WAR 12-31-2016-to-01-06-2017_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

Well this is about to get a lot dumber and fraught with unintended consequences.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/JZ...ange-missiles-broke-UN-limits-on-nuclear.html

Last Modified: Thu, Jan 05 2017. 07 41 PM IST

India’s Agni long-range missiles broke UN limits on nuclear arms: Chinese media

China’s Global Times says India has ‘broken’ UN limits on nuclear arms and long-range missiles and Pakistan should also be accorded the same ‘privilege’

K.J. M. Varma

Beijing: India has “broken” UN limits on nuclear arms and long-range missiles and Pakistan should also be accorded the same “privilege”, state-run Chinese media said on Thursday as it criticised New Delhi for carrying out Agni-4 and 5 missile tests whose range covers the Chinese mainland.

“India has broken the UN’s limits on its development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile,” the ruling Communist Party-run tabloid Global Times said in its editorial.

“The US and some Western countries have also bent the rules on its nuclear plans. New Delhi is no longer satisfied with its nuclear capability and is seeking intercontinental ballistic missiles that can target anywhere in the world and then it can land on an equal footing with the UN Security Council’s five permanent members,” it said.

“India is ‘promising’ in vying for permanent membership on the UN Security Council as it is the sole candidate who has both nuclear capability and economic potential,” it said. “China should realise that Beijing wouldn’t hold back India’s development of long-range ballistic missiles,” it said apparently highlighting China’s limitations in restricting India developing a nuclear and missile deterrence against Chinese military power.

Agni-5, a 5,000-km range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), is widely regarded as a strategic missile targeted at China as it can reach almost all parts of the Chinese mainland. The editorial said that “Chinese don’t feel India’s development has posed any big threat to it”.

The daily known for its sabre-rattling rhetoric said “India wouldn’t be considered as China’s main rival in the long run” due to vast disparity of in power between the two countries. But at the same time it suggested that the “best choice for Beijing and New Delhi is to build rapport”.

However, while accusing India of violating limits imposed by UN on nuclear and long range missile development, “if the Western countries accept India as a nuclear country and are indifferent to the nuclear race between India and Pakistan, China will not stand out and stick rigidly to those nuclear rules as necessary”, it said.

“At this time, Pakistan should have those privileges in nuclear development that India has,” it said, indicating that China which shared an all-weather ties with Islamabad will back it if it develops long-range missiles.

“In general, it is not difficult for India to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles which can cover the whole world. If the UN Security Council has no objection over this, let it be. The range of Pakistan’s nuclear missiles will also see an increase. If the world can adapt to these, China should too,” it said.

The references to violation of UN rules by the daily were significant as the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying while reacting to India’s Agni-5 missile test said on 27 December that “on whether India can develop this ballistic missile that can carry nuclear weapons, I think relevant resolutions of the UNSC have clear rules”. PTI

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ental-ballistic-missile-this-year-say-experts

North Korea able to test intercontinental ballistic missile this year, say experts

Although missile may be tested it is likely to fail with a successful model possibly two to three years away

Julian Borger World affairs editor
Thursday 5 January 2017 01.15*EST

North Korea is capable of fulfilling its New Year’s threat to start testing an intercontinental ballistic missile in 2017, bringing a long-brewing standoff with the US to the boil in the first year of a Trump administration, weapons experts have warned.

Those experts said the regime in Pyongyang was likely to encounter multiple test failures in developing a two- or three-stage missile capable of reaching the continental United States or Europe, and that it would probably take a few years for such a weapon to become operational. But the first test would trigger a foreign policy crisis in Washington and western capitals.

'Paranoid' North Korea won't stop building nuclear weapons – US spy chief
Read more

The looming crisis has sharpened into a battle of personal wills even before Donald Trump takes office on 20 January. On New Year’s Day, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, declared the country had “entered the final stage of preparation for the test launch of intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM]”.

He further warned that his country would continue to build up its “capability for preemptive strike” as long as the US and its regional allies kept up their own nuclear threat and “stop their war games they stage at our doorstep”.

In response, Trump fired off a tweet, suggesting Kim’s regime would not reach that goal. “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the US. It won’t happen!” the president elect declared on Twitter.

The tweet left it unclear whether Trump meant that North Korea lacked the capacity to build an ICBM or whether his administration would stop it. If the latter, it was also unclear how that would be done. North Korea’s fast growing nuclear weapons programme is a problem that has defied easy solutions.

Any attempt at a pre-emptive military strike would very likely trigger a ferocious response, quite possibly with short- and medium-range nuclear weapons aimed at South Korea and US bases in the region.

However, the Obama administration’s “strategic patience” approach, based on the hope that concerted international economic pressure would ultimately force North Korea to curb its nuclear activities, failed dramatically to reach its objective.

Over the eight years of the Obama administration, multilateral talks stalled and North Korea rapidly accelerated its programme, carrying out four nuclear tests and more than 50 missile and rocket launches.

Kim revelled in his regime’s technical successes in his New Year’s address
“We conducted the first H-bomb test, test-firing of various means of strike and nuclear warhead test successfully to cope with the imperialists’ nuclear war threats, which were growing more wicked day by day,” the North Korean leader said.

There are different opinions on whether North Korea succeeded in testing a hydrogen bomb exactly a year ago. Air sampling after the underground blast was inconclusive. US officials were quoted as saying it may have been a test of components of such a powerful thermonuclear warhead, rather than a fully-assembled weapon.

But there has been no doubt about the array of land and sea-based missiles of different ranges the North Koreans have tested, including satellite launch rockets, leaving an ICBM as the last major goal outstanding.

There is uncertainty over Pyongyang’s capacity to make a nuclear warhead small enough to put on missile. Following Kim Jong-un’s address on Sunday, the state department spokesman, John Kirby, said: “We do not believe that at this point in time he has the capability to tip one of these [missiles] with a nuclear warhead ... but we do know that he continues to want to have those capabilities and the programs continue to march in that direction.”

It is unclear whether Kirby was referring to all missiles or just ICBM’s. In the past, US military and intelligence officials have said they do believe the North Koreans can make a warhead that can be fitted on the No-dong missile, an established and well-tested weapon based on the Scud missile, with a range of up to 1600 km.

A nuclear-tipped ICBM would require a further technical leap, with a much longer range and a re-entry vehicle capable of withstanding the heat and vibration of plummeting through the earth’s atmosphere. However, there are ample signs North Korea is preparing to make that leap.

Melissa Hanham, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said the North Korean regime has been offering glimpses in 2016 of its planned ICBM, the KN-08 and testing components: the first and second stage, and a possible heat shield for a reentry vehicle.

The KN-08 - and its planned three-stage variant, the KN-14 - are designed to be truck-mounted so they can be moved around and hidden in caves until they are wheeled out, fuelled and fired.

Hanham said that pictures of missile engine tests also suggested the North Koreans had changed the liquid fuel they are experimenting with to UDMH/NTO a Soviet-pioneered propellant used in several space launch programmes.

“That’s a more energetic fuel, that allows you to jump to a higher rung in terms of how far you can go and how much weight you can carry,” Hanham said. A multi-stage missile with such fuel could not just reach the west coast, she added, but “it could even hit the eastern US”.

“They would have to do some flight testing, but there is no reason they can’t start that in 2017,” Hanham said.

A recent North Korean defector, Thae Yong-ho, a former deputy ambassador to London, said last week that the Pyongyang regime viewed 2017 as an opportunity to race ahead with its nuclear ambitions as a new administration finds its feet in Washington and South Korea is hamstrung by the impeachment of its president, Park Geun-hye. He said the goal was developing operational nuclear weapons “at all costs by the end of 2017”.

Perfecting a weapon capable of reaching the US and Europe would take longer, Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.

“As for a possible ICBM test flight, I judge that North Korea could conduct one this year, but it is likely to fail,” Elleman said. He pointed out that tests of North Korea’s intermediate-range missile, the Musudan, have produced only one success this year among multiple failures, and argued Musudan engines would be likely to power the first stage of an ICBM.

“It would be foolish, from an engineering perspective, to rush prematurely a flight test of the more complex ICBM,” he said.

 

[Housecarl]

Turkey Threatens To Block US From Using Incirlik Airbase
Started by*Lurker‎,*Today*06:44 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...atens-To-Block-US-From-Using-Incirlik-Airbase

Turkey's Incirlik Air Base: Post-Coup Power Cut Remains at U.S. Site - US nukes in danger
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...emains-at-U.S.-Site-US-nukes-in-danger/page17

Turkey go boom again. Car bomb.
Started by*Lurker‎,*Yesterday*06:40 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?509178-Turkey-go-boom-again.-Car-bomb.

