Iraqi officials have expressed outrage at the United States’ use of a small fleet of surveillance drones to help protect the US embassy, consulates and American personnel in Iraq, The New York Times reported. The newspaper said the State Department began operating some drones in Iraq last year on a trial basis and stepped up their use after the last US troops left the country in December. The US government plans to take bids for the management of drone operations in Iraq over the next five years, the report said. The State Department drones carry no weapons and are meant to provide data » Read More

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The Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul will be the second since US President Barack Obama inaugurated the forum in Washington in 2010 as a way to strengthen international safeguards and prevent nuclear terrorism. World leaders will gather in South Korea in March for a summit that will seek to restore confidence in the nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The disaster triggered by a tsunami has damaged confidence in nuclear energy, leading to the shutdown of most of Japan’s 54 commercial reactors and Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022. But Hahn, the spokesman for the summit, said the » Read More

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Kim Jong-Il had declared 2012 as the year when the North would become a “powerful and prosperous nation” to mark the centenary of its founder’s birth. North Korea plans a massive military parade including missiles and other weaponry to mark major anniversaries early this year after its leader’s death. A large number of army, naval and air force troops have been practising for months at Mirim air base near the capital Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified Seoul official. “The practice was under way even before the death of Kim Jong-Il,” Yonhap quoted the official as saying. The leader died on » Read More

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A secular bloc which won the most seats in Iraq’s March 2010 vote will end a boycott of parliament that it began in mid-December. “Iraqiya decided its deputies would return for parliament meetings,” Maysoon al-Damluji told a news conference after a gathering of Iraqiya leaders and MPs. The session was attended by Iraqiya leaders including former premier Iyad Allawi, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak, parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, and the finance minister, Rafa al-Essawi. The decision has not, however, been taken to end a boycott of cabinet sessions by Iraqiya ministers, according to Duri, who said “that will be the next step.” A row » Read More

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The Philippines previously hosted huge US military bases until the Philippine Senate, stirred by nationalist opposition of groups like Bayan, voted to close them down in 1992. Philippine activists picketed the US embassy and burned a cardboard American flag and mock stealth bomber, vowing to launch a campaign opposing a plan to allow more US troops in the country. About 50 members of the leftist New Nationalist Alliance (Bayan) also held a huge effigy of Uncle Sam with another of Philippine President Benigno Aquino labeled as his “dog”, as riot police prevented them approaching the mission. “If we allow more US troops to » Read More

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The US military plans to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East amid rising tensions with Iran and intensifying fighting in Yemen, The Washington Post reported. Citing unspecified procurement documents, the newspaper said the Navy is converting an aging warship it had planned to decommission into a makeshift staging base for the commandos in response to requests from the US Central Command. Unofficially dubbed a “mothership,” the floating base could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEALs, the report said. Special operations forces are a key part of President Barack Obama’s strategy to make » Read More

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The 13.6-ton “bunker-buster” bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea, the report said. The US military has concluded that its largest conventional bomb is not capable of destroying Iran’s most heavily fortified underground facilities suspected to be used for building nuclear weapons. But initial tests indicated that the bomb, as currently configured, would not be capable of destroying some of Iran’s facilities, either because of their depth or because Tehran has added new fortifications to protect them, the paper noted. In a report issued in November, the International » Read More

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His plan, written as the British and Americans had invaded Italy and as the A Prussian aristocrat and German diplomat who joined the Nazi Party in 1939, Renthe-Fink is one of those footnote figures of history who nonetheless embodied something important for his own time and for our own. He succeeded in keeping Petain under control but Renthe-Fink’s real claim to fame lies in a memorandum he drafted in August 1943 for Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on the idea of a united Europe. It was to be a confederacy under German leadership “based on free cooperation among independent nations.” He proposed » Read More

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Enriched uranium can have civilian uses but it’s the critical part of the process in producing weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons. Iran’s new uranium enrichment plant buried under a mountain outside the holy city of Qom could become the crucial factor in determining whether the United States launches a barrage of military strikes on the Islamic Republic.. The Iranians had been saying for months they planned to move their uranium-enrichment equipment to Fordow from the main enrichment plant at Natanz, in west-central Iran, to dramatically boost capacity. The existence of Fordow, which the Iranians carved out of a mountainside over four years, was first » Read More

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The Disarmament and Peace Institute, part of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, said the Lee administration, after four years in office, has been fomenting discord in the region, a report by the government-run Korean Central News Agency said. Lee has put north-south relations “at their lowest ebb, placing peace and security in northeast Asia at serious peril and creating a stumbling block in the process of denuclearization.” The DPI report — another in a line of similar reports from the DPI criticizing South Korea and Lee — also blames the United States for destabilizing inter-Korean relations by embarking on military maneuvers at » Read More

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