Another fall Again

Saturday, November 5, 2016

World AFP 8 hours ago

A Philippine mayor President Rodrigo Duterte named as being involved in the illegal drug trade was shot dead in jail on Saturday, police said, the second local official implicated in narcotics to be killed in two weeks.

Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill tens of thousands of criminals to prevent the Philippines from becoming a narco-state, and has launched an unprecedented war on drugs that has left more than 4,000 people dead.

He had named several local officials, policemen and judges as being involved in the narcotics trade and urged them to surrender.

In August, he accused Rolando Espinosa, the mayor of Albuera town in the central island of Leyte, and his son of drug trafficking and demanded they turn themselves in, giving police a "shoot on sight" order if the two resisted arrest.

Mayor Espinosa then surrendered to the national police chief, saying he feared for his life, and was arrested last month.

But early Saturday morning, police said Espinosa was killed in his cell in the provincial jail after he shot at officers during a search for illegal firearms.

"He fired on the raiding team. The raiding team fired back and this led to the mayor's death," chief inspector Leo Laraga of the regional police told AFP.

He added that another inmate accused of drug trafficking was also killed, after he too fired at the officers.

The national police said it was investigating the circumstances surrounding Espinosa's death as well as possible collusion between guards and inmates to get guns and drugs into the jail.

Police chief Ronald dela Rosa previously said Espinosa had been listed in official records as a "drug protector", whose son Kerwin controlled the narcotics trade in the Albuera region.

Kerwin was arrested in the United Arab Emirates last month and is set to return to the Philippines to face drug trafficking charges.

In August, six of the Espinosas' supporters died in a gunfight with police outside the mayor's property in Albuera where officers said they recovered guns and several grenades.

Another mayor accused of drug trafficking was killed in the southern Philippines in late October.

Police said Samsudin Dimaukom and his security personnel opened fire after anti-narcotics police stopped their vehicles at a checkpoint on suspicion they were transporting illegal drugs.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

World By Michelle Nichols,Reuters 1 hour 7 minutes ago

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday abstained for the first time from a United Nations General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for an end to a U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, after opposing such measures every year for 24 years.

For the 25th time, the 193-member General Assembly adopted the resolution with 191 votes in favor. Israel, which opposed the resolution last year, also abstained on Wednesday. Such resolutions are non-binding, but can carry political weight.

Communist-run Cuba and the United States, former Cold War foes, began normalizing relations in 2014. U.S. President Barack Obama has taken steps to ease trade and travel restrictions on Cuba, but only the U.S. Congress can lift the full embargo.

The Republican-controlled Congress has resisted Obama's call to lift Washington's economic embargo after more than 50 years. Republican critics say Obama is making too many concessions to Cuba for too little in return, especially on human rights.

The U.N. General Assembly applauded when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power announced prior to the vote that the United States would abstain.

"Abstaining on this resolution does not mean that the United States agrees with all of the policies and practices of the Cuban government. We do not," Power told the General Assembly.

"We are profoundly concerned by the serious human rights violations that the Cuban government continues to commit with impunity against its own people," she said.

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez described the abstention as a "positive step for the future of improving relations between the United States and Cuba."

Rodriguez said in September that damage from U.S. sanctions between April 2015 and March 2016 amounted to $4.6 billion and to $125.9 billion since the embargo's inception more than 50 years ago.

In March, Obama made the first visit to Havana by a U.S. president in 88 years. His trip was made possible by his breakthrough agreement with Cuban President Raul Castro in December 2014 to cast aside decades of hostility that began soon after Cuba's 1959 revolution.

Since the opening, Obama has repeatedly used his executive powers to relax trade and travel restrictions, while pushing Cuba to accelerate market-style reforms and boost political and economic freedoms.

The U.N. resolution adopted on Wednesday takes note of the steps taken by Obama as positive but "still limited in scope." It urges the United States to repeal or invalidate the embargo on Cuba as soon as possible.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish)

World By Andrew Osborn and Simon Johnson,Reuters 3 hours ago

By Andrew Osborn and Simon Johnson

MOSCOW/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Russia is sharply upgrading the firepower of its Baltic Fleet by adding warships armed with long-range cruise missiles to counter NATO's build-up in the region, Russian media reported on Wednesday.

There was no official confirmation from Moscow, but the reports will raise tensions in the Baltic, already heightened since Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and cause particular alarm in Poland and Lithuania which border Russia's base there.

The reported deployment comes as NATO is planning its biggest military build-up on Russia's borders since the Cold War to deter possible Russian aggression.

Russia's daily Izvestia newspaper cited a military source as saying that the first two of five ships, the Serpukhov and the Zeleny Dol, had already entered the Baltic Sea and would soon become part of a newly formed division in Kaliningrad, Russia's European exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Another source familiar with the situation told the Interfax news agency that the two warships would be joining the Baltic Fleet in the coming days.

"With the appearance of two small missile ships armed with the Kalibr cruise missiles the Fleet's potential targeting range will be significantly expanded in the northern European military theater," the source told Interfax.

