
Cancellations, Restrictions, Tightened Security Worldwide for New Year’s Eve
Terrorist threats hang especially heavy over major cities as 2015 draws to a close.

Terrorist threats hang especially heavy over major cities as 2015 draws to a close.

A 2016 calendar and a cologne inspired by Russian President Vladimir Putin are the latest items for sale that Russians can purchase in order to “celebrate” him.

The Times of Israel reports: Just a few days after the Technion broke ground on a research center in Guangdong, a second Israeli institution — Israel Aerospace Industries — announced that it, too, was establishing one in the southeastern Chinese province.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saluted Kurdish efforts against the Islamic State, and offered Moscow’s support, by way of Damascus.

Amnesty International has released a new report detailing how Russia is killing hundreds of innocents in its bombings of heavily-populated areas in Syria.

Russia will break ground on two new nuclear power plants in Iran next week, adding to Iran’s nuclear capacity, officials said, after a deal was signed last year in Moscow by the countries’ state-run atomic agencies.

Selahattin Demirtaş, the head of the pro-Kurdish opposition party in Turkey, will visit Moscow this week to speak to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and open a satellite office for his party. The meeting follows a tense several weeks in which Turkey and Russia have all but severed their diplomatic ties.

U.S. diplomats told Reuters that the Russian government would accept a regime change in Syria that results in dictator Bashar al-Assad’s stepping down.

Five people were lightly injured when a homemade explosive detonated at a bus stop in central Moscow, authorities said Tuesday. The device went off Monday night on Pokrovka Street, a trendy area in central Moscow dotted with bars and restaurants.

Protests against the Turkish government in Russia following the downing of a Russian jet on the Turkey/Syria border have intensified. Last week, Russians burned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in effigy before a Turkish embassy in Crimea.

Russian bombers are dropping cluster munitions over Raqqa, Syria, the city known as the de facto capital of the Islamic State terror group, sources inside Syria confirmed to Breitbart News. Sources say Moscow is also indiscriminately targeting civilians neighborhoods populated by Sunni Muslims, killing innocent women and children in the process.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended Turkey’s defense of its airspace Tuesday evening after Ankara fighter jets shot down a Russian SU-24 warplane earlier in the day, with the Turkish leader claiming that the military was unable to identify the jet that was violating the country’s sovereignty.

In an impromptu meeting at the sidelines of the G-20 summit currently underway in Turkey, President Barack Obama met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and, according to the White House, both parties agreed on a “political transition” in Syria. The meeting precedes a report claiming Putin has already begun pressuring Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to step down.

Independent military analysts believe that Russia intentionally leaked plans of a long-range nuclear torpedo during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

Mikhail Lesin–who, in addition to being a Putin confidant, was the inspiration for Russia Today (RT), the state-run Kremlin news service–was found deceased in his hotel room at the Dupont Circle Hotel on Thursday, according to reports.

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published an interview with Edward Snowden Friday in which Snowden described how he wound up stuck in Russia and why being an exile is not what it used to be.

Russia’s military presence in Syria has grown to roughly 4,000 personnel, as Moscow continues to wage an ongoing air campaign in support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the country.

The Free Syrian Army has been backed by Western powers until now and has been actively targeted by Russian airstrikes, but it has reportedly made overtures to Moscow to discuss military cooperation, or at least an end to Russian bombing of their positions.
The Turkish government made it known on Wednesday they could accept a transition period for Syria where President Bashar al-Assad stays in power for six months before another person takes over.

Almost four out of every five declared targets of Russian airstrikes in Syria are located in areas not held by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), according to an analysis of Russian Defense Ministry data by Reuters.

The White House has condemned Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s surprise visit to Moscow, chiding Vladimir Putin for rolling out a “red carpet welcome” for a leader “who has used chemical weapons against his own people.”

Moscow and St. Petersburg are toying with the idea of banning alcohol sales one day a week in an attempt to curb alcoholism.

Will Stevens, the spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Russia, tweeted today that the world has spent “[T]oo much energy” trying to determine who specifically shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine.

In an interview that reportedly took “three months of often covert communications” to arrange, the BBC interviewed Edward Snowden in Moscow about his life as a fugitive from American justice.

The government of Turkey is expressing “deep concern” regarding Russia’s prodigious military buildup in Syria, allegedly intended to keep Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power against the jihadists of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS).