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Russia has cut a deal with Sudan to deliver a dozen advanced MiG-29 Fulcrum jet fighters to the war-torn country. The deal, announced Christmas Day in Moscow, also includes 14 MiG-29 jets for Yemen. The transfer of fourth-generation MiG-29 Fulcrums to Sudan has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and is certain to alter any possible U.S. plans for air strikes at known terrorist bases inside the African nation. Sudan was cited as one of a limited number of nations with direct links to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The U.S. State Department also listed Sudan as one of a few hostile ...

WASHINGTON — The United States is said to have disclosed that Saudi King Abdullah was dying. (Snip) The sources said the photograph was taken by White House personnel during Obama’s meeting with the Saudi king outside Riyad on March 28.“The Saudis specifically did not want any photograph that showed Abdullah with the tube,” a source said. “But there was a White House photographer that took the picture for what he said was history.” The photograph was said to have been relayed to members of the White House press corps. Within a day, an image of the Saudi king with the...

President Barack Obama is seeking to abolish two highly successful missile programs that experts say has helped the U.S. Navy maintain military superiority for the past several decades. The Tomahawk missile program—known as “the world’s most advanced cruise missile”—is set to be cut by $128 million under Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal and completely eliminated by fiscal year 2016, according to budget documents released by the Navy. In addition to the monetary cuts to the program, the number of actual Tomahawk missiles acquired by the United States would drop significantly—from 196 last year to just 100 in 2015. The...

While Vladimir Putin's actions in Crimea are worthy of international censure, a more imminent threat to world peace is impasse over Iran. There has been a sense in recent days that this was no ordinary week in the life of the planet. Our already bloodstained 21st-century history — unfolding once again in uncertain and threatening ways — seemed to be opening a new chapter. Two events last Tuesday in world capitals more than 2,000 kilometres apart best symbolized this. But which of these events do you think poses the greatest potential danger to world peace? In Moscow, a preening, self-satisfied...

Israeli officials have been lobbying Washington hard on behalf of the new Egyptian government, urging resumption of U.S. aid to Cairo. Since the coup in 2013, during which the army headed by the present defense minister, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, ousted President Mohammed Morsi and outlawed Morsi’s movement, the Islamic Brotherhood, American military aid to Egypt has been on ice. Collaboration on security between Israel and Egypt has improved since Morsi’s ouster. The senior Israeli official says that Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, and other embassy diplomats talked about the matter with high-ranking American officials during the last...

As her de facto colony, Venezuela has Cuban assistance in resisting anti- regime protests. Iran also seems to be helping. March 16th march against Cuban interference Although not very successful, Cuba has been helping the Venezuelan regime to respond in the only ways she understands to anti-regime protests. In consequence, there is increasing anger about Cuban intervention. People are starting to express clear feeling of xenophobia, justified as it is against colonial masters: the Cuban mercenaries sent over by Fidel to control Venezuela. And the world saw that, which is not only an embarrassment for the regime towards its colonial masters as far as...

The storm lasted just 90 minutes, but afterwards parts of Asmara, capital of Eritrea, were completely blocked by ice, government-run newspaper Hadas Eritrea reports. A freak rain storm has dumped as much as 1m (3ft) of hail on Asmara, capital of Eritrea, in what appears to be the heaviest rainfall ever recorded there. This week's storm lasted just 90 minutes, but afterwards parts of the city were completely blocked by ice, government-run newspaper Hadas Eritrea reports. Footage on local television shows streets running with water, and vehicles buried under the hail. It is by far the heaviest rain ever recorded...

Russia has signed a preliminary agreement to build at least two more nuclear power plants in the Iranian port city of Bushehr, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday. "Iran and Russia reached a preliminary agreement to build at least two new nuclear power plants," Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told the news agency. In January, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that establishing long-term relations between the two countries "can serve the stability and security of the region". Iranian media last month speculated that Rouhani could travel to Russia for a regional...

TEHRAN -- Russia will build two nuclear power plants in Iran's southern Persian Gulf littoral city of Bushehr, the spokesman for Iran Atomic Energy Organization Behrouz Kamalvandi was quoted as saying by official IRNA news agency on Wednesday. Iran and Russia reached a preliminary agreement to build at least two nuclear plants in Iran, Kamalvandi told IRNA. "According to the agreement, the capacity of each plant will be at least 1,000 megawatt and the new plants will be built by the side of the existent Bushehr nuclear power plant," Kamalvandi said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has failed to fulfil campaign promises to allow greater freedom of expression and there has been a sharp rise in executions since his election, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday. Rouhani, who won a landslide in June, led Iran to an initial nuclear deal with world powers. But, perhaps wary of further antagonizing powerful hardliners, he has not made significant reforms at home that moderate voters had hoped for. …

The nation’s top military commander painted a dark picture Tuesday of future U.S. defense capabilities clouded by shrinking Pentagon budgets and adversaries’ technological advances that he said would erode American battlefield superiority. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided his sobering views as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated evaluation of U.S. military strength issued every four years. Dempsey predicted that it would become increasingly difficult to balance the competing demands of protecting allies abroad, securing Americans at home and deterring future wars. “The smaller and less capable military outlined in...

