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PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The big question at this hour: Is the U.S. planning to invade Iraq sometime next year? While White House officials are downplaying a "New York Times" report that says the U.S. is considering a major air and ground assault for next year that could include as many as 250,000 American troops. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein celebrated his 65th birthday over the weekend with the usual well-choreographed tributes from the Iraqi people. And, in Baghdad, tens of thousands of people marched as a show of support and defiance in the face of U.S. determination to topple Hussein. Ambassador...

Boko Haram has evolved from a local terrorist group to a regional and global security threat....Since then, Boko Haram has increased its frequency of terror attacks in Nigeria, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and expanded geographically to launching attacks in other West and Central African countries, such as Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. ...snip.... The U.S. support is also coming rather late in the game. The U.S. commitment of troops in Cameroon came only after China, Russia, Germany and France had already committed to help Cameroon, through defense cooperation agreements (Russia) and by providing sophisticated military equipment (China, Germany) and...

The mass deportations come amid rising tensions between Algeria and its southern neighbours, all now led by military juntas that ousted elected governments previously aligned with Algiers.Authorities in Algeria have rounded up more than 1,800 migrants and left them at the border with Niger in a record expulsion earlier this month, a migrant rights group has said. Alarmphone Sahara, which monitors migration across the region, said the migrants were bussed to a remote desert area known as "Point Zero" after being apprehended in Algerian cities. Abdou Aziz Chehou, the group’s national coordinator, said that 1,845 migrants without legal status...

Jihadists are murdering, raping, torturing, kidnapping, enslaving, and, in some instances, burning people alive — across Africa, and now in Syria. Local jihadist organizations go by different names, but the ideology that drives them is the same: Every one of them deeply believes that Allah wants him to wipe the world clean of the kuffar (infidels). More than 16.2 million Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa have been driven from their homes by jihadi violence and conflict, reports the human rights organization Open Doors. Women and girls are abducted, forced into "marriage," forced to convert to Islam, raped, and subjected to forced...

A Biden-era US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was found dead in her Alexandria, Virginia, home on Saturday morning. The cause and manner of death is unknown. Jessica Aber, 43, was found unresponsive on Saturday morning. Her death is under investigation. “This morning, at approximately 9:18 a.m., Alexandria Police responded to the 900 block of Beverley Drive for the report of an unresponsive woman. Officers located a deceased woman. Following notification of family members, the Alexandria Police Department can confirm the identity of the woman as Ms. Jessica Aber, age 43, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District...

In the past 18 months military leaders have toppled the governments of Mali, Chad, Guinea, Sudan and now, Burkina Faso. West African leaders on Friday called an emergency summit on the situation in Burkina Faso, where the new military leader, Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, told the nation in his first public address that he would return the country to constitutional order “when the conditions are right.” The resurgence ofcoups has alarmed the region’s remaining civilian leaders. Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said on Friday, “It represents a threat to peace, security and stability in West-Africa.” First came Mali, in August 2020....

Recently, after over two decades of an unnecessary U.S. military presence in Niger, the U.S. finally withdrew from the West African country. I, for one, never believed we should have been there in the first place and warned our presence was doing more harm than good. Congress never authorized sending troops to Niger. Last year, I was right to demand their withdrawal. Why waste our money and risk our troops’ lives for a hostile country? In over a decade, civilian lives were lost, U.S. service members were killed, millions of taxpayer dollars were spent, and we have nothing to show...

In the wake of yet another foiled ISIS-inspired terrorist plot, this one by a Canada-based Pakistani seeking to kill Jews in New York on the anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack in Israel, everyone is loudly proclaiming: “ISIS is back.”And yet, this analysis is wrong.For someone or something to “be back,” it has to have left in the first place. This return can be surprising or expected, but in the end it is of note. With respect to the ISIS terrorist group, it has not “resurged” because it never went away in the first place.The group has been around since...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran, which the United States accuses of secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, has a stake in the world's biggest open-pit uranium mine in the African state of Namibia, the mine's owner told Reuters. Rossing Uranium Limited, which is majority owned by Anglo-Australian firm Rio Tinto, sells its uranium to nuclear power plants in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. Graham Davidson, the general manager for operations at Rossing, said in a letter to Reuters that the company's board of directors only permits the sale of uranium for use in generating electricity. "The government of Iran has...

