It was an unexpectedly direct exchange: With nearly every significant Asian defense official gathered in a single room, a senior Chinese military officer on Saturday defended his country’s island-building spree in the South China Sea and rebuked Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter for saying it threatened the region’s stability.
When King Salman became Saudi Arabia’s ruler this year, few people expected much change. He was 79 and reputedly in ill health. The longtime governor of Riyadh province, Salman was known as a capable administrator and skilled mediator, not as a man who challenged the status quo.But since taking the throne in January, Salman has shaken up both Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy and the royal family’s succession plans.
With only one month left before a deadline to complete a nuclear deal with Iran, international inspectors have reported that Tehran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel increased about 20 percent over the last 18 months of negotiations, partially undercutting the Obama administration’s contention that the Iranian program had been “frozen” during that period.
Nearly eight years ago, the Pentagon faced an embarrassing scandal: The military flew a B-52 Stratofortress from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana while accidentally carrying nuclear warheads, prompting an investigation that resulted in the firing of Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley. 
The U.S. Air Force on Monday said it aims to meet electronic warfare needs using next-generation aircraft such as Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter and a new long-range bomber, rather than older planes like Boeing Co's EA-18G Growler.Air Combat Command Commander General Herbert Carlisle said the F-35 offered "some pretty impressive" electronic warfare capabilities - consisting of jamming enemy signals to make it easier for warplanes to bomb targets on the ground and other offensive actions - though he gave no details.
The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State is doubling down on its strategy to fight the extremists, insisting on staying the course it set last year despite the radical group's recent conquests on both sides of the border between Iraq and Syria. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi pressed his case Tuesday for more support from the 25 countries in the coalition at a one-day Paris conference on fighting the militant group, organized within weeks of the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi and the Syrian city of Palmyra.
Perhaps the number one question I always get about the ordeal I went through and the sheer chaos that surrounded everything, was just who really was behind the plot to blackmail the former head of Russia Boris Yeltsin to stop him from running for reelection in 2000 and hand-pick Boris Abramovich Berezovsky? It is true I even had a meeting with the US Attorney Office on the subject when they realized that Republic National Bank and Edmond Safra had set up even Bank of New York as the center piece in the plot.
Near-zero interest rates in Europe have made individual deposits an unnecessary headache for local banks: Wholesale funding is cheaper and easier to arrange. There are two banks that exist in a different reality, however: the Austrian subsidiaries of Russia's state-controlled Sberbank and VTB. They very much want Europeans' savings because they know how to play the Russian carry trade.
An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned. The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system. According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.
A test of the new Chinese YJ-18 supersonic ASCM from November 2014 is visible in this video clip, about one minute into this segment introducing China’s new nuclear submarine design. Even though we know that YJ-18 is part of a whole new generation of new and lethal Chinese ASCMs, it is curious that Chinese ASCMs generally go unmentioned in a recent TNI analysis of the “5 Most Deadly Anti-Ship Missiles of All Time.” 
The European Union has responded angrily to Russia's entry ban against 89 European politicians, officials and military leaders.Those banned are believed to include general secretary of the EU council Uwe Corsepius, and former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.Russia shared the list after several requests by diplomats, the EU said.The EU called the ban "totally arbitrary and unjustified" and said no explanation had been provided.
Two serious technical flaws have been identified in the ground-launched anti-missile interceptors that the United States would rely on to defend against a nuclear attack by North Korea. Pentagon officials were informed of the problems as recently as last summer but decided to postpone corrective action. They told federal auditors that acting immediately to fix the defects would interfere with the production of new interceptors and slow a planned expansion of the nation’s homeland missile defense system, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
his week, the Islamic State (IS) militant group achieved a new milestone, publishing the first edition of its new Russian-language digital magazine, Istok. According to IS Russian-language Twitter accounts, Istok -- whose name means "the source" -- is the work of IS's official media arm, Al-Hayat.Superficially, the 24-page magazine is similar to Al-Hayat's slick English-language magazine, Dabiq. It's peppered with inspirational quotes from the Koran and Hadith and illustrated with full-color photographs of smiling militants waving black flags.