--

Jihadists Train, Plan U.S. Attack from Mexican Border State of Nuevo León
Started by*Medical Maven‎,*Today*06:50 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ttack-from-Mexican-Border-State-of-Nuevo-León

Refugee facility on fire in Germany, dozens treated for smoke inhalation – media
Started by*Millwright‎,*Today*07:55 AM

----------

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jplehma...uts-asia-in-uncharted-territory/#6ebb17b234d0

Jan 5, 2017 @ 09:45 AM 4,099 views

The New World Disorder Puts Asia In Uncharted Territory

Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Contributor
I write about Asia in the 21st-century world economy.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

The world we observed in 2016 is amazing and frightening. This was not what was supposed to happen.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, the presumption was that we were going from an era dominated by geopolitics to a new era of geo-economics, one in which the state would cede place to the market, and in which rivalries would principally be over economic gains (technological innovations, market share, trade, investments, profits) and not over politics or ideologies. This was the vision of “the new world order,” as coined by President George H. W. Bush in March 1991.

Well that (short) cycle has been terminated. What we see happening is the return of geopolitics, big time. But it is not the familiar landscape of the old world order. Events and developments in 2016 point to disorder—with Asia playing a prominent role.

Last year, highlighted by Brexit, confirmed the continuing marginalization of Europe from the world stage. The two remaining major “European” powers, Turkey and Russia, are both Eurasian nations and their fields of activity will be primarily in Asia.

This is one of the uncharted territories of the new world disorder. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the global narrative was written in Europe, a period during which Asia (with the single exception of Japan) was exploited, colonized and sidelined; in the 21st century, it will be written in Asia.

U.S. is done crafting a global order

This is happening in a context in which the global order crafted by the United States in the wake of World War II is effectively over. As Robert Kagan, conservative thought leader and author of The World America Made, put it in an article in the Financial Times, “the US is, for now, out of the world order business.” The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency marks not a new beginning but the concluding intensification of trends that have evolved in the course of this century.

On the global economic leadership front, Washington’s failure to lead the WTO Doha Round to a successful conclusion, followed by the failures of the much hyped two “mega-regionals” trade deals, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, have led to the isolationism, pugilism and protectionism that the Trump campaign espoused. Whether that rhetoric translates into policy implementation remains to be seen, but whatever the outcome, the U.S. has effectively abdicated the leadership role in global trade it had supported for the last seven decades.

What is true of the geo-economic sphere applies to the geopolitical, as President-elect Trump has sent a clear message to America’s allies, both in NATO and in East Asia: Pax Americana is finished and henceforth they must depend far more on their own defenses.

This is a major historical upheaval.

From the 1960s to now

I have been an observer of Asia for over half-a-century. At the time when I embarked on my journey, Asia (with the sole omission of Japan) was seen as a continent of poverty and underdevelopment.

In 1968, Swedish Nobel Prize Laureate Gunnar Myrdal published his seminal three-volume work entitled, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, explaining why the continent was poor and would remain so. Meanwhile the Vietnam War was raging, and much of Southeast Asia was in political turmoil with massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66 and the Cultural Revolution in China. As dramatic as these events were, their global consequences were minimal. Asia was peripheral. Japan was the exception, but following its failed attempt in the 1940s to put all Asia under one (Japanese) roof, it joined the Western world order.

The re-Asianisation of Asia

Things did change in the ensuing decades. By the early 1990s, the World Bank, for instance, published a major report on the East Asian miracle story. But it is only in the course of this century, especially with the rise of China as a global power, that what has been termed the re-Asianisation of Asia has occurred. Throughout the second half of the 20th-century, when Asian leaders woke up in the morning they looked West. Now they look increasingly East. To cite one vivid example: China, followed by India, has become the world’s biggest importer of oil. And the launch of the New Silk Road and Maritime Route from Astana in 2013 (what the Chinese call Belt and Road) has cemented*the*movement.

Recent proceedings confirm this shift for me: Last November, I participated in two events, a round-table hosted by the Astana Club entitled “Eurasia at a Crossroads” and the Global Trade Review’s Trade & Commodity Finance Conference. Both meetings had been scheduled well before Donald Trump’s victory, but both occurred after it—and discussions were heavily influenced by it. Whatever route the U.S. takes, global--hence Asian--consequences will be considerable. The Trump election sets the scene for the proverbial bull in the fragile Asian china shop.

