Ahead of leaving for the Arab country as part of a Middle East tour, Carter said that he will be speaking to US military commanders in the region to „get their latest reading on the battlefield situation and also very importantly their thinking about ways that we can continue to accelerate the campaign to defeat ISIL.“…
Daesh terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of Syria and Iraq.
In a Wednesday statement, David Kaye, who serves as the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, censured Saudi Arabia’s punishment for three bloggers and rights advocates, saying the rising trend in the number of court rulings involving rights issues is a sign of „growing repression“ in the kingdom.
US Vice President Joe Biden has called on Turkey to pull its troops out of Iraq as they have been deployed “without the prior consent of the Iraqi government.”
The White House made the announcement on Wednesday after a telephone conversation between Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
The U.S. is withdrawing a dozen F-15 fighters from the key Turkish air base of Incirlik, less than two months after their arrival.
Das Radiometer AMSR2 an Bord des seit dem 18. Mai 2012 die Erde kreisenden japanischen Erdbeobachtungssatelliten SHIZUKU alias GCOM-W setzt die Arbeit des AMSR-E fort. Die zusätzliche Kalibrierungsmöglichkeit sorgte für eine Verbesserung bei der Datenkonsistenz und -Kontinuität. Unterschiede in den Daten, die die konstruktiv durchaus unterschiedlichen Instrumente mit abweichenden Sensoreigenschaften liefern bzw. lieferten, können jetzt einfacher korrigiert werden.
A massive „must-pass“ omnibus spending bill released by Congress on Wednesday would lift the current ban on Russian rocket engines being used to launch US military payloads into space.
(Juli 2014) Vor drei Wochen, Ende Juni 2014, berichtete eine nur kleine Anzahl von Zeitungen, überwiegend aus dem asiatischen Raum über eine verdeckte Urananreicherungsanlage in Indien, in der atomwaffenfähiges Material produziert werden kann. Für internationale Kontrolleure ist diese Militäranlage für „Arbeiten an Einsätzen von Seltenen Metallen“ auf Betreiben der U.S.A. aus Sicherheitsgründen unzugänglich.
Only after construction on the site began that year did it finally become clear that two secretive agencies were behind a project that experts say will be the subcontinent’s largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic research laboratories and weapons and aircraft testing facilities. Among the project‘s aims: to expand the government’s nuclear research, to produce fuel for India’s nuclear reactors, and to help power the country’s fleet of new submarines, one of which underwent sea trials in 2014.
Ukraine will suspend trade with Crimea in 30 days time, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said on Wednesday, adding that restoring electricity to the peninsula will be a separate issue.
Fast zwei Jahre nach dem von Berlin unterstützten Umsturz in Kiew ziehen Experten eine gleich in mehrfacher Hinsicht verheerende Bilanz der Entwicklung in der Ukraine. Das belegen aktuelle Studien in den an der Universität Bremen publizierten „Ukraine-Analysen“. Demnach ist die Wirtschaft des prowestlich gewendeten Landes katastrophal eingebrochen und droht aufgrund der politischen Unwägbarkeiten noch weiter abzustürzen. Die Krise hat zu einem Rückgang der Reallöhne um mehr als 30 Prozent geführt; die Preise für Lebensmittel sind im laufenden Jahr um 34 Prozent gestiegen, die Wohnkosten haben sich seit der Unterstellung des Landes unter westliche Dominanz verdoppelt. Ein Drittel der Ukrainer kann sich die notwendigen Nahrungsmittel nicht mehr leisten; lediglich der Konsum von Brot und Kartoffeln bleibt annähernd konstant. Gleichzeitig dauern Nepotismus und Korruption auch unter der neuen Regierung an und drohen breite Proteste hervorzurufen. Weniger als ein Drittel der Bevölkerung äußert noch „Vertrauen“ gegenüber Staatspräsident Petro Poroschenko; seine „Vertrauensbalance“, die statistische Differenz zwischen Zustimmung und Ablehnung, liegt noch unter derjenigen für Staatspräsident Wiktor Janukowitsch im Dezember 2013. Die „Vertrauensbalance“ für Regierung und Parlament hat sogar ein – unter Janukowitsch nie gekanntes – Langzeittief erreicht.