Russia's Defence Ministry, which said earlier this month the two ships were en route to the Mediterranean, did not respond to a request for comment, but NATO and the Swedish military confirmed the two warships had entered the Baltic.

"NATO navies are monitoring this activity near our borders," said Dylan White, the alliance's acting spokesman.

The Buyan-M class corvettes are armed with nuclear-capable Kalibr cruise missiles, known by the NATO code name Sizzler, which the Russian military says have a range of at least 1,500 km (930 miles).

Though variants of the missile are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, the ships are believed to be carrying conventional warheads.

"The addition of Kalibr missiles would increase the strike range not just of the Baltic Fleet, but of Russian forces in the Baltic region, fivefold," said Ben Nimmo, a defense analyst at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, who has been tracking the ships' progress.

"The two small corvettes, with their modern, nuclear-capable missiles, may yet have an impact out of proportion to their size in the Baltic."

SWEDEN, POLAND WORRIED

Izvestia said Russia's Baltic Fleet would probably receive a further three such small warships armed with the same missiles by the end of 2020.

It said the Baltic Fleet's coastal defenses would also be beefed up with the Bastion and Bal land-based missile systems. The Bastion is a mobile defense system armed with two anti-ship missiles with a range of up to 300 km (188 miles). The Bal anti-ship missile has a similar range.

Sweden's Defence Minister said his country was worried by the presence of the warships in the Baltic Sea, complaining the move was likely to keep tension in the region high.

"This is ... worrying and is not something that helps to reduce tensions in our region," Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist told Sweden's national TT news agency. "This affects all the countries round the Baltic."

Swedish media said the Kalibr missiles had the range to hit targets across the Nordic region. The Russian Defence Ministry said in August that the two corvettes had been used to fire cruise missiles at militants in Syria.

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, in Brussels for a NATO meeting, called the deployment "an obvious cause for concern," the PAP news agency reported. "Moving such ships into the Baltic changes the balance of power," he said.

Earlier this month, Russia moved nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles into Kaliningrad leading to protests from Lithuania and Poland.

(Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs in Moscow, Justyna Pawlak and Jakub Iglewski in Warsaw and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Andrew Heavens)

World The New York Observer 5 hours ago

This year, on Sailors Square in the town of Yevpatoria, Crimea—which Russia snatched from Ukraine more than two years ago—a small but sturdy red-bricked monument with a message to future generations of Russians was built. The monument is named “For the Edification of Posterity” and the inscription on it reads: “WE HAVE RETURNED CRIMEA, YOU ARE TO RETURN ALASKA.” Silhouettes of both Crimea and Alaska are engraved. The U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 has been engulfed by conspiracy theories since the days of Soviet history textbooks that blamed Russian czars for every inch of Russian land lost to hostile outsiders. Disregarding the facts, one popular belief is that the Alaska purchase was a top-secret, “under the table” deal between corrupt Russian officials and Washington. ...

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

World The National Interest Mon, Oct 24 1:00 AM PDT

Earlier this month, a Russian ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) called Podmoskovie slipped out of its pier at Severodvinsk for the first time in 16 years. Podmoskovie was photographed leaving the shipyard for contractor sea trials on Oct. 22 by Oleg Kuleshov, who writes for the BMPD blog—a product of the Moscow-based Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. Podmoskovie and her sister BS-136 Orenburg—a former Delta III SSBN—are roughly analogous to the U.S. Navy’s secretive USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23)—which is a highly modified Seawolf-class boat. Carter is roughly 100ft longer that her two Seawolf-class sisters with the addition of a Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), which allows the submarine to launch and recovery of various unmanned vehicles and support special operations forces. ...

World Newsweek 16 hours ago

This article first appeared on the American Enterprise Institute site. On at least two occasions and possibly a third, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched missiles at the USS Mason, a destroyer stationed near the Bab al-Mandab, one of the world’s most perilous maritime choke points. The USS San Antonio has also come under attack. Sign up to our daily newsletter for up to date global news and features. After the second incident, the USS Nitze fired Tomahawk missiles at three coastal radar sites. The Pentagon called them “limited self-defense strikes,” more a symbolic action than one designed to punish those responsible. It seems that there is a reluctance on the part of the White ...

The Huffington Post Mon, Oct 24 2:09 PM PDT

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Oct. 8 that the situation between the U.S. and Russia today is more dangerous than it was during the Cold War. As he put it, "It's a fallacy to think that this is like the Cold War. The current times are different and more dangerous." Since most of us think of the Cold War as by far the most dangerous time we have known, Steinmeier's view is startling. It is important to understand what he is saying, not simply because he is the foreign minister of an important country, but because he is a smart man. In the interview, Steinmeier discussed the Russian intervention in Syria, the standoff with the United States and the frozen but still dangerous confrontation ...

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Philippine mayor accused over drugs killed in jail: police

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

U.S. abstains for first time on U.N. call for end to Cuba embargo

Russia beefs up Baltic Fleet amid NATO tensions: reports

On Alaska Day, Russians Still Dream of Getting Alaska Back

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Russia's Super Secret Spy Submarine Returns to Sea

Michael Rubin: Iran-backed rebels are attacking U.S. ships

Germany Warns of the Danger of War