The U.S. military conducted an airstrike in southern Somalia on Sunday against a suspected militant leader, a U.S. military official told CNN. The target was described by the official as a "senior leader" affiliated with al Qaeda and Al-Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia. The United States has not yet been able to determine whether the target was killed, the official said.

Nine members of the Eritrea national football team and the coach of the squad have disappeared in Kenya following a regional football tournament. After Eritrea were eliminated from the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup, which was won by Kenya last weekend, the 12 men disappeared. Cecafa general secretary Nicholas Musonye told Reuters: "The players and the coach have absconded." It is not the first time players from the national squad have defected abroad. Last December, 17 players and the team doctor claimed asylum in Uganda, 18 months after 13 players from an Eritrean club side sought refuge in Tanzania.

Addis Ababa — A new report published on Wednesday claims that Eritrean and Sudanese military officers are jointly working on trafficking thousands of Eritrean children who are being held hostage for ransom in Sudan and further sold on to a trafficking network in Sinai, Egypt. ... An Eritrean opposition official on Friday told Sudan Tribune that if relatives fail to raise the money the children either are tortured to death or will be subjected to organ harvesting such as to the extraction of kidneys. According to the report, between 2007 and 2012 up to 30,000 children were trafficked from inside...

Saudi fighter jets on Tuesday intercepted an Eritrean plane and forced it to land in King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Airport in Jazan, said Yassine al-Qassem, deputy media spokesman in the province of Jazan. It was not clear whether the plane was civilian or military, but Qassem said it was carrying three passengers who were seeking asylum and that this was granted to them through a speedy procedure. This was not the first time Eritreans flee to Saudi Arabia. In April, a military pilot sent by Eretria to reclaim a fighter jet that was previously stolen by two officers and...

... Around 3,000 people flee Eritrea every month, despite a "shoot to kill" policy targeting escapees. Earlier this month, two boats carrying refugees sank off the coast of Italy. One was carrying around 500 people, mostly from Eritrea and Somalia, when it went down. Some 30,100 asylum-seekers arrived on Italy's coastline between January and the end of September. According to a BBC report, 7,500 of them were Eritrean. Release International, a VOMC partner in Eritrea, says 185 believers gathered recently to pray about the exodus. Suddenly, police broke into the house and arrested them all. Church leaders fear this may...

Eritrea declared independence in 1993 following a United Nations-backed referendum in which Eritreans voted to break away from Ethiopia. Eritrea's pro-independence leaders fought a guerrilla war against Ethiopia that ended in 1991. Relations between landlocked Ethiopia and Eritrea, which has a Red Sea coastline, have since remained tense, with both countries' armies occasionally clashing over an undefined common border. From May 1998 to June 2000, the neighbors fought a costly and bloody war over a disputed border territory. Both countries continue to accuse each other of supporting armed groups across the border. ... Eritrea has long been accused of fomenting...

There is no civil war in Eritrea: its people flee because their isolated homeland could pass as an African version of North Korea. Like the Kim regime in Pyongyang, President Isaias Afewerki keeps Eritrea on a permanent war-footing. Most adults are conscripted into the army or forced to perform compulsory labour of some kind. Today, one Eritrean in every 20 serves in a bloated army with 320,000 soldiers. Mr Isaias justifies this eternal mass mobilisation by claiming that neighbouring Ethiopia is scheming to re-conquer Eritrea. Just as the fictional state of “Oceania” was always at war in George Orwell’s “1984”,...

By Chris Mitchell, Middle Eastern Bureau Chief JERUSALEM, Israel -- From the West Coast of Africa to the deserts of Sinai, Bedouin tribes are conducting a human trafficking trade on a massive scale. It's no secret. The trade reaps millions of dollars and deals with human misery. It could be stopped but so far no one has dared. "By that time I had lost sense (sensation) in both my hands," an Eritrean torture victim told CBN News. "It was a result of the accumulated torture but mainly because (both) of my wrists were tied up so tightly, (and I was)...

JUBA — 3 July, 2013 … The Washington-based think-tank The International Strategic Studies Association has devoted the latest issue of Global Information System (GIS) Special Analysis, a confidential newsletter used by the Western governments and select subscribers, to the latest Sudanese-Iranian designs for the entire west Africa. “The governments of Iran and Sudan are preparing for a major strategic surge into western Africa, into both the Sahel and the shores of the Gulf of Guinea,” the report warns. “The ultimate objective of this surge is to consolidate control and/or influence over this extensive region and its considerable oil, gas, uranium,...