National Security - Page 757

Amnesty International is reportedly organizing mass protests against Google over the company’s development of a censored Chinese search app, code-named” Project Dragonfly.”

Contents: Pakistan fails to get agreement from IMF for a bailout; Pakistan’s link to the FATF financial blacklist; Pakistan turns to its ‘friends’ for aid

Militants of the Boko Haram Islamic terror group kidnapped 18 girls last Friday from two villages in the southeastern part of Niger near the Nigerian border, reports say.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its ally Russia reportedly blamed rebels for a suspected toxic gas attack in regime-held Aleppo city this weekend. A local monitor group reported that the attack wounded nearly 100 people, including many women and children.

Fuel shortages in the oil-rich country of Venezuela continue to worsen as mass resignations at the state oil company’s tanker fleet cause the delay gasoline shipments

Taiwan held the equivalent of a midterm election on Saturday. The results were brutally disappointing for President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – so disappointing that Tsai almost immediately resigned as head of the party, although she remains president of Taiwan.

Army Ranger Sgt. Leandro A.S. Jasso, 25, was killed in Afghanistan early Saturday, bringing the number of American troops killed in action in the Afghanistan War up to nine this year.

Ukraine’s parliament has voted to support the president’s motion to impose martial law in the country for 30 days.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte issued yet another tirade against the Catholic Church on Monday, accusing Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of illegal drug use and threatening to behead him for buying drugs.

A new column in Foreign Policy magazine details the intense persecution of students at universities in China.

Iran is ready to export domestically designed and manufactured fighter jets and training aircraft despite sanctions imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, the managing director of the Iran Aviation Industries Organization (IAIO) announced Monday.

Russia on Monday refused to return three Ukrainian ships seized in the Black Sea on Sunday during a confrontation in which Ukraine said the Russians fired upon its vessels and injured six sailors.

The naval conflict this weekend between Russia and Ukraine was not a sudden development. Pressure has been building between the two nations for a long time, arguably even before Ukraine broke away from the disintegrating Soviet Union in 1991.

Russia alarmed the world on Sunday by reportedly seizing Ukrainian vessels in the Sea of Azov, attacking Ukrainian assets and blocking some of its most important port cities through its illegal command of the Crimean peninsula.

The head of Russian oil company Rosneft, Igor Sechin, traveled to Venezuela this week for meetings with socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro to complain about delayed oil shipments designed to repay loans, Reuters reported Sunday.

China’s ambassador to Tehran told Iranian officials on Sunday that Beijing is seeking a role in ending the Yemen war, potentially using its status as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to take action to settle the dispute.

The Polish government is resisting the single European Army being pushed by Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and the EU’s chief bureaucrats, implying concern that it is alienating the continent’s security relationship with the United States of America.

In an attempt to hold Facebook accountable for the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, the U.K. Parliament has seized a cache of internal Facebook documents from an American software executive visiting the country for business.

Contents: Russia attacks Ukraine’s navy and blockades Ukraine’s ports at Kerch Strait; Russia confirms the attack on the Ukrainian ships

Dropping U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen might make politicians in Washington feel good about taking a stand for human rights. Yet doing so would also mean surrendering Yemen to Iranian control.

The Ukrainian president will ask his parliament to consider enacting martial law after three Ukrainian navy ships were fired upon and captured in the Black Sea on Sunday.

Russia and Ukraine traded accusations over an incident at sea Sunday near the disputed Crimean Peninsula, increasing tensions between both countries and prompting Moscow to block passage through the Kerch Strait.

Contents: Socialist Venezuela oil production in ‘free fall’ as infrastructure collapses; Russia rebukes Venezuela for non-payment

A French farmer who was attacked by a knife-wielding man yelling “Allahu Ackbar” has complained that the prosecution in the case has not treated the crime as terrorism despite the attacker also being on France’s terror watch list.

A new underwater pipeline connecting Israel’s natural gas reserves to Greece, Italy, and Cyprus will eventually give all of Europe a new source of energy to challenge traditional suppliers in Russia and the Middle East.

The Israeli military’s Commando Brigade launched a large-scale exercise this week to practice fighting the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip and the Hezbollah terrorist militia in Lebanon simultaneously, the army said Saturday. The drill is continuing into this week.

DAMASCUS, Syria — At least 50 civilians were being treated Saturday following a suspected poison gas attack by Syrian rebel groups on the government-held Aleppo city in the country’s north, according to reports in Syrian state media.

The Islamic State affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has seized a weapons shipment that included a number of Kornet missiles, the Russian-made advanced anti-tank laser-guided weapon system.

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called the Trump administration’s latest memorandum asking the Supreme Court to hear cases on the administration’s transgender military policy “cowardly” and “disgusting.”

U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to bypass two federal appeals courts and render a final decision on President Donald Trump’s military transgender policy by summer 2019.

More than 60 percent of the world’s population of more than 7.5 billion reside in countries where the right to religious freedom is obstructed or denied. An estimated 505 million Christians face persecution for following their faith, a Catholic NGO Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) report indicated this week.

A terrorist attack Friday against the Chinese consulate in Pakistan’s Karachi region reportedly killed two policemen, two civilians, and the three attackers.

Contents: Maldives can’t determine how much money it owes to China; Constitutional crisis continues in Sri Lanka over China-India competition

TEL AVIV – An extremely rare stone weight inscribed with a word from the Hebrew Bible dating back 3,000 years was discovered by archaeologists near the Western Wall.

An angry mob killed a man in Munaje, Malawi this week after he was implicated in the death of another individual by practicing “witchcraft,” local media reported.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Ken Buck (R-CO) agree that Congress should weigh in on the deployment of American troops across 17 different nations.