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WASHINGTON —The U.S. Air Force has selected Boeing to replace the service's aging fleet of UH-1N Iroquois helicopters, which are currently tasked with security missions as well as protecting America's nuclear missile arsenal. The long-awaited Pentagon contract is worth $2.4 billion for up to 84 aircraft. The service awarded Boeing approximately $375 million for the first four helicopters on Monday.

WASHINGTON — Over the years, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has come to view herself as a China hand. And now, amid mounting tensions between China and Taiwan, the California Democrat is increasingly asserting herself behind the scenes as a would-be peacemaker. In the process, Feinstein is playing on a rare set of personal relationships that she has nurtured with the three men now at the center of the standoff: the presidents of China, Taiwan and the United States. To each, Feinstein has been dispensing strong and unequivocal advice. "I sometimes say that in my last life maybe I was Chinese," Feinstein...

American forces will remain in Syria even after the last remnants of the Islamic State militant group are eradicated, signaling a shift in U.S. policy that further complicates the political climate in Syria amid its seven-year civil war Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that U.S. forces will stay in Syria to provide training to local forces in an effort to ensure stability within the region, a decision that seems to run counter to past statements from President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to withdraw American forces from the region. The news out of...

In a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis in June, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed that Bejing “cannot lose even one inch of the territory” in the South China Sea. That’s about as plain a warning as one gets: China will defend, militarily, it’s outsized claims in a body of water through which one-third of all global trade passes. The U.S. would have little difficulty in taking out militarily significant targets on any of the islands in question. But that’s not really the point. Through the construction of these artificial islands-turned-military bases, China acted brazenly but in a calculated...

The first remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War and sent from North Korea have been identified as belonging to Army Master Sgt. Charles H. McDaniel of Indiana and Army Pfc. William H. Jones of North Carolina, President Trump shared through Twitter on Thursday.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~SNIP~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Army Pfc. William H. Jones, killed during the Korean War, was identified in September 2018. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSEArmy Master Sgt. Charles H. McDaniel, killed during the Korean War. He was identified in September 2018. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

The Russian Communist Party has announced it will form a coalition government with the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) in three regions where Kremlin-backed candidates suffered rare gubernatorial election defeats over the past week. Incumbents from the ruling party in the Far East Khabarovsk region and central Russia’s Vladimir region lost gubernatorial runoffs to LDPR on Sunday. Candidates from the Communist Party and A Just Russia will compete for the governor’s seat in the Siberian republic of Khakasia on Oct. 7 after its governor’s withdrawal from the race. “We will now form a coalition government in Khabarovsk, Vladimir and Khakasia,”...

The Israel Defense Forces are so much more than the picture of raw power perceived in news stories and war-centered history books. The IDF functions on a daily basis employing stealth and deception in the battle against Israel's unremitting enemies. Pre-1967, the state and military were perceived as underdogs fighting the good fight against all odds. The devastating effectiveness and efficiency with which the IDF knocked out and embarrassed Arab armies changed the perception of the IDF and the Jewish people into a conquering military machine. The success was so decisive that it altered the mindset of the Jewish people...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Some 129 countries at the United Nations signed on to a U.S.-drafted pledge to fight the global drug problem on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump warned presented a public health and national security threat. In order to attend the brief U.N. event with Trump, countries had to sign the one-page “call to action on the world drug problem.” Trump held a similar event at the annual gathering of world leaders in New York last year, focused on U.N. reform....

President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May will be among more than 130 world leaders expected for meetings at the United Nations General Assembly this week. May will raise important global issues, including the Iran nuclear deal and the use of chemical weapons by Russia. Britain accuses Russia of poisoning four people in Salisbury, England. "CBS This Morning" co-host John Dickerson visited the prime minister's official residence at 10 Downing Street in London for her only interview ahead of the U.N. General Assembly. May told Dickerson that she trusts Mr. Trump and believes Iran is holding up its end...

The Syrian government first began receiving S-200 systems around 1983. By the time the civil war began, the Syrian army still operated several S-200 sites, but on at least one occasion, rebels overran one site that contained a fire control radar in disrepair. Beginning in 2015 after Russia joined the war on the side of Syria, efforts were made to rehabilitate these systems. In November 2016, Defense Minister Shoigu announced that Syria’s S-200s had been restored. Thoughout 2017 several were fired at Israeli aircraft, and while the Syrians claimed to have downed an Israeli fighter and a drone at one...

