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(LEAD) Scud missiles fired into Saudi Arabia from Yemen traced to N. Korea: official 2015/07/29 18:16 (ATTN: UPDATES with comment by South Korean official; ADDS background) SEOUL, July 29 (Yonhap) -- Scud missiles fired into Saudi Arabia by Yemeni rebels in recent months came from North Korea, a South Korean intelligence official said Wednesday, in the latest case that illustrated North Korea's support for the weapons programs of some countries in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has shot down about 40 percent of some 20 Scud missiles fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels, said the official, who is familiar with the...

JERUSALEM — Muslim militants, evoking a jihadist pretext and backed by rogue states, are attacking vital Western interests. The president of the United States fails to convince Europe to join a coalition to confront the aggressors. No, this is not President Bush versus Saddam Hussein, but Thomas Jefferson versus the Barbary pirates of North Africa, who were plundering Western ships and enslaving their crews. When Jefferson proposed creating a multilateral force to stop the pirates, Europe went on bribing them. "This is money thrown away," Jefferson concluded, before ordering the Navy into action. On Aug. 1, 1801, the first American...

Egypt is in talks with France to buy two more naval corvettes, a French diplomat said Saturday, as Paris's Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Cairo in an African tour. French shipbuilder DCNS had already signed a contract estimated at one billion euros ($1.1 billion) to supply four Gowind-class corvettes to Egypt, which also became the first country to purchase French Rafale jets. Le Drian, whose government has developed close ties with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, met the leader and his defence minister on Saturday morning. "There is a bid for two more corvettes; the discussions are ongoing," the...

Turkish fighter jets launched attacks on camps of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq overnight SNIP---- Turkey simultaneously launched ground attacks against the PKK and Islamic State in northern Syria

Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty told Ahram Online that studies carried out revealed that the first relief belongs to the Middle Kindom because it bears the cartouche of the seventh king of the 12th Dynasty, King Amenemhat IV, whose reign was characterised by exploration for precious turquoise and amethyst on Punt Island. Meanwhile the second relief, which is in a bad conservation condition, can be dated to the Second Intermediate Period. After restoration, Eldamaty said, more information on the relief would be revealed. Three Roman burials and parts of Berenice Temple's façade were also uncovered as well as a number...

Secretary of State John Kerry sat down with Matt Lauer for an interview on Today earlier, defending the deal with Iran — and telling Israel to cool their jets, almost literally. In doing so, Kerry managed to turn Israel into the aggressor and Iran into a passive actor who might somehow decide they need a bomb only if Israel attacked them. It’s a strange reversal, and one that confirms the impression that the Obama administration has become the lawyers for the mullahs (via Jeff Dunetz): Lauer points out to Kerry that opposition to the Iran deal encompasses practically the whole...

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e1243662-2c67-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca.html#ixzz3gmnryuF4 The recruiter in central Syria did not hide the grim facts behind his job offer: Around half of those who joined his new militia to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces would be likely to die. But the pay was about $200 a month — a windfall in the war-torn country. “It sounded like a suicide mission, but about 100 of us...

US Secretary of State John Kerry indirectly conceded that the US would defend Iran's nuclear program from Israeli sabotage on Thursday, in a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which he was grilled over the deal reached last Tuesday. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) put Kerry on the spot when he asked him and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz whether the controversial articles in Annex III on page 142 of the 159-page deal would stipulate that the US block Israeli attempts to scupper the Iranian nuclear threat. The articles in question state that the US, world powers and the...

Israel has delivered 16 Cobra helicopter gunships to Jordan to help the Hashemite kingdom deal with the threat of Islamic State (ISIS) which currently control large areas along its borders with Syria and Iraq. The transfer provided at no cost was kept in secret since last year but was recently leaked by an unnamed U.S. official and published by Reuters. Jordanian and Israeli officials declined comment, as did the Pentagon. The handover of helicopters was approved by Washington, after blocking an earlier Israeli plan to sell the surplus helicopters to Nigeria, which is also battling Islamic insurgents in Central Africa....

