Sources in the Russian law enforcement agencies, citing data from closed communication channels with the Defense Ministries of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, say that the operation to prepare a large-scale hybrid offensive against Russia through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is in the final phase.

Reports of this have been received earlier, in particular, this was mentioned at a recent security conference held in Tashkent. Then the head of the Tajik Foreign Ministry Sirodzhiddin Aslov openly announced the activation of terrorists in the region:

The activation of terrorist groups, their advancement to the northern regions of Afghanistan, especially in the territories bordering Tajikistan, the increase in the number of ISIS supporters, as well as the participation of a certain number of citizens of the post-Soviet republics in the terrorist groups and movements present in Afghanistan … causes our serious concern

A sample of Novichok (substance A-234), the nerve agent allegedly used to poison the Skripals in the United Kingdom in March 2018, was obtained by German intelligence in the 1990s, local media have reported. Since then, the substance has been studied and produced by NATO countries.

Western countries, including the US and UK, have long been aware of the chemical composition of the nerve agent known as Novichok, a group of German media have reported following after a investigation.

The inquiry, based on anonymous sources, gives new insight into the issue of the nerve agent that would have been used in the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK, in March.

Western governments managed to get their hands on the formula of what is described as “one of the deadliest chemical weapons ever developed,” after the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, obtained a sample of the nerve agent from a Russian defector decades ago.

The US has cleared the sale of 3,200 bombs valued at about $45 million, including powerful bunker busters, to Bahrain. The Persian Gulf monarchy is hosting the US 5th Fleet and has been involved in the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen.
The order would consist of 1,500 Mark-82 general purpose bombs; 600 Mark-83 bombs; 600 Mark-84 bombs; and 500 BLU-109 “bunker busters,” bombs armed with special warheads designed to penetrate hardened targets, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced on Friday.

The ordnance is intended for Bahrain’s US-made F-16 combat jets, and would come directly from US government stocks. Bahrain “will use these munitions as a deterrent to regional threats, strengthen its homeland defense, and execute counter-terrorism operations,” the agency said, as well as “operate with US-led and US-supported coalition operations.”

The Trump administration escalated its demands on Iran on Monday while giving Tehran a possible loophole if it wants the US to return to the nuclear deal which President Trump unilaterally cancelled last month, laying out a list of demands that Iran has to satisfy for the deal to be restored, including a stop to all uranium enrichment and halt to Iran's support for militant groups in the region.

The administration’s demands were outlined in a speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which for the first time spelled out all of the administration’s requirements for a new agreement. Pompeo laid out an onerous list of 12 "basic requirements" on Iran which toughened the nuclear demands and called for a wholesale change to Iran’s military posture in the region, that he says should be included.

Facebook has announced a new partnership with the Atlantic Council, a think tank with close ties to the Military Industrial Complex and Defense Department.

On Thursday Facebook announced a new partnership with the Atlantic Council, a think tank which officially claims to provide a forum for international political, business, and intellectual leaders. The social media giant said the partnership is aimed at preventing Facebook from “being abused during elections.” The press release promotes Facebook’s efforts to fight fake news by using artificial intelligence, as well as working with outside experts and governments.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced from Yemen’s coastal province of Hodeidah, as pro-Saudi forces invaded the area with an eye toward eventually seizing the last port held by Shi’ite Houthi forces.

The civilians say they were facing terrifying mortar attacks, with rockets flying overhead and landmines ripping people to shreds. Amnesty International is reporting that the worst is yet to come, however, for the entire nation, as this offensive worsens.

That’s because as the last Houthi port, Hodeidah is the lone source of humanitarian aid for roughly half of the country. That makes it a “strategic target,” but the fall of the port also means that half of the country, the half already on the brink of starvation and recovering from a record large cholera epidemic, will be under even tighter siege.

As global counterterrorism operations show no signs of slowing down, U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) are receivingthousands of light, gliding missiles that are smaller and more powerful than an AGM-114 Hellfire and fired from a Lockheed C-130 Hercules above the modern battlefield.

In recent years, insurgent groups have outsmarted American precision-guided weapons launched from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with fast traveling vehicles. However, a new powerful gliding munition can chase down and destroy these fast-moving targets.

President Donald Trump has confirmed in no uncertain terms, his support of Israel’s illegal settlements (including his opposition to UN Security Council Resolution 2334, pertaining to the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank).

Moreover, by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and allowing for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and beyond, the US president has provided a de facto endorsement of the “Greater Israel” project as formulated under the Yinon Plan.

Bear in mind: this design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, namely Washington’s intent to fracture and balkanize the Middle East. Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is intended to trigger political instability throughout the region.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 to support Gina Haspel’s nomination today, despite the fact that her facilitation of torture should disqualify her from assuming the role of CIA director.