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and...

The Pentagon announced Monday that it had finished withdrawing U.S. forces from a $110 million military base in Niger, Africa, as the nation’s ruling regime takes over. Niger’s Air Base 201 previously hosted hundreds of U.S. troops who have now evacuated at the request of the country’s military junta.... Some equipment from Air Base 201 was shipped out, such as weaponry, but other equipment was left behind.... “What the [Biden administration] was not understanding, is that these guys are cold-blooded. This new government in Niger? They don’t care. They do not want the United States involved in their country,” Michael...

NIAMEY, Niger — A crucial military relationship between the United States and its closest West African ally, the country of Niger, ruptured this spring after a visiting U.S. official made threats during last-ditch negotiations over whether American troops based there would be allowed to remain, according to the country’s prime minister. In an exclusive interview, Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine put the blame for the breakdown squarely on the United States, accusing American officials of trying to dictate which countries Niger could partner with and failing to justify the U.S. troop presence, now scheduled to end in the coming...

In Peru tonight the prosecutors office opening a preliminary investigation against President Dina Boluarte...follows the arrest of the president's brother... Dozens of people hurt in a train collision in Buenos Aires... Eight wounded in a Ukrainian attack on the Russian city of Belgorod... The Pentagon this week formally ordering one thousand US combat troops out of the African nation of Niger... North Korean ruler Kim Jong-Un guiding live fire testing of a modernized multiple rocket launcher system (MLRS)... Police blocking an attempt by protesters to storm a Tesla factory outside Berlin... South Africa making an urgent request to the International...

Russian military personnel have entered an airbase in Niger that is hosting American troops, after a decision by Niger’s junta to expel US forces from the country. The military officers ruling the west African country have told the US to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington’s fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more. A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Russian forces were not mingling with US troops but were using a separate hangar at...

Russian military personnel have entered an air base in Niger that is hosting U.S. troops, a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters, a move that follows a decision by Niger's junta to expel U.S. forces from the country. The military officers ruling the West African nation have told the U.S. to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington's fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian forces were...

Another preventable Afghanistan-pullout-like failure, because that's what Joe Biden does. oe Biden is a lucky bungler. With no Fox News cameras around and nobody paying much attention to what was going on in Niger, a disgraceful, utterly humiliating exit of the U.S. military from that benighted country now led by a military junta, has dealt the U.S. another strategic blow, and entirely preventably. The crummy little tinpot junta now running Niger has managed to kick Uncle Sam around, much as the Taliban and Iran did, creating an accumulating pattern of lost U.S. influence. And sure enough, they got us good,...

NEW YORK Oct. 16, 2004 — Pierre Salinger, who served as President John F. Kennedy's press secretary and later had a long career with ABC News, has died, the network said Saturday. Salinger, 79, died from a heart attack at a hospital in France, the network said. It was not immediately clear when or where in France he died, ABC News said.

Niamey: see no evil The Senate Select Commission on Intelligence noted that in 1999 Joseph A Wilson had also been sent to Niger by the CIA and there has been much speculation about the purpose of that trip. Now we know. His keen powers of observation were put in out nation’s service to check out reports that A. Q Khan was traveling to Africa to purchase yellow cake uranium, something of which he seems to have found no evidence. From opinionjournal.com

Don’t imagine this is just an unprovoked, brutal attack by a bunch of terrorists from Gaza. It is much more than that. The hands that pushed these killers forward are in Moscow. US President Joe Biden and European leaders have long feared an escalation of the Ukraine war and that is what they’ve now got. Unwilling to take the fight directly to NATO, instead, Putin has been fomenting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Serbia and Kosovo, in West Africa and now in Israel. The instability created in these places is intended to pull US attention, as well as resources, away...

Another Joe Biden foreign policy disaster is in the works. Joe Biden already turned over the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan to Taliban terrorists in September 2021. Biden abandoned Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years in July by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ secret departure more than two hours after they left. The Taliban quickly took control of Bagram Air Base, which is only 30 miles north of Kabul, on August 15th and released thousands of terrorists held at its prison. The Americans and Afghans...