President Barack Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser in New York on Tuesday evening that he had “ended two wars” during his presidency. In its recently released human rights report on Iraq, however, the State Department said that the Iraqi government had “lost effective control” over a large part of Iraqi territory to the Islamic State terrorist group. Also, according to the State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2014, the group that the administration now calls ISIL was founded in the 1990s by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and fought against U.S. forces in Iraq before Obama removed U.S. troops from that...

At sundown each day during Ramadan, which ended on 17 July with the Eid-al-Fitr celebrations, observant Muslims customarily broke their fast at their evening iftar meal by eating dates. A week prior, on the evening of 10 July, 16-year-old Fawzi Osama was on the street in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria, handing out dates to those hurrying home before sundown. In a country that is 90 per cent Muslim, nearly every passer-by was, almost by definition, Muslim. Osama, however, is a Coptic Christian, and in each small plastic bag of dates he also had included a slip of paper...

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — A dozen Palestinian Muslim men gathered after midnight at an isolated farm house this week to indulge in a new delight. They were going to watch a soap opera about Jews. “Hush, hush. It’s starting!” someone said. The group settled down, sipped fresh lemonade, nibbled sweets, sucked on water pipes and then cranked up the volume for the opening credits of “Haret al-Yahud,” or “The Jewish Quarter.” The steamy Egyptian soap tells a Romeo and Juliet tale of a beautiful daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant and a dashing Muslim army commander falling in and out...

US President Barack Obama hailed the recently concluded nuclear agreement in Vienna between the P5+1 world powers and Iran as a step towards a “more hopeful world.” On July 14 CNN cited President Obama’s claim that, “This deal is not built on trust. It's built on verification.” This nuclear agreement, however, seems to be predicated more on this administration’s proclivity towards building on hope. The Obama administration is hoping that an inspection regime by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will accomplish under this agreement what the UN has failed to do for decades under the Non-Proliferation of...

Ted Cruz’s worst fear about the nuclear deal with Iran? That “millions of Americans will be murdered by radical theocratic zealots.” President Obama [argues] that under the deal Iran’s ability to quickly make a bomb will be hamstrung, and that doing nothing would actually accelerate Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But Cruz said if Iran were to acquire a bomb, he fears the detonation of a nuclear weapon over Tel Aviv,... that would “murder vast numbers of Palestinians” and Israeli Jews. “The odds are unacceptably high that they would view the murder of those Palestinians is perfectly acceptable collateral damage to annihilating...

A senior Iranian cleric delivered Friday prayers in Tehran while standing behind a podium that declared, “We Will Trample Upon America,” according to photos released by Iran’s state-controlled media. Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, who was handpicked by the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader to deliver the prayers, delivered a message of hostility toward the United States in the first official remarks since a final nuclear deal was signed between Iran and world powers in Vienna last week. Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and expert on rogue regimes, said that the official remarks by Iranian officials and clerics...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday vowing to defy American policies in the region despite a deal with world powers over Tehran's nuclear program was "very disturbing".

Secretary of State John Kerry admitted to Al-Arabiya that it’s “very disturbing” how Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues talking about destroying the U.S. and Israel after signing the P5+1 nuclear agreement.Kerry said he would be pitching Gulf partners on “all of the ways in which this agreement, in fact, makes the Gulf states and the region safer.” “I will also discuss with them at great length the things that the United States of America is going to do, working with them, in order to push back against the terror and counterterrorism efforts and other activities in the region that are very...

DUBAI, (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it was very disturbed by anti-U.S. hostility voiced by Iran's top leader after a nuclear deal, as both countries' top diplomats sought to calm opposition to the accord from political hardliners at home. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday vowing to defy American policies in the region despite a deal with world powers over Tehran's nuclear programme was "very troubling". "I don't know how to interpret it at this point in time, except to take it at face value, that...

If President Barack Obama and other world leaders hoped the nuclear agreement with Iran would lead to normalized relations down the road, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has nipped that prospect in the bud. Speaking Saturday about the deal, the Islamic holy leader denied a wider shift in foreign policy. “We have repeatedly said we don’t negotiate with the U.S. on regional or international affairs; not even on bilateral issues. There are some exceptions like the nuclear program that we negotiated with the Americans to serve our interests,” Khamenei said. Iranians are excited about the ramifications of the deal,...

Obama favored Iran in the negotiations because he has many ties to Shia Islam and Iran, regardless of his actual faith.