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Chinese drone maker DJI is offering up to one million yuan (£112,000) for information about drones that disrupted scores of flights at a Chinese airport. On four days this month - 14, 17, 18 and 21 - drones were blamed for stranding thousands of passengers at Chengdu Shuangliu International. Chinese reports said they caused 60 flight interruptions on 21 April alone. The bounty was a sign that the firm was taking the potential impact on its reputation seriously, suggested Prof David Dunn at the University of Birmingham. "Clearly they're concerned about their brand image, given how much they dominate the...

Chinese paper mocks North Korea's tech prowess after failed ballistic missile launch China's semi-official Global Times newspaper criticized an ongoing "game of chicken" between North Korea and Washington but also knocked Pyongyang's tech talents. Early Saturday, the reclusive communist nation launched yet another missile, presumably in a new display of force amid a verbal war of words with President Donald Trump. However, the missile exploded seconds after liftoff, and officials said the failed test involved a short-range, non-nuclear missile able to hit Seoul but not Japan. "The test's failure shows that the country's missile technology is not mature, and that...

BEIRUT — Many don’t speak Arabic and their role in Syria is little known to the outside world, but the Chinese fighters of the Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria are organized, battled-hardened and have been instrumental in ground offensives against President Bashar Assad’s forces in the country’s northern regions. Thousands of Chinese jihadis have come to Syria since the country’s civil war began in March 2011 to fight against government forces and their allies. Some have joined the al-Qaida’s branch in the country previously known as Nusra Front. Others paid allegiance to the Islamic State group and a smaller number...

The Syrian city of Raqqa remains occupied by Daesh terrorists since early 2014. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with the backing of a US-led international coalition is set to storm Raqqa and liberate it next month. It has been reported that US tanks will be used during the battle. A representative of the command of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who wished to remain anonymous, told Sputnik Arabic that the US had recently delivered heavy weapons and tanks to the SDF.“Two days ago, as part of the upcoming battle against Daesh the US sent us tanks and heavy weapons. The armament was delivered to Rojava [Kurdish de facto autonomous...

A Russian government spokesperson praised the Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS. Meanwhile, the co-Chair of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), Salih Muslim, and PYD Europe representative Abdulselam Mustafa met with Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Gennady Gatilov in Geneva on Thursday.The two sides discussed the recent developments in northern Syria, including the Turkish air strikes against the People’s Protection Forces (YPG). Russian officials have condemned the Turkish air strikes against the Kurds in Syria and Iraq that took place last week.“On April 25, it was reported that Turkish jets carried out a series of strikes on the positions...

A US-led coalition spokesperson on Saturday told ARA News that for the United States there is a difference between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The US-led coalition recognizes the PKK as a threat to Turkey.“We disagree with the Turkish position that the YPG and the PKK are the same organization. The Coalition recognizes the threat the PKK poses to Turkey, but Turkey cannot pursue that fight at the expense of our common fight against terrorists that threaten us all,” the coalition spokesperson said in an exclusive interview with ARA News. “We call on all countries in...

Backed by the Iraqi air force, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) – an umbrella organization for Iraqi paramilitaries – launched an offensive this week southwest of Mosul in Nineveh Province to capture territory from the Islamic State. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has embedded operatives in the PMF and supports a number of its component militias. Abu Mahdi al Muhandis – the PMF operations commander and designated global terrorist – announced the launch of “Operation Muhammad Rasulollah” (Muhammad, Prophet of God) on Tuesday. Proclaiming the capture of the ancient town of Hadr on Wednesday – after meeting light resistance...

Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (“Assembly for the Liberation of the Levant”) and the Islamic State have released competing propaganda claims from the Yarmouk camp in the southern part of Damascus this week. The two sides have battled each other for control of the camp, which was once home to more than 100,000 Syrians and Palestinian refugees, for more than two years. But the fighting continues to rage on. Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) is a joint venture of several organizations that was formed in January. It includes the group formerly known as Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s branch in the...

Oh noes, how is the U.S. media going to find a way to spin this? It was only a matter of time. President Trump and Secretary Tillerson played out the global strategy perfectly. By assembling international allies in a coalition of influence, specifically by pulling China into a close relationship with President Trump, Russia has been cast into a brutally diminished role. Secretary Tillerson’s exceptionally well received visit to the U.N. Security Council yesterday appears to have been the final straw. The international diplomacy of President Trump, Vice-President Pence, Secretary T-Rex and even Ambassador Nikki Haley has been incredibly well...