Next the full Senate will make a final decision on Haspel’s nomination in a vote that is expected to take place next week but could occur as early as tomorrow.

In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA’s interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated.

There aren’t really examples of nations with substantial nuclear arsenals giving them up as part of a broad negotiated settlement and it working out. North Korea’s denuclearization, then, is very much uncharted territory. The Trump Administration, however, insists on drawing parallels to Libya.

National Security Adviser John Bolton in particular is trying to draw this comparison, even though there are obvious, dramatic differences between the two situations. North Korea is also furious about the Trump Administration’s talk of Libya, and it’s not hard to see why.

Libya never had functional nuclear weapons, and gave up its equipment in 2003 in hopes of ending its international isolation and reforming its image. North Korea’s interest in diplomatic engagement is one commonality, but makes it a particularly poor example, as Libya never really enjoyed much of a reward.

Russia will keep its warships – armed with Kalibr cruise missiles – in the Mediterranean to thwart the possible re-emergence of terrorist groups in Syria, President Vladimir Putin said, hailing the navy’s operations overseas.
Russia’s standing naval task force, which includes warships equipped with Kalibr-class cruise missiles, will remain off Syrian shores on permanent deployment “given the persistent threat of terrorist incursions” in the country, Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

Russia’s naval presence in the Mediterranean has become a game-changer in combatting terrorism in Syria, Putin said, adding that “missile strikes as well as efficient action by our naval aircraft inflicted serious damage to terrorists.”

Russia’s state-of-the-art hypersonic glide vehicle, which analysts say is capable of easily cutting through the existing US missile shield, will become operational by 2020, reports citing US intelligence have warned.
Speaking to CNBC on the condition of anonymity, sources aware of US intelligence reports, said the Russian military successfully tested the weapon twice in 2016. The third known test of the weapon was allegedly carried out in October 2017, and allegedly failed when the device crashed seconds before hitting its target.

The sources believe the device would be a significant breakthrough which could enable Russian military to surpass US counterparts. The intelligence sources claimed that the hypersonic gliders will get onboard countermeasures to enable them to defeat even the most advanced missile-defense systems.

Google's "Project Maven" is supplying machine-learning tools to the Pentagon to support drone strikes; the project has been hugely divisive within Google, with employees pointing out that the company is wildly profitable and doesn't need to compromise on its ethics to keep its doors open; that the drone program is a system of extrajudicial killing far from the battlefield; and that the firm's long-term health depends on its ability to win and retain the trust of users around the world, which will be harder if Google becomes a de facto wing of the US military.

A dozen googlers have put their money where their mouths are, publicly resigning over the contract; 4,000 more googlers have signed an open letter to the company's CEO asking him to cancel the contract.

The US, Swedish, and Finnish defense ministers signed a trilateral Statement of Intent (SOI) to expand defense cooperation on all fronts. The signing ceremony took place in Washington on May 8. In 2016, the two Scandinavian nations finalized separate defense SOIs with America. Now they have signed a joint document to unify those previous agreements and enhance their interoperability.

The Scandinavian visitors claimed this was just a starting point for a more mature relationship. The agreement emphasizes the countries’ combined joint exercises and streamlines the procedures that have been established to manage them.

At some settler event in the capital of Palestine Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, mentioned today's Gaza massacre in which Israeli soldiers murdered at least 52 and maimed 1,200 unarmed Palestinians. He accused them of being the guilty ones because they protest against the Zionist theft and occupation of their land:

"As we have seen from the protests of the last month and even today, those provoking violence are part of the problem and not part of the solution."
The White House omitted that sentence in its official transcript. In its daily press briefing the White House called the murder committed by the Zionist army "a propaganda attempt" by Hamas and Palestinians.

In response to today's massacre South Africa recalled its ambassador from Israel. It is so far the only country which did so. South Africa knows apartheid and colonial violence. It no longer condones it.

North Korea plans to join global efforts to implement a total ban on nuclear weapons tests, Pyongyang’s ambassador told the United Nations disarmament body on Tuesday.

Tensions are at an all-time high in the Middle East as Israel launched more than sixty missiles at Syria because Israel claimed that Iranian forces fired rockets into the Golan Heights, an Israel-occupied territory since the 1967 Six-Day War.

ran responded to the Israeli claims in a Zero Hedge report:

In the aftermath of one of the most severe Israeli attacks on Syria “in decades,” Iranian lawmakers said Thursday that Iran had no role in the attack, and that Shia nation doesn’t operate any bases in Syria.

