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Sahand destroyer -- which can sustain voyages lasting five months without resupply -- joined Iran's regular navy at a base in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. The Sahand has a flight deck for helicopters, torpedo launchers, anti-aircraft and anti-ship guns, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and electronic warfare capabilities, state television reported. "This vessel is the result of daring and creative design relying on the local technical knowledge of the Iranian Navy... and has been built with stealth capabilities," Rear-Admiral Alireza Sheikhi, head of the navy shipyards that built the destroyer, told the state news agency IRNA. Iran launched its first...

BOSTON — Massachusetts’s governor wants a judge he nominated pulled off the bench amid a federal investigation into whether she helped a man in the country illegally evade immigration officials. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday that District Court Judge Shelley Joseph shouldn’t hear criminal cases until the investigation is resolved.

Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized on Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose. Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, the...

Concerned about U.S. Coast Guard forces losing a paycheck in the partial government shutdown, President Trump personally urged his team to find a solution that would allow the administration to make this week’s $75 million payroll, according to officials. Trump stepped in on Wednesday, calling on top lawyers and staffers to determine if the Coast Guard could make payroll despite being included in the shutdown that has impacted about 25 percent of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, which houses the Coast Guard. Officials said that Trump was keen to find a “way we can fix this” as...

Smoking a joint can get you disqualified for a security clearance but vote for a Communist and you too could become the Director of the CIA. John Brennan voted for Communist Gus Hall in 1976 and was himself a Communist sympathizer. This is the adoring portrait from The Intelligencer in 2016: In 1976, future CIA director John Brennan was a college student disgusted by Watergate and the “system” that produced it. As the young Brennan surveyed the political landscape, only one candidate seemed to be speaking the truth about the need for real change (and/or the dictatorship of the proletariat)...

Slovakia will not have a representative at the December 10 UN meeting in Marrakesh where the Migration Compact will be signed. Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini stated this as a final decision, given that the cabinet approved the parliamentary resolution about the Marrakesh Pact on December 5. At the same time, the prime minister indicated he will send a letter with Slovakia's comments on the document. The Migration Compact has been at the centre of the conflict between the ruling coalition Smer and Slovak National Party (SNS) and the Smer-nominated Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajãák. The minister defended the compact and insisted...

What happens when the face of a country’s anti-corruption movement suddenly is investigated for the sort of bribery he once condemned? Ukraine, a U.S. ally and neighboring foe of Russia, is soon to find out. And it’s a case with implications in the United States, where the fallout from the unproven Trump-Russia collusion scandal has engulfed several Ukrainians. The country’s chief corruption prosecutor on Thursday opened an investigation into “suspicions” that Serhiy Leshchenko, a crusading anti-corruption member of Ukraine’s parliament and former investigative journalist, accepted bribes in 2016 from a Russian source that enabled him to buy a luxury condo...

Ukraine’s future is again bound up in the political ambitions of Yulia Tymoshenko. The fate of the two-time prime minister and her country are once more tightly woven together — like the blonde halo braid that made her an international icon. Only this time, Ukraine is at war, and that means Tymoshenko’s third run for president could have implications far beyond her country’s borders, potentially rewriting relations between Russia and the West and unbalancing the geopolitical order.

Lawyers for Cardinal George Pell are working to keep the 77-year-old Australian prelate out of jail pending an appeal of his convictions of sexually abusing minors. The highest ranking churchman to be charged with sexual offenses, Pell was convicted in December 2018, but details of his trial were under a publication ban until Tuesday. It has now been revealed that Pell was convicted of one charge of sexually penetrating a child under 16 and four counts of committing an indecent act on a child under 16, the BBC reported. Judge Peter Kidd lifted the ban after prosecutors dropped a second...

"The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation and prosecution of CEFC China Energy Co. boss and Biden family associate Patrick Ho displayed “irregularities,” including concealing known connections between the Chinese Communist Party-linked entity and the Bidens, and communication between Hunter Biden and the FBI agents involved in Ho’s case, according to a memo by the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project."