FULL TITLE...................American solider killed by an explosive device near Mosul as US military continues to fight Islamic State.............................An American solider has been killed in an explosion outside the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The Pentagon said the US service member died of wounds caused by an explosive device on Saturday. The solider has not been identified and a statement from Operation Inherent Resolve gave no other details.

There is social justice in Cuba. Nope. The dictatorship has institutionalized an apartheid between foreigners and Communist Party elites — Cuba's 1 percent — and "ordinary" Cubans. How? Through two currencies, a valuable one for the former and a worthless one for the latter, who are mostly black and brown.

The bill for Britain’s Brexit divorce settlement is growing ever longer, with leaders in Brussels now saying that Britain should continue to pick up a portion of the tab for migrants living in Turkey beyond accession. Initial demands that Britain should pay into the European Union’s seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) until it expires at the end of 2020 – a year after Brexit – have since expanded to include references to “issues resulting from” the budget, as well as those related to the European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Development Fund (EDF). German representatives are now suggesting that “issues”...

SIERRA VISTA – At 18 years old, Buena High School senior Adrian Garlant is living his dream. The Buena High School senior recently received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Garlant says he’s been dreaming of attending West Point Military Academy since the sixth grade. His mother Elizabeth Clark remembers the day he announced his plan. “They must have had career day or something, because he came in the door and said, ‘Mom, I’m going to West Point when I grow up’,” Clark recalls. “I said, ‘Do you know how hard that is?’” Clark...

So how much of our money did Obama ship to the terrorist regime in Iran? We hear $150 billion. We are not sure. Could be a dollar less, a dollar more. We’ll never know for sure. That’s because his entire administration operated in the dark. That’s how he governed and that’s how he got himself elected, in lies and in stealth, and the news media did the rest. They covered for him. They let him get away with murder – and in this case, that is not a cliché, it’s fact.

Turkey's airstrikes on Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq recently raised many an eyebrow around the globe. They left world leaders wondering if there will be more strikes and, if so, how the escalation will unfold. This article is a sequel to Amberin Zaman’s piece on April 25 that reflected the viewpoints of the United States, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Baghdad. This will focus on the perspectives of Ankara and Moscow, Ankara's strategic calculations behind the attacks and Moscow’s position on the events. Early April 25, the Turkish air force carried out simultaneous air attacks on Iraq’s Sinjar region and on Mount Qarachok near the...

French amphibious carrier visits Japan ahead of Pacific show of power By Nobuhiro Kubo | SASEBO As tension spikes on the Korean peninsula, a French amphibious assault carrier sailed into Japan's naval base of Sasebo on Saturday ahead of drills that risk upsetting China, which faces U.S. pressure to rein in North Korea's arms programs. The Mistral will lead exercises next month near Guam, along with forces from Japan, the United States and Britain, practicing amphibious landings around Tinian, an island about 2,500 km (1,553 miles) south of the Japanese capital of Tokyo. The drills, involving 700 troops, were planned...

On Tuesday, Turkey bombed the headquarters of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, killing 20 of our soldiers. Immediately after the strike, the leaders of our forces — known as the People’s Protection Groups, or YPG — rushed from their operations center near Raqqa, where they’ve been working with the U.S. military to push the Islamic State out of its Syrian stronghold, to view the site of the attack. The American colonel and other officers who accompanied the YPG leaders were met by tens of thousands of protesters, including the mothers of soldiers who have died fighting the Islamic State. They...

A HUGE US Navy super-carrier is gearing up for war off the coast of North Korea after Kim Jong-un's third test fire flop this month. USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group arrived in waters near the Korean peninsula, where it will join the USS Michigan, a guided missile submarine that docked in South Korea on Tuesday. The Nimitz-class U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson sailing towards the Korean coast this morning.

North Korea’s military may be armed with obsolete conventional weapons, but at 1.2 million men, it poses a very real threat to its neighbor and nemisis to the south. Equipped with 20,000 artillery pieces, 1,000 short- and medium-range missiles, 70 submarines, more than 400 patrol/missile boats and 563 combat aircraft, the Hermit Kingdom's forces are poised to do maximum damage in a sneak attack against South Korea.

BERLIN: German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel Saturday criticised Ivanka Trump's role as an adviser to her father in the White House, describing it as a form of "nepotism." "For me there are things that remain strange, like for example the visit of his daughter to Germany which was treated almost like a world event, while the mix of politics with family and business reminds us instead of nepotism and would be unimaginable here," he said. Gabriel was referring to the visit to Berlin of Ivanka Trump this week to take part in a women's empowerment summit at the invitation of...