We've already seen this in play: Also in November, while*the*APEC Summit in Lima*was taking place, Trump announced thedeath-knell of the TPP, leaving*Chinese President Xi Jinping to quickly step in and say that henceforth China would assume the leadership role and act as guarantor of the global free trade regime.

A geopolitical cauldron

Whether and how this perceived transition from an American-led order to a possible Chinese-led order occurs not only remains to be seen, but can be undoubtedly termed the biggest challenge facing the world in the 21st century. For all its economic achievements, Asia, from the Korean Peninsula across the continent to Yemen, from the East China Sea to the Red Sea, and across the Indian Ocean, remains a geopolitical cauldron.

Asian nations are not immune from the current universal affliction of populism, what Indian author Pankaj Mishra recently termed the “globalization of rage.” Nationalism is ascendant virtually everywhere on the continent, with leaders including Abe in Japan, Xi in China, Modi in India and Duterte in the Philippines to name a few. Populism breeds nationalism, which in turn breeds mercantilism, which leads to protectionism and economic conflict. There are many factors of instability in this business environment.

In the meantime, firms need to adjust to the realities of this new Asian-driven global disorder. Business leaders must be responsive to the challenges. This requires, perhaps above all, a much deeper integration of politics and geopolitics in corporate culture and corporate learning. As The Economist noted late last year, “a glaring underlying weakness of management studies [has been] its naivety about politics.” Business cannot hope to be immune from the political forces and developments that will mark the world, especially Asia, in this new era of global disorder.

There are many risks, but there are ample business opportunities as well, including the recently launched New Silk Road initiative and putting Central Asia more visibly on the corporate map.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-idUSKBN14Q1K9

World News | Fri Jan 6, 2017 | 9:12am EST

In renewed push, Iraqi forces enter Mosul from north for first time

By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed | NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD

Iraqi troops entered Mosul from the north for the first time on Friday, part of a new phase in the battle for the city that also saw elite forces bridge a river under cover of darkness in an unprecedented night raid.

The operations were part of a major new push launched last week to seize ground in the city, after progress in the nearly three-month-old operation had stalled for weeks because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.

Troops would soon "cut the head of the snake" and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said on Friday.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong U.S.-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State's self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.

They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul on Friday, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.

A spokesman for Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said troops had taken territory in an overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul.

"We used special equipment and had the element of surprise - the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day," Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.

Iraqi army units later breached the city from the north for the first time since the offensive began on Oct. 17, entering the residential al-Hadba apartments complex, officers at a nearby command post told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how much of the area they controlled amid resistance from Islamic State.

Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.

More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.

The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.

In the latest phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.

U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.

Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in battles to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment.

"The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism ... and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages," he said in a statement.

'HEAD OF THE SNAKE'

"The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces ... will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God's help," Abadi said.

Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.

The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.

Also In World News
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One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.

Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.

Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.

Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.

The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.

Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.

A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people.

Iraqi forces meanwhile pushed IS militants back in an area northwest of Baghdad towards the Syrian border, military sources said, in a separate, smaller operation launched on Thursday and part of the wider fight against the group in Anbar province.

They encountered little resistance from the militants, who withdrew towards Aneh, around 50 km northwest of the town of Haditha, the sources said.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles, Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin; writing by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)

Next In World News

Syrian rebel official denies report of ceasefire near Damascus

In Istanbul district, horror but scant surprise at links to nightclub shooter

Kosovo to review ties with Serbia after ex-PM arrest: foreign minister

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.npr.org/sections/paralle...s-intercontinental-missile-is-coming-together

North Korea 'Very Far Along' In Developing New Ballistic Missile

January 6, 2017
11:14 AM ET

North Korea got 2017 off to a menacing start. In his New Year's address, supreme leader Kim Jong Un warned the nation was in the "final stage" of preparations to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

A day later, President-elect Donald Trump said the North would never develop a nuclear weapon capable of striking the U.S. "It won't happen!" Trump tweeted.

Bombast aside, independent arms control experts agree that North Korea is moving rapidly to develop an ICBM. And many suspect it will test a missile capable of reaching the continental U.S. later this year.

Parallels
Even With Failures, North Korea's Nuclear Program Races Ahead

"They are very far along in their ICBM testing project," says Melissa Hanham, an East Asia researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. "Probably we will see that they will do a flight test in 2017."

If the test were successful — a big if — North Korea would join a small club of nations with ICBMs, including superpowers like the U.S., Russia and China.

