, said Cooper a Boston-based attorney who has known Fitaihi for more than 10 years.
He returned to Saudi Arabia in 2006 to help found a hospital built by his family and also became a popular motivational speaker on television. In November 2017, Fitaihi was one of about 200 prominent Saudis detained in a mass roundup and held prisoner in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The Saudi government described the mass arrests as a crackdown on corruption; critics, however, decried it as a move to consolidate power by Prince Mohammed and claimed the detainees were being tortured.
Most of those detainees were eventually released after agreeing to pay massive financial penalties, but Fitaihi and a small handful of others were instead transferred to a prison in Riyadh. Cooper said Fitaihi was recently moved to a different prison in the coastal city of Jeddah and that he was now in the prison hospital after suffering “an emotional breakdown” after months of physical and psychological torture.
Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has already been tested by last year’s grisly murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Trump however stood firmly by Prince Mohammed; in the face of widespread international skepticism, Trump repeatedly backed the official Saudi explanation that the murder was a rogue operation that took place without the crown prince’s knowledge.
Despite the Kashoggi controversy, the relationship remains strong and the Trump administration continues to depend on Prince Mohammed as a key regional ally. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner met with Prince Mohammed last week to discuss Kushner’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
National Security Adviser John Bolton was briefly asked about Fitaihi’s case during a Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Bolton said he knew only that American diplomats had recently met with him in prison.
“Beyond that, we don’t really have any additional information at this point,” Bolton said.
In response to an Associated Press query, the State Department released a statement confirming that U.S. diplomatic representatives have met with Fitaihi and have “raised his case” with the Saudi government.
“We take all allegations of abuse and torture extremely seriously. We urge the Government of Saudi Arabia, and all governments, to ensure fair trial guarantees, freedom from arbitrary and extrajudicial detention, transparency, and rule of law,” the statement said. “We also call on the Government of Saudi Arabia, and all governments, to treat prisoners and detainees humanely, and to ensure that allegations of abuse are investigated quickly and thoroughly.”
The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
(TORONTO) — An executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei is suing the Canadian government, its border agency and the national police force, saying they detained, searched and interrogated her before telling her she was under arrest.
Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou said Sunday they filed a notice of civil claim in the British Columbia Supreme Court. Canada arrested Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, at the request of the U.S. on Dec. 1 at Vancouver’s airport. She is wanted on fraud charges that she misled banks about the company’s business dealings in Iran.
The suit alleges that instead of immediately arresting her, authorities interrogated Meng “under the guise of a routine customs” examination and used the opportunity to “compel her to provide evidence and information.” The suit alleges Canada Border Service Agency agents seized her electronic devices, obtained passwords and unlawfully viewed the contents and intentionally failed to adviser her of the true reasons for her detention. The suit said only after three hours was she told she was under arrest and had right to counsel.
“This case concerns a deliberate and pre-meditated effort on the part of the defendant officers to obtain evidence and information from the plaintiff in a manner which they knew constituted serious violations of the plaintiff’s rights,” the claim says.
Meng is out on bail and living in Vancouver awaiting extradition proceedings.
On Friday, Canadian Justice Department officials gave the go-ahead for her extradition proceedings to begin. Meng is due in court Wednesday to set a date for the proceedings to start. It could be several months or even years before her case is resolved.
Meng’s arrest set off a diplomatic furor and severely strained Canadian relations with China. Beijing has accused Washington of a politically motivated attempt to hurt the company.
China detained former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor on Dec. 10 in an apparent attempt to pressure Canada to release Meng.
A Chinese court also sentenced a Canadian to death in a sudden retrial, overturning a 15-year prison term handed down earlier. Kovrig and Spavor haven’t had access to a lawyer or to their families since being arrested.
Nicolas Dorion, a spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency, said it’s not a practice of the agency to comment on legal matters that are before the courts. A justice department spokesman referred comment to the border agency, and a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they were unlikely to comment Sunday.
Gary Botting, a Vancouver extradition lawyer who is not representing Meng, said Canada’s Border Services Agency tends to overstep.
“They took her under custody without telling her why,” Botting said. “They disguised the real reason why they detained her. Her rights were violated.”
Botting said they had no reason to detain her as she had travelled to Canada many times before. “They are trying to get all this information ahead of time and they know ultimately an arrest was in the works,” he said.
Julian Ku, senior associate dean for academic affairs at Hofstra Law, noted the civil action is separate and apart from Meng’s extradition proceeding. He said the lawsuit will allow her to argue she is being unfairly treated and support her broader public relations claim that the detention is part of a U.S and Canadian political conspiracy against Huawei.
Lynette Ong, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto who focuses on China, quipped that the detained Canadians should take Beijing to court for violation of basic human rights, taking a leaf from the Meng lawsuit.
“The violation of their human rights is so much more grave than violation of her constitutional rights,” Ong said. “But that’s not even possible for them. The fact that they were denied a lawyer in the first place means they are not entitled to any justice.”
WASHINGTON — The White House national security adviser on Sunday described President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a success despite the lack of an agreement providing for the verifiable dismantling of the North’s nuclear sites.
John Bolton, in three television interviews, tried to make that case that Trump advanced America’s national security interests by rejecting a bad agreement while working to persuade Kim to take “the big deal that really could make a difference for North Korea.”
The U.S. and North Korea have offered contradictory accounts of why last week’s summit in Vietnam broke down, though both pointed to American sanctions as a sticking point.
Bolton said the leaders left on good terms and that Trump made an important point to North Korea and other countries that negotiate with him.
“He’s not desperate for a deal, not with North Korea, not with anybody if it’s contrary to American national interests,” Bolton said.
Bolton also sought to explain Trump’s comments about taking Kim’s word about Otto Warmbier, the American college student who was held prisoner in North Korea, then sent home in a vegetative state. Trump said he didn’t believe Kim knew about or would have allowed what happened to Warmbier.
“He tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word,” Trump said at a news conference last week.
Bolton said Trump’s “got a difficult line to walk to” in negotiating with North Korea.
“It doesn’t mean that he accepts it as reality. It means that he accepts that’s what Kim Jong Un said,” Bolton said.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., a close Trump ally, broke with the president.
“I think Kim knew what happened, which was wrong,” McCarthy said.
Some have been critical for Trump letting Kim stand with him on the world stage given North Korea’s poor human rights record. Kim will be able to portray himself to his people and supporters as the charismatic head of a nuclear-armed power, not an international pariah that starves its citizens so it can build weapons.
But Bolton said that Trump’s view is that he “gave nothing away.”
Asked whether that was his view, too, Bolton replied: “The president’s view is he gave nothing away. That’s what matters, not my view.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, summarized the summit as a “spectacular failure” made all the worse by Trump’s comments on “murder of an American citizen, Otto Warmbier.”
“This is, I think, the result of a president who is not prepared for these kind of negotiations, a staff that is not well-prepared and that is essentially flying by the seat of its pants, and it has real-world consequences,” Schiff said. “Those reactors continue to spin on, producing more material that can threaten us and our allies,” said Schiff, D-Calif.
Bolton said Trump has “turned traditional diplomacy on its head, and after all in the case of North Korea, why not? Traditional diplomacy has failed in the last three administrations.”
Bolton spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.” McCarthy was on ABC’s “This Week,” and Schiff was on CBS.
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