(…)
Der Terror von Paris ist gerade einmal einen Monat her. Als Konsequenz greift nun auch die Bundeswehr in den Luftkrieg gegen den „Islamischen Staat“ ein.
Fünf Airbus A310 betreibt die Flugbereitschaft der Luftwaffe von Köln-Wahn aus. Einer davon ist ein reiner Personentransporter, die vier anderen sind „MRTTs“ – Multi-Role-Tanker- Transport-Versionen. Ein solcher hat in der Nacht vom 15. auf 16. Dezember zweimal Kampfjets der internationalen Koalition gegen den IS in der Luft betankt.
(…)
CLINTON: Look, we are definitely in conflict with ISIS and I think we need a new update of military authorization. The AUMF, which was passed after the attack on 9/11, should be brought up to…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not declare war?
CLINTON: Well, declare war is a very legal term, as you know so well. I think what we want to do is make sure we have every tool at our disposal to, number one, destroy there would-be caliphate in Syria and in Ra — in Iraq.
Number two, do everything we can to dismantle this very effective virtual jihadist network that they are using on the Internet.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump defended his proposal to kill the family members of ISIS terrorists on Tuesday, saying the policy would be warranted because family members “know what is going on” with their relatives.
“We have to be much tougher and much stronger than we’ve been,” Trump said at the fifth Republican debate hosted by CNN in Las Vegas. The answer came in response to a question from Josh Jacob, a student at Georgia Tech, who asked, “How would intentionally killing innocent civilians set us apart from ISIS?”
Trump überrascht an der Stelle mit einer neuen Offerte: „Ich würde hart gegen die Familien von Terroristen vorgehen. Die haben das Recht uns umzubringen, aber wir haben nicht das Recht die umzubringen?“
„Body counts is not the only intention of terror, it‘s disrupting and changing our lives. That‘s why this threat of attack was partially successful.“
Die SPD müsse „die Partei des donnernden Sowohl-als-auch“ sein. Parteichef Gabriel zitierte seinen wortgewaltigen Vorgänger Willy Brandt und rief damit seine Genossen zu unbedingter Geschlossenheit auf.
“I want to remind us, particularly our Republican friends, that George Bush was right,” the Democratic presidential frontrunner said during remarks at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “Six days after 9/11, he went to a Muslim community center and here’s what he said:
“‘Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don’t represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.’”
“We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people the really understand what’s happening,” he said during a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown in South Carolina.
“We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, [about] closing that Internet up in some way. People will say ‘Oh freedom of speech,’ these are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”
It’s unclear what exactly Trump was getting at with his remarks.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday for talks with U.S. military commanders, seeking ways to intensify the fight against Islamic State militants.
The individual plan of cooperation between Azerbaijan and NATO has been approved by the headquarters of NATO and the countries of the Alliance, NATO’s Liaison Officer in the South Caucasus William Lahue told journalists on Dec.15.
Remember CISA? The „Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act“? It‘s getting much, much worse, with Congress and the administration looking to ram it through — in the process, dropping any pretense that it‘s not a surveillance bill.
As you may recall, Congress and the White House have been pushing for a „cybersecurity“ bill, for a few years now, that has never actually been a cybersecurity bill.
(Das war die Bürgermeisterkandidatin in Köln, die direkt vor der Wahl niedergestochen wurde)
Die Antwort der Bundesregierung ist ernüchternd:
The €1.23 billion contract gives a 40-year lease to the Frankfurt airport operator Fraport. The German firm could upgrade and operate a cluster of airports, including those on the popular tourist islands of Corfu, Mykonos, Rhodes and Santorini.
Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted a photo of himself watching Tim Peake’s launch to the International Space Station on TV. Twitter being Twitter, however, his PR stunt soon resulted in a series of hilarious spoofs.
Although the government announced plans to auction its surplus IP numbers, it can now be revealed that a chunk of them went to Saudi Telecom and the Saudi-based Mobile Telecommunications Company.
„Don‘t you think that‘s strange?“ one of the hackers asked Mirror Online. „We traced these accounts back to London, the home of the British intelligence services.“
Die Umstrukturierung der NATO-Politik vor dem Hintergrund von Ukraine-Konflikt und Russland-Krise