North Korea is a notoriously closed society, but the government periodically releases images and videos of its missiles. Analysts pore over that scant material and use it to cobble together a mosaic of the North's weapons program. Those reports, combined with public statements by officials in South Korea and the U.S., provide some sense of the North's progress.

And there was a lot of progress in 2016, Hanham says: "There were so many tests, I need crib notes."

North Korea tested a new rocket engine, based on a Soviet design, which is more powerful than anything it's used before. It also tested a heat shield of the type needed to protect a nuclear warhead as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere. In June, it successfully fired a new Musudan missile.

The Musudan's range of up to 2,500 miles is short of what's needed to reach America, but it appears to use some of the technology that would probably go into a larger ICBM.

That ICBM has yet to be tested. Known to analysts as the KN-08 or KN-14 ("one of the challenges with North Korean missiles is that they don't tell us what they're called," says Hanham), it first appeared in a military parade in 2012. Back then, the missile was so kludged together, it looked to some experts like it could be a decoy.

But in the years since, photos of the ICBM showed features that suggest it is becoming a real weapon. The missile began as a clunky, three-stage design, says David Wright, a rocketry expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It's since been redesigned as a simpler two-stage affair.

With the new engines tested this year, it would have a range of about 7,500 miles, Wright says. "That would start to bring things like Washington, D.C., into range."

Can Trump stop the test?

Neither Hanham nor Wright thinks there are easy solutions available to the president-elect. Attacking the missile before it's launched would be an act of war. If the ICBM is tested to the south, as happened with North Korea's space launches, then it will be out of range of the main U.S. missile-defense system based in Alaska. Smaller ship-based interceptors are also unlikely to be able to shoot it down, Wright says.

That leaves diplomacy, says Hanham. But Kim Jong Un has shown little willingness to negotiate.

"There are no good options, really," Hanham says. "That's why previous administrations have struggled with it for so long."

A flight test will not mean that North Korea can conduct a nuclear strike on U.S. soil. For one thing, the North's track record in testing new missiles is pretty bad, says Wright. He estimates the odds that this new ICBM will work are "probably less than 50 percent."

And while the individual components may all be there, they still need to be combined into a single weapon, he adds. Many analysts believe the North has miniaturized its nuclear bomb. But Wright says it's less clear whether a North Korean nuke could survive the g-forces of a missile launch.

Similarly, its re-entry system for bringing the weapon back to earth could be highly inaccurate in its current design. Perfecting an ICBM as a weapon may take several more years.

Still, Hanham believes that 2017 may be a watershed year for the North. Even an unsuccessful ICBM test will send a clear message. "That's going to be really scary," she says, "not just for the region, but the American public."

 

[Housecarl]

Mass Shooting At Fort Lauderdale Airport.
Started by*eXeý,*Today*10:13 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...s-Shooting-At-Fort-Lauderdale-Airport./page10


For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/taiwan-president-heads-us-beijing-watches-013741867.html

Taiwan president heads to US as Beijing watches

AFP
January 6, 2017

Taipei (AFP) - Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen left for the United States Saturday on her way to Central America, a trip that will be closely watched by Beijing, incensed by her congratulatory call to Donald Trump.

While the focus of the nine-day trip is to visit Taiwan's ally nations in Central America, Beijing-sceptic Tsai's transit stops in Houston this weekend and San Francisco next weekend will be under scrutiny as cross-strait tensions rise.

Tsai's conversation with Trump in December after he won the presidency upended decades of diplomatic precedent in which Washington has effectively ignored Taipei in favour of Beijing, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province to be brought back within its fold.

Since then, China has stepped up military drills near Taiwan, with speculation its sole aircraft carrier may pass through the Taiwan Strait during or shortly after Tsai's trip.

The drills are seen as a show of strength by Beijing as its ties with the self-ruled island and the US deteriorate.

Beijing has asked Washington to bar Tsai from flying through US airspace.

"A transit is a transit," the Taiwanese leader told reporters last week, when asked whether she would be meeting anyone from Trump's administration.

Trump himself appeared to have ruled out meeting Tsai this trip, saying it is "a little bit inappropriate" to meet anybody until he takes office January 20.

Taiwan's presidential office declined to provide details of Tsai's itinerary during her US stays.

"What China cares most about is whether Tsai and Trump will meet," political analyst Liao Da-chi told AFP.

"These are all warning signals to see how Taiwan will respond, as well as testing waters with the US," added Liao, a professor at the National Sun Yat-sen University.