WASHINGTON (TND) — Hunter Biden claimed he was all out of money in December 2018, according to text messages revealed in new IRS whistleblower documents. The documents were released by the House Committee on Ways and Means Wednesday. In the exchange, Hunter was writing to his uncle, James Biden. "I can work when I’m in NYC all day every day for the next 3 months from 8-12z [sic] But I can’t pay alimony w/o Dad or tuitions or food and gas,” Hunter wrote. “Really it’s all gone.” Hunter went on to say that his dad, now President Joe Biden, "basically...

A newly-uncovered trove of documents detailing plans to create a Covid-like virus in China months before the pandemic make the 'lab leak almost certain', experts say. The records - obtained now by FOIA requests - lay out a plan to 'engineer spike proteins' to infect human cells that would then be 'inserted into SARS-Covid backbones' at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018. Just a year later, in late 2019, the Covid-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic. The proposal was made by the now-notorious EcoHealth Alliance, a...

Two top Republican senators have demanded the Justice Department and FBI launch a full investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop, including the revelation unearthed on Hunter Biden’s laptop by the Washington Examiner that President Joe Biden apparently unwittingly financed his son’s participation in an escort ring tied to Russia. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent the Thursday letter citing the Washington Examiner’s reporting to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, who is handling the criminal investigation... The Republicans asked Garland and Wray to answer whether “the FBI investigating...

A man arrested as the prime suspect in the serial killing of four Muslim men in Albuquerque is believed to be a Sunni Muslim himself, it has been reported. Police named the man as 51-year-old Muhammad Syed, who lived in southeast Albuquerque. He emigrated from Afghanistan 'in the last few years', police said on Tuesday, and was twice charged with domestic violence - but charges were dropped. Court records obtained by DailyMail.com show Syed was arrested in May 2018 and charged with 'battery (household member)'. He pleaded not guilty, and prosecutors dropped the charges in August of that year. Four...

Hunter Biden reportedly suggested in December of 2018 that President Joe Biden is politically influenced by “anything that I want.” “He’ll talk about anything that I want him to, that he believes in,” Hunter said about his father’s political “platform” in a 77-minute recording the Washington Examiner obtained from Hunter’s “laptop from hell.” Hunter also said Joe Biden will amend his political platform and “work” to make his desires comes true because “my dad respects me more than he respects anyone in the world.”

Laptop reveals Hunter's fear after the 'assassination' and 'arrest' of his CEFC China business partners, Ye Jianming and Patrick Ho, the 'richest man in the world' and the 'spy chief of China'.

A ‘bombshell’ Hunter Biden text that was first discussed on air prior to the 2020 election has been verified. And it has explosive implications regarding the current President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Biden family.It regards a text conversation between Hunter Biden and his daughter Naomi, who is the president’s granddaughter. A copy of that text from December 26, 2018 has been provided to Becker News. Here it is below:“I love all of you,” the Hunter Biden text reads. “But I don’t receive any respect and thats fine I guess — works for you apparently. I Hope...

New revelations from Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” may show why top U.S. intelligence officials did not want it gaining credence in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Hunter Biden had texted his brother’s widow that China arrested CIA informants in “retaliation” for the U.S. arresting of “my client the chief of intelligence of the people’s republic of China.” It’s worth stating the obvious: This was written by the son of the current president of the United States. Hunter Biden sent the text messages to Hallie Biden on Dec. 14, 2018, according to text messages found on the abandoned...

Today, the Justice Department unsealed charges in a significant national security cyber matter.  The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington (EDWA) and the National Security Division (NSD) have charged two Chinese hackers working with the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), including the Guangdong State Security Department (GSSD) of the MSS, with a sweeping global computer intrusion campaign.  In making this announcement, I’m joined here by Dave Bowdich, Deputy Director of the FBI, Bill Hyslop, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, and Raymond Duda, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Seattle Field...

One of the attorneys representing the anonymous “whistleblowers” accusing President Donald Trump of conspiring with foreign leaders to interfere in the next U.S. presidential election used to report directly to former director of national intelligence James Clapper. Charles McCullough, an attorney now representing the whistleblowers with Andrew Bakaj, a former staffer for Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, was previously the inspector general of the intelligence community (ICIG) at the height of the Clinton email scandal. Now a partner at the Compass Rose Legal Group, McCullough’s professional biography on the law firm’s website notes that he reported directly to Clapper...