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U.S. prosecutors last month charged a former Turkish economy minister and the ex-head of a state-owned bank with conspiring to violate Iran sanctions by illegally moving hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on Tehran’s behalf.

Thirteen Afghans who came to the United States for military training between 2005 and 2017 went AWOL here and have not been accounted for, according to an inspector general's report. During that same period, a total of 253,977 foreigners came to the United States for military training, including 2,537 of them from Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a report released on Friday. During that time, 320 foreign trainees went AWOL in the United States. And of those 320 AWOL trainees, 152 of them (47.5 percent) were from Afghanistan. As of March 7, 2017, the...

Nikki Haley and Israel's UN Ambassador Danon at the Security Council this week denouncing Iran U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley used her entire speech to the UN Security Council on Wednesday to denounce the Iranian regime on multiple grounds. It was the Security Council first meeting on the ‘Situation in the Middle East’ after President Donald Trump’s statement on the new American policy on Iran. The session was supposed to be devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, Ambassador Haley departed from the monthly ritual during which Israel is normally singled out for criticism by other Council members....

The US troops stationed in Makhmur have also retreated after Hashd al-Shaabi took the control of the town from peshmerga forces. The US troops stationed in Makhmur town of Mosul have retreated to Hewler (Erbil) Wednesday evening after peshmerga forces withdrew and handed over the control of the town to Hashd al-Shaabi militia. The US troops reportedly blew up the base before their evacuation and withdrawal to the surroundings of Hewler next to the peshmerga forces. The US military base in Makhmur was constructed before the operation to liberate Mosul and an undisclosed number of US special forces were stationed...

The best is yet to come for US oil production—but it will be a short-lived hurrah, according to Ian Taylor, head of oil trading giant Vitol. US oil production has steadily increased throughout 2017 as US drillers regained their footing after the oil price crash. What started out at 8.946 million bpd of crude oil production in the first week of January has now reached an average of 9.561 million bpd as of September 29, according to the EIA.

North Korea claims it has a missile that could reach the West Coast of the United States and plans to test it in the very near future, according to Russian lawmakers who visited the reclusive nation this week.  “They are preparing for new tests of a long-range missile. They even gave us mathematical calculations that they believe prove that their missile can hit the West Coast of the United States,” Anton Morozov, a member of the Russian Duma’s international affairs committee, told the RIA news agency, Reuters reports.  “In general, [North Korea’s] mood is rather belligerent,” Morozov added. “The situation, of course, demands...

It’s been a beautiful spring day in the suburbs of Pennsylvania on this Thursday, June 7th, 1961. You just got home from work and your wife is almost finished preparing one of her typically delicious dinners. Your kids, a boy and two girls, aged 15, 13, and 9, have been out all day riding their bikes around the neighborhood and playing with friends. Now everybody’s hungry and ready to sit down for the family meal. Last night was game night, and you barely emerged with a victory in Monopoly. Your kids are getting good, and your wife, normally the more...

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton joined SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam and co-host Steve Bannon on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about Kurdish independence and the future of Iraq. “The Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world that has never had a nation in contemporary times,” Bolton explained. “Just two days ago, they held a referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan and voted well over 90 percent for independence. I think the United States should support independence for the Kurds. They’ve been friends of ours in the struggle against Saddam Hussein and the struggle against international terrorism. I...

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Congress on Wednesday that terrorist groups are looking to use drones to wage attacks in the U.S. “I think we do know that terrorist organizations have an interest in using drones,” Wray testified in a hearing for the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. “We’ve seen that overseas already with growing frequency. I think the expectation is that it’s coming here imminently. I think they are relatively easy to acquire, relatively easy to operate, and quite difficult to disrupt and monitor,” Wray added.

RAQQA, Syria — Mazlum Kobane is the chief commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and, as such, the chief interlocutor of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS). The 45-year-old commander, widely known as Gen. Mazlum, is at the helm of the campaign to retake Raqqa, the self-styled capital of IS, which is in its final stages. Kobane, who displays an avid interest in politics beyond his military skills, has earned himself fame in Washington, where his name is frequently mentioned at various panels. Coalition officials who know Kobane are full of praise for the SDF commander, who...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is keeping on the table the topic of a military operation against US- and Russian-allied Syrian Kurds operating under the banner of the People's Protection Units (YPG).“Despite the problems we are having with our allies, we are not stepping back from our plans or operations,” Erdogan told his guests during the Victory Day reception Aug. 30.  “They have to know that we are preparing to do whatever we did with [Operation] Euphrates Shield,” he added, referring to the 216-day military incursion Turkey launched into northern Syria a little over a year ago. Ankara said at the...