Tsai will visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador -- among the dwindling number of states that officially recognise Taiwan.

She will attend the presidential inauguration in Nicaragua on Tuesday and meet with the heads of states of the other three nations.

Taiwan is down to 21 allies after the small African nation of Sao Tome and Principe switched recognition to Beijing last month.

The Vatican is Taiwan's highest-profile supporter, but the Holy See's recently improving relations with Beijing is casting doubt over ties with the island.

Analyst Liao said Beijing would continue to woo the island's allies as a pressure tactic on Tsai, who refuses to acknowledge the concept that there is only "one China".

Taiwan's defence ministry has declined to comment on speculation that China's Liaoning aircraft carrier may pass through the Taiwan Strait on its return journey after its first exercise in the Pacific.

The ministry is "monitoring at all times" the position of the Liaoning, spokesman Chen Chung-chi said.

The vessel and five other warships passed south of the island outside Taiwan's air defence identification zone last month, before heading to the South China Sea.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-soldiers-seize-weapons-positions-ivory-coast-city-090320165.html

Ivory Coast uprising by disgruntled soldiers spreads to other cities

By Ange Aboa and Loucoumane Coulibaly
Reuters
January 6, 2017

BOUAKE, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - Disgruntled soldiers demanding salary increases and the payment of bonuses seized control of Ivory Coast's second-largest city, Bouake, on Friday, in an uprising that spread to at least two other cities.

A statement from Defence Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi read out on state television said a group of soldiers had used their weapons to force their way into the military headquarters in Bouake soon after midnight and then made their demands.

Ivory Coast - French-speaking West Africa's largest economy - has emerged from a 2002-11 political crisis as one of the continent's rising economic stars.

But its army, thrown together at the end of the conflict from a mixture of former rebel factions and government soldiers, remains an unruly force riddled with divisions.

"We are going to talk with our men, listen to their preoccupations and find solutions to this situation," Donwahi said in a later evening statement, after an emergency meeting with other members of the National Security Council, including President Alassane Ouattara and top military officers.

Donwahi said the revolt was "understandable but deplorable for the image of the country and for the work the president has done since the end of the crisis."

Heavy gunfire was heard from around 2 a.m. local time (0200 GMT) in the city of around a half million inhabitants, but later died down.

Shooting also broke out at a base in Daloa, the main trading hub in the western cocoa belt, and residents said soldiers, some of them masked, were patrolling the streets in 4x4s.

FORMER REBELS

Residents of the northern city of Korhogo reported hearing sporadic gunfire in the afternoon as military sources said some soldiers there had also joined the uprising.

Donwahi said the towns of Odienne and Daoukro had also been affected by the mutiny, but said the situation was now calm.

Bouake was the seat of a rebellion that controlled the northern half of the country from 2002, until Ivory Coast was reunited following a civil war in 2011.

Most of those involved in the mutiny appeared to be former rebels who were integrated into the army.

Bema Fofana, a member of parliament representing Bouake who spoke to several of the soldiers, said they were demanding 5 million CFA francs ($8,000) each, as well as a house.

Ivory Coast is the world's leading cocoa producer, and prices rose as the unrest prompted a wave of buying.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed a pick-up truck laden with soldiers racing through empty Bouake streets.

Ami Soro, a teacher living in Bouake, said men in balaclavas were patrolling the city on motorcycles or in cars.

A helicopter, which residents said was from Ivory Coast's U.N. peacekeeping mission, buzzed overhead.

A Reuters journalist saw some 20 U.N. military vehicles heading toward Bouake from 15 km (9 miles) to the south.

During a similar uprising in 2014, when hundreds of soldiers barricaded roads in cities across Ivory Coast demanding back pay, the government agreed a financial settlement.

That may have emboldened them to try it again.

"If you don't really sort out the real problems and open the door to this kind of behavior, what can you expect?" said Rinaldo Depagne, West Africa project director for International Crisis Group. "You can expect it to happen again."

While paying the soldiers off again could worsen the problem in the long run, military action to force them out is made tricky by the presence of rival factions and parallel chains of command within the army.

"The only guys they could count on to send in are the Republican Guard or special forces," said a diplomat based in the region. "But the Republican Guard protects the president, and the special forces - there simply aren't enough of them."
($1 = 622.78 CFA francs)

(Additional reporting and writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Tim Cocks and Lisa Shumaker)