Mohammad Javad Jamali Nobandegani, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said Israel’s claim that Iran had provoked Israel by firing first was “a lie,” adding that

“Israel’s history of carrying out unprovoked attacks in Syria has been well-documented.” “Iran does not have military base in Syria,” Nobandegani added

he U.S. Government Accountability Office is expected to rule soon on a disputed contract worth more than a billion dollars to supply food to American forces in the Middle East.

The big-dollar decision will mark the most recent twist in a battle over giant U.S. military logistics deals dating back nearly a decade, and includes allegations of sanctions busting, corruption, and fraud. The ruling could also prove troublesome for the Defense Department, which for years has faced criticism over its contracts with Gulf-owned logistics companies the military has used to feed deployed troops.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni army took control of the town of al-Bareh, west of Taiz, earlier this week. The fall of this town is less important than what comes next, as the army draws ever closer to the key port city of Hodeidah.

Hodeidah is the lone seaport under the control of the Shi’ite Houthi movement, and by extension is the only port through which humanitarian aid can flow for the entire northern half of the country. A vital humanitarian location, which to pro-Saudi forces is a vital military target.

Successfully conquering Hodeidah would, after all, mean the Houthi territory, including the capital city and many millions of people, would have no access to food or medical aid. This would be an opportunity for the Saudi invading force to really crack down on them.

They envision it forcing a surrender, but it may also could bring millions of malnourished people into outright starvation.

“Trump’s reckless, unwarranted, utterly irrational action will pull Washington ever deeper into an incendiary Middle Eastern vortex of political and religious conflict that has absolutely nothing to do with the safety and security of the American people”.
— David Stockman, Former Congressman and Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director on Trump pulling out of the Iran nuke deal

“Sheldon Adelson, for his part, has advocated launching a nuclear attack against Iran as a negotiating tactic and threatening to nuke Tehran, a city with a population of 8.8 million people if Iran does not completely abandon their nuclear program”.
— Eli Clifton, Writer

A Japanese newspaper has raised the possibility of Chinese President Xi Jinping also travelling to Singapore when US President Donald Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for an unprecedented summit on June 12.

The Mainichi Shimbun's Washington-based correspondent cited American diplomatic sources as saying there was a chance that Mr Xi may meet Mr Trump and Mr Kim in Singapore.

In the report published on Friday, the Mainichi quoted a senior international negotiator with the National Security Council as telling reporters that "there is a possibility" the leader of a third country may take part.

Mr Trump announced via a tweet on Thursday that his summit with Mr Kim will be held on June 12 in Singapore.

The United States Army recently awarded BAE Systems $97 Million in orders for new night vision goggles and thermal weapon sights for the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle III and Family of Weapon Sight-Individual (ENVG III/FWS-I) program. The all-in-one weapon sight system allows soldiers to acquire and eliminate enemy targets through a wireless connection that transmits the weapon’s crosshairs and surrounding imagery directly into the soldier’s goggles.

During the election, I wrote a little ebook titled “Donald Trump’s War on Islam.” In addition to pointing out Trump’s pandering to Islamophobia, I wrote about his association with a number of neocons, including Frank Gaffney and John Bolton, who is now his national security adviser. “I think John Bolton’s a good man,” Trump told the Hugh Hewitt Show.
“I watched him yesterday, actually, and he was very good in defending me in some of my views, and very, very strong. And I’ve always liked John Bolton. Well, we are thinking about it, Hugh [nominating Bolton as secretary of state]. I will say that. We are thinking about it. I mean, the negative is what I told you. But we are seriously thinking about it.”

Last month, warplanes belonging to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen repeatedly bombed a wedding party in the northern part of the country, killing more than 20 people, including the bride, and injuring dozens of others. In the days that followed, local media published a photograph of a bomb fragment with a serial number tying it to the U.S.-based weapons manufacturer Raytheon.
Now the State Department is taking preliminary steps toward a massive, multibillion-dollar sale of similar weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three congressional aides, a State Department official, and two other people familiar with the sales told The Intercept.

The State Department has yet to announce the exact details and dollar value of the package, but it is said to include tens of thousands of precision-guided munitions from Raytheon, the same company that was involved in producing the weapons used in last month’s strike.

At the beginning of the month (May 2018) the British Ministry of Defence seemingly on accident revealed for the first time that they are unloading horrifyingly inhumane, thermobaric weapons out of drones onto the people of Syria: and it wasn’t even in this recent April 2018 escalation of tension, but last year. They are doing it more often than they’d like to admit.

Somehow the use of thermobaric weapons seems less humane than ripping a person to shreds with shrapnel.

The weapons work by igniting oxygen surrounding the weapon.

A cloud of explosive chemicals is released, and upon impact the fuel-air mixture is detonated, exploding the lungs of animals and human beings in the vicinity, not damaging structures much but filling the lungs of all animals with fuel and burning them in what may be one of the most horrifying ways imaginable to die.