It has been obligatory for American presidents to give lip service to the "value" of the United Nations as an organization vital for world peace. U.N. diplomats love to hear that kind of stuff because they think it justifies their massive expense accounts and other perks that come with living high on the hog in New York City. Donald Trump will pay a visit to New York this week. He will address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday (where many representatives are expected to sit on their hands or walk out) and then chair a meeting of the Security Council...

Next month, Europe’s leading budget airline will begin regular flights from Ukraine to a host of EU destinations. This is the latest milestone in a Ukrainian aviation boom that is seeing additional routes announced on a weekly basis and record passenger numbers at airports across the country. Each new flight serves to broaden Ukrainian horizons and anchor the country more firmly within the wider international community. Meanwhile, there has not been a single direct flight between Ukraine and Russia since October 2015. The changes in Ukraine’s air travel industry are just one of the many ways in which the country...

The Trump administration is planning to launch a major, "administration-wide," broadside against China, according to two sources briefed on the sensitive internal discussions. These sources, who weren't authorized to discuss the plans with the media, told me the effort is expected to launch in the next few weeks. What we're hearing: The broadside against China — which is planned to be both rhetorical and substantive — will be "administration-wide," including the White House (led by senior officials on the National Security Council), Treasury, Commerce and Defense. "We're not just going to let Russia be the bogeyman," one White House official...

Ireland may recognize a Palestinian state if peace talks with Israel aimed at producing a two-state solution in the region continue to stagnate, the country’s Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, said. Coveney’s comments came during a joint press conference on the weekend with the Palestinian Authority (PA) “foreign minister”, Riyad Al-Maliki, reported The Irish Times. Coveney said Ireland has already committed to recognizing a Palestinian state as part of a peace process. However, if negotiations between the side continue to prove fruitless “we may have to forget the second part of that,” he added. He speculated that other European countries would...

MILAN (Reuters) - The Panama Maritime Authority has revoked the registration of search and rescue ship Aquarius 2 in a move that means there will be no charity rescue ships off the Libyan coast in the near future unless the vessel can find a new flag to sail under. Aquarius 2, the one remaining charity rescue vessel still operating in the Central Mediterranean area, is currently at sea with 58 survivors on board. The decision by the Panama Authority (PMA) means that once the ship comes into port it will be deflagged and will not be allowed to operate again...

Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon is helping to craft the curriculum for a leadership course at a right-wing Roman Catholic institute in Italy, stepping up his efforts to influence conservative thinking in the church. Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute based in a mountaintop monastery not far from Rome, told Reuters Bannon had been helping to build up the institute for about half of its eight-year life. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading Vatican conservative who is president of the Institute’s board of advisers, said Bannon would be playing a leading role there. Burke told Reuters he...

The proportion of Christians to Muslims among refugees from around the world admitted to the United States has changed significantly in FY 2018, with Christians comprising seven in ten new arrivals, and Muslims fewer than two in ten. With ten days of the fiscal year to go, a total of 21,561 refugees have been resettled since October 1 last year, of whom 15,278 (70.8 percent) are Christians and 3,333 (15.4 percent) are Muslims, according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data. In FY 2017 by contrast, 47.2 percent of the 53,716 refugees admitted to the U.S. by both the Obama...

Watch video of our great hero Some notable quotes: What I want our adversary to know is please work with our State Department. You really don’t want to work with me. That’s our message. America today is emerging from a period of strategic atrophy. To be out of Washington DC I am so happy I could cry. We have changed our tactics from attrition to annihilation. We surround the enemy and eliminate it.

Emmanuel Macron has said funding should be withdrawn from pro-sovereignty nations reluctant to hand more power over to Brussels, and that countries which refuse to welcome third world migrants must be thrown out of the Schengen area. “Europe is not a menu à la carte, it’s a political project,” the French president declared, speaking at the end of an EU mini-summit on migration in Salzburg Thursday evening. “Countries that do not want more Frontex or solidarity [in housing and feeding third world migrants] will leave Schengen. Countries that don’t want more Europe will no longer [get access to] structural funds,”...

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi authorities have deprived Turkish soldiers, deployed in northern Iraq to combat Kurdish militias, from visas to return to their bases as means to cut down the number of troops which Baghdad had repeatedly demanded to pull out. Watheq al-Hashemi, director of al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies, an Iraqi government-affiliated think tank, told Almaalomah website that the Iraqi government has unilaterally decided not to grant Turkish soldiers on leave at their homeland visas to return to the Turkish military base in Bashiqa region, north of Iraq. According to Hashemi, the measure, adopted over the past months, has helped...