Two weeks. Two suicide bombings. Both targeting Shiites in a Sunni land. And both claimed by ISIS.If this were Iraq or Syria, these attacks – sadly – wouldn’t be surprising. But it’s not. It’s Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s most precious sites and the region’s most powerful Sunni rulers — a relatively vast territory, kept remarkably stable by the ruthless application of authoritarian rule while its neighbors teeter under the destabilizing weight of popular revolution and terrorist intervention.
Above us, white clouds graze the top of Tel Moussa, 9,400 feet of red rock above foothills of granite and valleys of innocent cherry orchards. Colonel Median of the Syrian Army’s 3rd Armoured Division stands on the dry, cold earth below, sun-shades above his stubble beard; he does not know the identity of the ancient Moussa who blessed this mountain with his name, but he knows how to curse him. “If I could catch him, I would hang him because he is the source of torture for me and many of my men.”
Republican presidential candidates gathered last month at the Oklahoma City Cox Conference Center, just a few blocks from the site of what was the Alfred R. Murrah Federal Building. Two decades ago, anti-government militia sympathizer Timothy McVeigh blew it up in what he called an act of war against the U.S. government. It was the worst crime of domestically bred terrorism in American history. 
The numbers are staggering: China spent $40 billion to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing and Russia spent $50 billion for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Brazil's total expenditures are thought to have been as much as $20 billion for the World Cup this summer and Qatar, which will be the site of the 2022 World Cup, is estimating that it will spend $200 billion.
The Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit critical of biotech crops, considers the ruling a “big win” but expects the plaintiffs will challenge it before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said George Kimbrell, senior attorney for the group.The judge has recognized that genetically engineered crops pose a significant commercial threat to non-biotech growers, which was a key issue in the litigation, Kimbrell said. “This case is a resounding affirmation of the right of farmers to protect themselves from GE contamination.”
Norway’s decision to dump all coal-focused investments from its $900bnsovereign wealth fund could unleash a wave of divestment from other large funds, according to investment experts. The fund, the largest in the world, is one of the top 10 investors in the global coal industry.
There is one important incident that indicates what is REALLY happening in the Vaccine Wars. President of Merck's Vaccine Division - Julie Gerberding, just sold half of her Merck stock, cashing out at about 2.5 million US dollars.
More than two thirds of U.S. adults are now overweight and it is fair to say that almost all of them overeat. It is not too difficult to overeat when food and snack ads are everywhere--as are the products themselves. Why are snacks sold in the hardware store, office supply store and car wash? Because we've gone a whole 45 minutes without eating? Why do hotel rooms have mini-bars? Because it has been a whole hour since dinner? The average U.S. refrigerator is opened 50 times a day, probably correlated with TV ads. When some Europeans saw Americans downing cheese fries at 10:30 am in a mall food court they legitimately asked "what meal is that?"
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) announced Monday in his hometown of Central, S.C. that he will run for president in 2016, adding to a crowded Republican field one of the party's most aggressive national security voices in a campaign that has focused often on foreign policy.
The news spread like wildfire through Venezuela early on Sunday. An image circulating on digital outlets showed a smiling woman pulling a suitcase behind her alongside two men in an airport corridor. The picture of complacent friendship was reportedly taken moments before the woman, former Supreme Court Judge Miriam Morandy, and one of her companions, Richard José Cammarano Jaime, were arrested by drug-trafficking police. 
What follows is based on sixty years of experience in public life and journalism. It arises from deepening concern about the people’s limited appreciation of the First Amendment and disgust with media waffling behind timidity’s breastworks. It also arises from urgent unease about government overreach in the name of “homeland security,” an overreach based on post-9/11 fear, political opportunism and an all but explicit assertion that a free people do not need to know and should not demand to know how they are being protected. 