The Pentagon’s newly released 8-page report on the Niger incident had a very clear narrative. From the moment local commanders endorsed the mission to the recovery of the four bodies of slain US soldiers, the report goes out of its way to lionize everyone’s actions, and downplay errors.

This makes sense, because underlying these conclusions is the fact that the Pentagon has no intention of holding anyone to account for the mistakes made. Yet the summary report’s decision to tread very lightly on a lot of potentially embarrassing specifics means that it ultimately raises a lot more questions than it answered.

Fortunately, a lot of those answers exist, as this 8-page version was just a summary of a 180-page full report on the incident. The administration is keeping that carefully secret, however. They say that the report needs to be heavily reviewed, and redacted, before ever being made public.

North Korea will openly dismantle its nuclear test site around May 23-25, state media said. Pyongyang has invited foreign journalists, including those from the US, to cover the event.

The dismantling will involve collapsing all tunnels with explosions and blocking their entrances. All observation facilities, research buildings, and security posts will be removed, KCNA reported.

Notably, journalists from other nations, including China, Russia, South Korea, the UK and the US, will be invited to cover the event.

(Authored by Ty Joplin via Albawaba.com)

Erik Prince is the modern architect of private military firms

His latest venture is in training security personnel in China

But he's been all over the world, outsourcing militaries to cheap labor markets

Al Bawaba has provided a partial map to track Erik Prince's activities over the years.

Erik Prince, the brain behind the infamous private military firm Blackwater, is now in China training security forces.

Prince is partially responsible for modernizing the private army for the post 9/11 world, outsourcing militaries to cheap, specialized labor pools and skirting traditional regulations meant to ensure accountability for armed forces.

His journey from hiring mercenaries to help bolster the U.S. occupation in Iraq to China is long, dizzying and includes stops around the world to train Colombian mercenaries to help make a private army for the U.A.E. and outfitting crop duster planes with missiles to be fired at Armenians.

The chief of inspections at the U.N. nuclear watchdog has resigned suddenly, the agency said on Friday without giving a reason.

The departure of Tero Varjoranta comes at a sensitive time, three days after the United States announced it was quitting world powers’ nuclear accord with Iran, raising questions as to whether Tehran will continue to comply with it.

Against all common sense, moral considerations and international law, U.S. President Donald Trump tonight decided to place the United States outside the international so-called community and isolate itself, not Iran.

He withdrew the United States from what is one of the most important negotiated peace-oriented agreements that have ever been signed: the one that prevents Iran (if it has ever wanted to) from acquiring nuclear weapons: The Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, JCPOA, of July 2015 – all about this agreement and its text here).

Noteworthy is that the nuclear deal is incorporated into international law by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, even though the U.S. already at that point stated – as an exceptionalist state – that it did not consider the deal binding for it.

With the exception of Germany, the deal was negotiated – cynically, of course – by countries which have themselves thousands of nuclear weapons.

This guy on CNN just asked Netanyahu straight up if he has nukes!

There are two types of foreign policy: one based on the principle “might makes right,” and one based on the international rule of law. The United States wants to have it both ways: to hold other countries accountable to international law while exempting itself. And nowhere is this truer than on the matter of nuclear weapons.

America’s approach is doomed to fail. As Jesus declared, “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Rather than perishing, it’s time to hold all countries, including the U.S. and other nuclear powers, accountable to the international rules of nonproliferation.

Trump withdraws the U.S. from Iran nuclear deal.

Israeli security officials believe Iran may be preparing a missile attack in retaliation for the April 9 strike on Syria’s T-4 airbase, in which seven Iranians were killed.

Israeli media reported Sunday, citing defense officials, that Tel Aviv is bracing for possible missile strikes by Iran from sites inside Syria.

According to security personnel, Iran is likely to attempt a retaliatory missile attack against military targets in northern Israel following last month's strike on the T-4 base in Syria.

In Sept. 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel shows an illustration as he describes his concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions during his address to the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters.

Things to Know About Israel's Alleged Top-Secret Nuclear Program

The U.S. imposed restrictions on the use of Javelin anti-tank missile systems in the Donbas, which Washington supplied to Ukraine, as stated by Georgiy Tuka, the deputy minister for the temporarily occupied territories and internally displaced persons of Ukraine, on the Pryamoy channel.

According to him, one of the terms of the contract to supply the missile systems was “not to use these complexes directly on the contact line.”

