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I wish I could draw...if I could, I would draw a cartoon of Obama & Putin with Putin turning his head toward Obama and yelling "BOOH!" AND Obama jumping out of his skin......

The United States on Thursday expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland in response to a campaign of harassment by Russia against American diplomats in Moscow, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday. The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the Russian diplomats would be given 72 hours to leave the United States. Access to the two compounds will be denied to all Russian officials as of noon on Friday, the official added. "These actions were taken to respond to Russian harassment of American diplomats and actions by the diplomats...

(AFP) Exasperated US diplomats are in open revolt over Barack Obama's Syria policy, but radical change is unlikely in the twilight of his presidency. More than 280,000 people have been killed. Millions more have fled their homes. A relentless drumbeat of cluster bombs, barrel bombs, chemical bombs, murder, rape and torture has turned swaths of Syria to dust. Humanitarian aid sometimes drips into the beleaguered cities, but when it does, President Bashar al-Assad's regime makes sure "punishment" bombings quickly follow. "The Assad regime's actions defy all definitions of human decency," said one US official. There are ominous signs the regime...

The political fallout from the 2012 terrorist attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, has had a chilling effect on the Foreign Service that has left U.S. diplomats wary of treading into areas with questionable security. Multiple former diplomats and other knowledgeable sources say security precautions in the Foreign Service have intensified since Benghazi, with officials in Washington fearful of another disaster abroad. Former diplomats say the heightened security has become excessive and warn that American leadership is suffering as a result. "It undermines the ability of our diplomats to do our job when you essentially have a governor...

One hundred and twenty-five members of Congress asked Secretary of State John Kerry in a letter Monday to deny visas to diplomats’ spouses if the envoys come from a country that doesn’t recognize same-sex spouses of State Department personnel. House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) led the letter, which got one GOP signature — Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who has a transgender son. The lawmakers argued that countries not granting accreditation to same-sex spouses of American foreign service...

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has issued a subpoena to the Obama administration compelling it to release long-withheld documents concerning the training of diplomatic security personnel tasked with defending Americans abroad. Since 2014, Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.) the committee’s chairman, has been seeking key documents from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regarding State Department plans to construct a nearly $1 billion training facility for diplomatic security personnel. Royce issued a subpoena to the OMB on Friday to force the release of documents detailing whether construction of the new training facility will be cost effective. Critics such as...

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date. Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam ...

Two House committees are demanding answers after learning that the Affordable Care Act makes foreign diplomats eligible for health care subsidies.Obamacare has a loophole that allows foreign diplomats to receive healthcare subsidies, the House Ways and Means and Foreign Affairs Committees revealed Wednesday as they announced a joint investigation. “According to the Department of Health and Human Services, foreign diplomats holding ‘A’ or ‘G’ visas are eligible to participate in an array of medical programs administered by the federal government, including participation in Health Insurance Marketplaces governed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA),” wrote chairmen Ed Royce and Dave Camp...

"Mali national arraigned in 2000 killing of American diplomat in Niger" 


Pedophile teacher abused scores as clues missed He was one of the most beloved teachers in the small world of international schools that serve the children of diplomats, well-off American expatriates and local elites. He was often the first to arrive in the morning, and the last to leave each day. He led students on class trips to exotic places, treating them to cookies and milk at bedtime. That was the public persona of William Vahey, carefully crafted over four decades until a maid cleaning his home in Nicaragua stole a 16-gigabyte memory drive. There, in photograph after photograph, was...

A kidnapper-diplomat is an oxymoron—words with contradictory meanings, In this case, the terms suggest that an ambassador has operated outside the rules of diplomacy. Now tack on evidence that he is linked to an assassination of another envoy; then surely there are grounds for his exclusion from the United States. Iran nominated Hamid Aboutalebi to be Ambassador to the UN, but Washington refused to issue a visa. The Committee on Relations with the Host Country refrained from making a recommendation to the General Assembly, and the case remains on the Committee agenda. On April 18, 2014, President Barack Obama signed...