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump agreed on Monday to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles in the wake of North Korea’s sixth nuclear test, South Korea’s presidential office said. In a separate phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin also on Monday, Moon said the U.N. Security Council should seek ways to sever North Korea’s foreign currency income, including from its workers employed abroad and oil shipments. Under the existing missile pact between the United States and South Korea, Seoul’s warheads currently face a cap of 500 kg...

Today the USS McCain collided a merchant vessel, marking the 4th incident in the past year at the Navy. The timeline is as follows: 8/19/2016 — USS Louisiana 5/09/2017 — USS Lake Champlain 6/17/2017 — USS Fitzgerald 8/21/2017 — USS McCain These ships share similarities, they are all based in Yokosuka Naval Base, and the USS McCain & USS Fitzgerald are both part of Destroyer Squadron 15 and the Seventh Fleet. While accidents and mistakes do happen, the number of collisions in the past year is extremely rare, and it is now within the realm of possibility that these accidents were not accidents. Both China and Russia have...

Two close associates of Pope Francis have accused American Catholic ultraconservatives of making an alliance of “hate” with evangelical Christians to back President Trump, further alienating a group already out of the Vatican’s good graces. The authors, writing in a Vatican-vetted journal, singled out Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, as a “supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics” that has stymied action against climate change and exploited fears of migrants and Muslims with calls for “walls and purifying deportations.” The article warns that conservative American Catholics have strayed dangerously into the deepening political polarization in the United States. The writers...

The idea that to ask voters to provide photographic identification to either register to vote or to actually vote is neither uncommon, nor new. It is a process used in most of the world’s developed nation. And the reason they do it is…To prevent Voter Fraud. If a nation does not take its elections seriously, then it does not take the rights of its citizens seriously; consider that the UN actually has “vote checking” teams who oversee elections and electoral processes around the world because of the prevalence of attempted voter fraud and voter intimidation. Why then, does the US...

The Trump Administration released a statement tonight condemning the illegitimate elections. The US promised “strong and swift” action against the architects of the authoritarianism.

Washington (AFP) - The US State Department on Thursday ordered the family members of its embassy staff in Caracas to leave Venezuela and authorized the voluntary departure of its employees as a political crisis appeared headed for a dangerous showdown. Its advisory also warned citizens against traveling to the South American country "due to social unrest, violent crime, and pervasive food and medicine shortages." The move came as the embattled government of President Nicolas Maduro was on a deadly collision course with the opposition, which defied a government ban to hold a nationwide strike ahead of a controversial weekend vote.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has some interesting videos on a range of topics but some of their videos on nuclear deterrence and war fighting are good. Enjoy watching China's Strategy and US Nuclear Weapons.

The China-Vietnam relationship might be less complicated than Washington would wish, despite BeijingÂ’s recent threat to use force against Hanoi to stop drilling in the South China Sea. Interestingly, there was nothing in the 31 May joint statement issued by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc that would commit the US to assisting Hanoi in its current dealings with Chinese threats. Those in Washington who see Vietnam as a potential ally against China have quite possibly ignored the powerful and corrupting influence of cross-border trade between China and Vietnam. While attending IMDEX in Singapore in May, a...

A week after the appearance of the Spadaro-Figueroa rant against American conservatives, I am still shaking my head with disbelief, wondering how a semi-official Vatican journal could have published such a harshly partisan and grossly misinformed analysis of American politics. I am not alone. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia was characteristically polite but firm in his critique, describing the already infamous Civilta Cattolica essay as “an exercise in dumbing down and inadequately presenting the nature of Catholic/evangelical cooperation on religious freedom and other key issues.” Archbishop Chaput—who has been a prime mover in Catholic-Evangelical cooperation, and thus implicitly a target...