The death toll following Saudi coalition airstrikes targeting the presidential in the densely populated neighborhood of Al-Tahrir in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, has risen to more than 90 people, including schoolchildren, according to a statement to MintPress by an official from Yemen’s Ministry of Health. Local hospitals received 86 injuries, but rescuers are still struggling to retrieve bodies from the rubble, so the number of victims could rise.
The destruction in Tahrir, the second largest residential and commercial area in Sana`a, was extensive. Two airstrikes hit the building, located near a hotel, a bank and several shops, and not far from the central bank, which was bustling with employees at that time.

The principal of the Gamal Abdel Nasser School, close to the presidential compound, told MintPress that a number of students sustained injuries, adding that the huge blasts threw students into a sudden panic, prompting school authorities to suspend ongoing exams.

Netanyahu repeatedly warned the world about Iran’s alleged nuclear arsenal while making no mention at all of Israel’s own large, secret nuclear arsenal, which is believed to comprise of over 100 warheads, perhaps even several hundred, that can be delivered by aircraft, missiles and submarines. Every Mideast nation can be hit by Israeli nukes as well as Russia, which some experts say is or was on Israel’s target list.

Trump, of course, made no mention of the awkward fact that Israel had stolen much of its nuclear technology and uranium from the United States, sometimes with the connivance of very senior US government officials. France, that paragon of world peace, had the rest.

During an internationally-televised speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of lying about its nuclear program after signing the 2015 deal – his remarks have prompted speculations over Tel Aviv’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Israel is widely suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction, supposedly developed in 1948-1949, with an estimated arsenal of up to 400 warheads. Despite the fact that Mordechai Vanunu, a former worker at the Israeli Dimona nuclear reactor, blew the whistle on Tel Aviv’s nuclear program in 1986, Israel still maintains a policy of “nuclear ambiguity” – never denying or admitting to having nuclear arms.

Israel Lied Too?

The UK is ‘indiscriminately’ using thermobaric missiles as part of its ongoing air war in Syria, a Freedom of Information (FoI) request has revealed.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) admitted, for the first time, using thermobaric weapons during strikes carried out by Royal Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones during missions in January and February, in response to the FoI request by anti-war campaign group Drone Wars UK.

Thermobaric weapons, known colloquially as “vacuum bombs,” differ from conventional munitions - which cause damage by spreading shrapnel - as they create a high-temperature explosion with an extremely powerful blast radius. The pressure created causes severe internal damage to the organs of people caught in the blast radius.

The B-21 Raider - the US Air Force's secretive, next-generation, long-range stealth bomber - will be deployed to three US air force bases for testing once it finally rolls off the production line some time during the middle of the next decade, according to Sputnik.

The bomber, which was once known as the Long Range Strike Bomber (or LRS-B), will be deployed at the Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and the Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.

US Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson explained that, since these bases have hosted older American bombers before, they would be well-suited to host the Raider.

Details about the B-21, including the cost of the program and how much the government has already been spent on R&D are shrouded in mystery. Indeed, the Pentagon has said that it could tip its hand to America's enemies just by revealing how much the bomber cost.

While US “relief funds” are frozen in Syria, the Pentagon continues to seek massive amounts of funding for its military operations in the country. This includes a request for $300 million in weapons to give to “partner forces” in Syria.

This amounts to enough arms for 65,000 fighters. This is expected to center on the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is to say, almost entirely the Kurdish YPG. The US has been arming the YPG for years now as part of its Syria operations.

This is being sought in spite of repeated US assurances to Turkey that their arming of the YPG was temporary. With ISIS virtually wiped out in Syria, the YPG no longer has offensive goals fitting into US plans for Syria, and rather is focused chiefly on fighting a Turkish invasion of northern Syria.

Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein said: “The US Air Force has already conducted 26 engineering, development and guided flight tests.”

He added the programme was “doing extremely well”.

The B61-12 bomb, which has been in development for the past seven years, will eventually be carried by the B-2 Spirit and the future B-21 Long Range Strategic Bomber, known as the Raider.

The 12th model of the B61 bomb, which was first designed in 1963, will feature new technological developments compared to its predecessors.

With just over a week until President Trump’s May 12 ultimatum on Iran’s nuclear deal, there is growing speculation about what will happen. If President Trump does withdraw the US from the deal, however, Iran is being very clear what will happen.

“The consequence would be that Iran would in fact be ready to go back to the previous situation,” said Iranian Ambassador Hamid Baeidinejad, who said that without the US “there is no deal left.” European nations had previously suggested the deal might stay intact with or without the US.

The three European parties to the P5+1, Britain, France, and Germany, have been trying to come up with a sideline deal to placate President Trump and avoid the pullout. Whether this is going to be successful or not is still uncertain.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), refused to assess the statement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tehran’s alleged nuclear developments bypassing the agency’s control.