Services needed for everybody from new immigrants to employers bringing in foreign workers will be brought to a halt. Foreign Ministry’s workers committee declared a full-fledged strike on Sunday, closing the ministry and all the country’s embassies and consulates around the world for the first time. The strike is the latest development in a nearly two-year-old work dispute that the workers declared for improved salaries and work conditions. Seven months of mediation efforts exploded on March 4 when the workers rejected a Finance Ministry proposal. The workers then resumed crippling labor measures that had been put on hold during the...

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced Sunday that his government has expelled three US consulate officials accused of meeting with students involved in anti-government protests that have raged throughout Venezuela for nearly two weeks.In an address on Venezuela state television, Maduro accused the consulate workers and the United States government of conspiring with opposition forces to incite turmoil across the country. “We are determined to defend our country,” said Maduro. US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed concern over Venezuela’s handling of the protests, resulting in at least three deaths, more than 40 injuries and numerous arrests and detentions. “We are...

Recognising the damage that the diplomat row has done to the India-US relationship, there is a realisation in the top American leadership that "it was the most stupid thing to do" on their part and that they would now have to "work overtime" to bring back the ties on track. As Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade landed in New Delhi last night, there was a sense of relief in the US government, with officials expressing their determination to move forward the relationship, which President Barack Obama has described as the defining partnership of the 21st century. "The US and India enjoy...

India's tough measures against United States diplomats following the arrest of a senior Indian diplomat in New York has impacted US Ambassador Nancy Powell who called off her travel to Nepal after her special privileges were withdrawn. Powell, who had informed the government here about her travel plans to Nepal, cancelled her visit after airport pass which gave her special access to various procedural checks at the airport stood withdrawn as India downgraded privileges and benefits to US diplomats in sharp retaliation to the arrest of its Deputy Consul General Devyani Khobragade. Only the ambassador's airport pass came with a...

**SNIP** “None of our diplomats charged by the Americans remains in the United States, they have all returned home,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. Ryabkov added that Russia had discussed the matter with US officials and planned to take no action in response. “I repeat what we have always said: we do not want to go down the path of retaliating with an eye for an eye.”

Nude pictures of former French first lady Carla Bruni were used to break in to the computer systems of dozens of diplomats. The shocking security breach was first discovered at the G20 summit in Paris in February 2011 and may be ongoing. "To see naked pictures of Carla Bruni click here" said a message sent to those attending, who included finance ministers and central bank representatives. Once accessed, it infected the computers of senior officials as well as forwarding the offensive email on to others. "Almost everybody who received the email took the bait," said a government source in Paris,...

Federal law enforcement authorities have charged nearly 50 past or present Russian diplomats and their spouses in a $1.5 million Medicaid fraud scheme, an unusual twist in what has become a familiar criminal story line in New York. An F.B.I. investigation revealed “the systemic fraudulent submission of falsified applications for Medicaid benefits” by the diplomats and their spouses, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday in United States District Court in Manhattan. The diplomats and their spouses obtained the benefits for pregnancies, births and first-year-of-life medical needs, generally applying at the same New York hospital, which was not identified,...

McLean home owned by Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, real estate records say A case of "possible human trafficking" at a Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia is under investigation, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to News4. Homeland Security Special-Agent-in-Charge John Torres, who is leading the probe, said Fairfax County Police responded to a tip Tuesday night citing a possible case of modern slavery. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations were called to a home in the 6000 block of Orris Street in McLean and -- in the words of a source familiar with the investigation -- "rescued" two women....

North Korean Diplomats 'Sell Millions of Dollars Worth of Drugs' North Korea sent a large amount of illegal drugs to its embassy in an East European country last December and ordered diplomats there to sell it for cash by early April, a diplomatic source here claims. "South Korean intelligence obtained the information from a North Korean agent who defected recently," the source said. "Similar orders were delivered to other North Korean embassies." North Korea has ordered each diplomat to raise US $300,000 to prove their loyalty and mark the birthday of nation founder Kim Il-sung on April 15. Each North...