Iraq continues to kill, capture IS members as effectiveness questioned

Iraqi security forces have captured and killed a number of key Islamic State facilitators and others in the past month amid a US mission transition and concerns over coordination. Iraqi security forces continued their operations against Islamic State (IS) cells and sources of funding in December with a number of …

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Syrian jihadist group opens food market north of Idlib

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls Idlib in northwestern Syria, is supporting development projects in various economic sectors. A food market has been opened in the city of Sarmada, north of Idlib, under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The opening ceremony, which was held Dec. 12, was attended by …

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Israel plans to double Golan Heights population

Relocating its weekly meeting to the Golan Heights Kibbutz Mevo Hama, the government approved a 1 billion-shekel plan for the development of the region. Israel’s Cabinet approved Dec. 26 a 1 billion-shekel ($317 million) plan for encouraging demographic and economic growth in the Golan Heights. Aiming at doubling the Israeli …

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Kurdish leaders say poverty ‘biggest threat’ as it drives Syrians into arms of Islamic State

Offers of money by the Islamic State to join its ranks prove “irresistible” to those hit hard by Syria’s collapsed economy. A man being led by security guards shuffles into an interrogation cell in a military prison in the Kurdish-administered city of Hasakah in northeastern Syria. His hands are cuffed, …

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Yemeni rebel attack on southern Saudi Arabia kills 2 people

A Yemeni rebel attack on Saudi Arabia’s southern border town of Jizan killed two people and wounded seven more late Friday, Saudi state-run media reported. Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a projectile that killed a Saudi citizen and Yemeni resident in the southwestern Saudi province of Jizan, the official Saudi Press …

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Turkey freezes assets of 770 people for alleged terror links

Turkey froze the assets of 770 Turkish nationals and a Chicago-based foundation, according to a decision published Friday in the country’s official gazette. The list of targets includes 454 people with alleged links to Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the United States. The Turkish government accuses Gulen and …

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Unavoidability Of Sino-American Rift: History Of Strategic Decoupling – Analysis

Americans performed three very different policies on the People’s Republic: From a total negation (and the Mao-time mutual annihilation assurances), to Nixon’s sudden cohabitation. Finally, a Copernican-turn: the US spotted no real ideological differences between them and the post-Deng China. This signalled a ‘new opening’: West imagined China’s coastal areas …

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Moscow sees threat of new missile crisis as serious – RIA cites formin

Moscow considers the threat of a new missile crisis as serious, the RIA news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Monday amid a standoff between Russia and Western powers over Ukraine. Throughout the crisis, Russia has veered between harsh rhetoric, calls for dialogue and dire warnings, …

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Amid fears Russia will invade Ukraine, Putin points finger at U.S. and NATO in marathon news conference

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a marathon news conference Thursday, blamed the West for tensions on the Ukraine border and fears of war, but stopped short of issuing any pronouncements likely to drive further escalation. One of his most prominent television appearances of the year, the annual conference, which lasted …

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The Attack On Latakia

When the news broke on December 7 that the Syrian port of Latakia had been bombed, and that an Israeli military spokesperson had declined to comment, a natural first reaction was that this air strike was the latest of hundreds over the past few years, targeting Syrian government facilities in …

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