"In line with standard IAEA practice, the IAEA evaluates all safeguards-relevant information available to it. However, it is not the practice of the IAEA to publicly discuss issues related to any such information," the agency said in a statement on its website.

The US Air Force has conducted more than two dozen engineering, development and guided flight tests of the new B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb, a US Air Force general said May 1.

The service has "already conducted 26 engineering, development and guided flight tests," Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein told Military.com, adding that the program was "doing extremely well." The new version of the B61 gravity bomb is said to be more than three times more accurate than its predecessors, according to the news outlet.

The 12th version of the B61 bomb, originally designed in 1963, will have a new capability that its cousins don't: underground penetration so it can strike fortified command and control centers. Its explosive yield is estimated at 50 kilotons, or roughly four times the power of the bomb the US used to destroy the Japanese city of Nagasaki in August 1945.

“Full spectrum dominance” was the watchword in a 2000 document, “Joint Vision 2020” (updated from a 1996 version), which the authors described as a “conceptual template” for the U.S. military’s evolution over the two decades to come. Its language was even more hubristic than that slogan suggests: “a force that is dominant across the full spectrum of military operations – persuasive in peace, decisive in war, preeminent in any form of conflict… prepared to win across the full range of military operations in any part of the world… [with the ability] to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations.”

Defeat any adversary? Control any situation?

The still-unscheduled Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit offers the opportunity for a denuclearization deal that would avoid a possible nuclear war, but that potential deal remains vulnerable to a hostile corporate media sector and political elites in the United States. At the center of this hostility is national security adviser John Bolton, who’s not just uninterested in selling a denuclearization deal to the public. He’s working actively to undermine it.

Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that he leaked intelligence to a Washington think tank sympathetic to his views in order to generate media questioning about the president’s announced plan to reach an agreement with North Korea’s leader.

According to secret South African documents, Mr Peres, then Israel's defence minister, responded to a request in 1975 from the white minority government for Jericho Missiles by offering to fit them "in three different sizes", The Guardian reported.

The "three sizes" refer to conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons according to Sasha Polakow-Suransky, the American academic who uncovered a series of classified memos detailing South Africa's clandestine nuclear negotiations with Israel.

The claims appear to offer the first documentary corroboration of a nuclear relationship long suspected but never proved.

Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel have an ally in Russia. When it comes to Washington (and Tel Aviv's) penchant for calling foul on the Iranian nuclear deal, the two largest economies in the eurozone can count on Vladimir Putin to stand in their corner.

Putin reiterated Russia's position that the Iranian nuclear deal made by former president Barack Obama is "of paramount importance for ensuring international stability and security" and must be "strictly observed by all parties," the Kommersant business daily reported on Tuesday.

Putin reportedly discussed the Iranian nuclear power deal with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who just hours before had come out with his own intelligence agency's report alleging evidence that the Islamic Republic was indeed enriching uranium for military use and not just for energy use. The report said that Israel initiated the call.

On CNN Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Iran for allegedly working to develop nuclear bombs in secret, but refused to say whether Israel did the same (in violation of US non-proliferation law).

From The Daily Caller:

“A ‘yes-no’ question for you,” [CNN’s Chris Cuomo] said. “You know where I’m going with this. Does Israel have nuclear capabilities and nuclear weapons, yes or no?”

“We’ve always said that we won’t be the first to introduce it, so we haven’t introduced it,” Netanyahu replied.

“That’s not an answer to the question. Do you have them or do you not?” Cuomo asked.

“It’s as good an answer as you’re going to get,” Netanyahu said. “Iran said they don’t have this nuclear weapons program and Iran calls daily for the annihilation of my country. We don’t do that.”
Cuomo admitted Iran has a reputation for being dishonest but continued to press the prime minister about his country’s nuclear program.

The Israeli’s are raving – and the US news media is buying – that Iran has some paperwork related to a nuclear weapons program.

Meanwhile Israel, according to Colin Powell, has TWO HUNDRED nuclear weapons pointed at Tehran.

Amazingly, in spite of its nuclear arsenal, one of the biggest in the world, Israel has not signed the non-proliferation treaty…which makes it ILLEGAL for the US government to continue to give it aid.

Meanwhile, Iran has no nuclear weapons and is under non-stop verbal threat from Israeli war mongers and their surrogates in the United States.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is the wrong person to accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons as his country has repeatedly refused to join any non-proliferation treaties which equates it to North Korea, Middle East experts told RT.

Israel and its PM “are in no position to accuse Iran of anything, they’re not part of the nuclear deal, they’re not even a member [of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty],” said Hamed Mousavi, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tehran.

The analyst then commented on Netanyahu’s well-rehearsed Monday show, in which he claimed Israel has incriminating evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear program in violation of the milestone 2015 deal. He noted the only entity in the world authorized to declare Iranian compliance or non-compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal is the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The reported “chemical attack” at Douma, Russia has claimed, was fake news. One U.S. news agency has now confirmed from the location of the reported attack that April 7, 2018 was an uneventful day in this Syrian city and not one single person in Douma corroborated the story of a chemical attack taking place.
It is the latest in a long series of false-flag reports generated about Syria by the United States and forces that oppose the government of President Bashar al Assad. This trickery dates back to at least 2006, when a WikiLeaks cable exposed U.S. political treachery at its very worst; calculated meddling designed to harm the government and population of Syria.

In this article we will review false revelations and calculated moves undertaken by politicians to undermine Syria’s government, which is designed to provide protection to religious minorities and freedom for people of all faiths, who lived securely in Syria until civil war broke out in 2011.

It is up to Europe whether or not the Earth dies in nuclear Armageddon.

European governments do not realize their potential to save the world from Washington’s aggression, because the western Europeans are accustomed to being Washington’s vassal states since the end of World War 2, and the eastern and central Europeans have accepted Washington’s vassalage since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Vassalage pays well if all the costs are not counted.

When U.S. troops were ambushed in Niger last October, the widespread reaction was surprise: The U.S. has military forces in Niger? What are they doing there?

Pentagon Cites Multiple Missteps That Led To Ambush Of U.S. Troops In Niger
Yet in many ways, the Niger operation typifies U.S. military missions underway in roughly 20 African countries, mostly in the northern half of the continent. The missions tend to be small, they are carried out largely below the radar, and most are focused on a specific aim: rolling back Islamist extremism.

As concerns about nuclear war with North Korea wane, Taiwan is reminding the world that its own relations with Beijing have been progressively deteriorating; to do that the small island nation will simulate a response to an "invading force", along with using civilian operated drones, in war games next week amid its increasing tensions with China the defense ministry said Tuesday according to Reuters.

While the annual Han Kuang drills, set to begin on April 30 with a computer-aided command post exercise, make no mention of China, only “offensive forces invading Taiwan” and will include a live-fire field training exercise and “enemy elimination on beaches”, it is clear that the "hypothetical" aggressor is China.

Britain has approved the sale of arms to Israel worth $445m since the 2014 Gaza war, including components for drones, combat aircraft and helicopters along with spare parts for sniper rifles, according to figures seen by Middle East Eye.

The government data will raise fresh concerns that British-made weapons are being used by the Israeli military in the Occupied Territories, amid fears that components in sniper rifles used to kill scores of Palestinian civilians in recent weeks could have been made in the UK.

Will the Russian president and foreign minister continue to speak of “our Western partners” and seek common ground with proven lawless war criminals? What would that common ground be?

How can other governments accept the US, UK, and French governments that intentionally lied about a Russian chemical attack on the Skripals and about a Syrian chemical attack on Douma, risking a third world war, and then themselves attacking Syria on the basis of a transparent lie unsupported by any evidence? How exactly do you conduct diplomatic relations with war criminals?

You don’t. You put them on trial. Why aren’t Trump, May, and Macron on trial?

The reason is that the world has been conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs, to expect and accept the West’s war crimes as ordinary common features of life. The West’s crimes are protected by precedents established by decades of failing to hold the West accountable. The West has squatters rights in committing unaccountable war crimes.

Mattis and Dunford have open hearings at the Armed Services Committees, but will talk over their $686.1 billion request with House appropriators in private.

For the first time in at least eight years, House appropriators will grill the Pentagon’s top civilian and uniformed leader about their budget request behind closed doors, not in an open hearing.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford will sit before the defense subcommittee on Wednesday to talk over the military’s $686.1 billion request for 2019. It’s not the largest defense budget ever, but the $80 billion bump over legislated spending caps and the bipartisan budget deal that delivered that figure both represent a massive victory for Pentagon leaders and Congressional defense hawks.

Where those dollars will go, however, will be discussed in a session closed to the public.

If you thought America’s overseas wars had reached their limit - think again.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is building a new $110 million drone base in Niger, adding to its existing footprint of more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

On Monday, the AP detailed in a report that the U.S. Air Force is constructing a base for weaponized drones, the newest front in America’s expanding foreign wars “against the growing extremist threat in Africa’s vast Sahel region.”

North Korea’s mountain nuclear test site has collapsed, putting China and other nearby nations at unprecedented risk of radioactive exposure, two separate groups of Chinese scientists studying the issue have confirmed.

The collapse after five nuclear blasts may be why North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared last Friday that he would freeze the hermit state’s nuclear and missile tests and shut down the site, one researcher said.

The last five of Pyongyang’s six nuclear tests have all been carried out under Mount Mantap at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea’s northwest.

A research team led by Wen Lianxing, a geologist with the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, concluded the collapse occurred following the detonation last autumn of North Korea’s most powerful thermal nuclear warhead in a tunnel about 700 metres (2,296 feet) below the mountain’s peak.

The test turned the mountain into fragile fragments, the researchers found.

Before President Trump trashes the Iran nuclear deal, he might consider: If he could negotiate an identical deal with Kim Jong Un, it would astonish the world and win him the Nobel Peace Prize.

For Iran has no nuclear bomb or ICBM and has never tested either. It has never enriched uranium to bomb grade. It has shipped 98 percent of its uranium out of the country. It has cameras inside and inspectors crawling all over its nuclear facilities.

And North Korea? It has atom bombs and has tested an H-bomb. It has intermediate range-ballistic missiles that can hit Guam and an ICBM that, fully operational, could hit the West Coast. It has shorter-range missiles that could put nukes on South Korea and Japan.

Hard to believe Kim Jong Un will surrender these weapons, his ticket of admission to the table of great powers.

Artificial intelligence could destabilize the delicate balance of nuclear deterrence, inching the world closer to catastrophe, according to a working group of experts convened by RAND. New smarter, faster intelligence analysis from AI agents, combined with more sensor and open-source data, could convince countries that their nuclear capability is increasingly vulnerable. That may cause them to take more drastic steps to keep up with the U.S. Another worrying scenario: commanders could make decisions to launch strikes based on advice from AI assistants that have been fed wrong information.

Bombings at voter registration centres in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in Baghlan province have killed at least 63 people and wounded more than a hundred others, health officials said.

At least 57 people were killed in Kabul when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the doorway of an ID distribution centre in the city on Sunday, officials said.

Six more people were killed later in the day in Baghlan's Pul-e-Khumri city, when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb near another voting centre. All six were from the same family.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group said it carried out the Kabul attack, but no group has claimed responsibility for the Baghlan blast yet.

The Kabul bombing occured in the Dasht-e-Barchi area, where many of the country's Shia Hazara minority reside.

Among the victims were many women and children, witnesses said.

Unit 731, the notorious germ warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that conducted horrific lethal experiments on Chinese civilians and Allied prisoners of war before and during World War II, is back in the news again after the Japanese government released the names of more than 3,000 of its former members. The unit is little known in either Japan or the United States; what’s even less known is that rather than punish its members, US authorities during the postwar occupation of Japan paid them millions of dollars to share knowledge gained from, among other crimes, dissecting live POWs and killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by aerial spraying of bubonic plague and other deadly diseases.

The Russian army found in the Syrian Duma another evidence that Nusra fronts produce chemical weapons, the expert on Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Unit Colonel Alexander Rodionov told journalists on Friday

- A large quantity of substance hexamine was found during search of a chemical laboratory of terrorists, which is another proof that the terrorists produced chemical weapons - said Rodionov.

He added that this substance is used for the production of explosives, but also for the production of war poisonous substances such as sarin.

Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of Russia announced that the withdrawal of fighters from the Duma was fully completed on April 13. The city has left 21,000 fighters and members of their families. The Duma went under the control of the Syrian government.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will absolutely not allow armed confrontation between Russia and the US, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

“Speaking about risks of a military confrontation, I am 100 percent sure that [both the US and Russian] militaries won’t allow this, and of course neither will President [Vladimir] Putin or President [Donald] Trump,” Lavrov said.

“After all they are leaders, elected by their people and are responsible for their peace,” the Russian foreign minister added.

Three hundred parliamentarians from Britain, France and Germany have called on the US Congress not to let President Trump abandon the Iran deal, warning it would undermine the very concept of diplomacy and any future negotiations.
The letter, written by British MP Richard Bacon and his German and French counterparts, Omid Nouripour and Delphine O, was published in the Guardian on Thursday. In it, they argue that the deal has been the only effective control of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and has helped prevent an arms race and a potentially devastating conflict in the Middle East.

“We were able to impose unprecedented scrutiny on the Iranian nuclear programme, dismantle most of their nuclear enrichment facilities, and drastically reduce the danger of a nuclear arms race,” they wrote.

Syrian government troops have found chlorine bombs of western production, said spokeswoman for Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova.

“In the liberated territories of Eastern Ghouta, Syrian government troops have found containers with chlorine – the most terrible type of chemical weapons – the containers are from Germany, as well as smoke flasks from – attention! – Salisbury,” she said at a briefing in Moscow. The Porton Down laboratory is located not far from the city of Salisbury in Great Britain, whereby an alleged poisoning of the Skripals took place last month.