Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions, the most since Pentagon began keeping track in 2006
The US dropped more bombs on Afghanistan in 2019 than any other year since the Pentagon began keeping a tally in 2006, reflecting an apparent effort to force concessions from the Taliban at the negotiating table.
According to new figures released by US central command, US warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions on Afghanistan, a nearly eightfold increase from 2015.
President’s vision emphasises Israel’s security rather than Palestinian self-determination
President Donald Trump has unveiled his much-touted Middle East peace plan, tweeting a map showing his vision for an even further depleted Palestinian state than that envisioned by the Oslo peace agreement in 1993.
The crude “concept” map in the plan shows the occupied Jordan valley under Israeli control – although Trump suggests that could be eased in the future – and a West Bank split north and south around Jerusalem, heavily eaten into by Israeli settlements which the plan proposes to recognise under Israeli sovereignty.
The unusually detailed 80-page proposal fulfils a wishlist of Israeli demands while abandoning longstanding tenets of US diplomacy
Donald Trump pronounced his newly unveiled peace plan “overly good” to the Palestinians but it was the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at his side, grinning broadly.
Donald Trump has unveiled his vision for Middle East peace in a White House launch that gifted Israel a wishlist of its long-held demands while promising Palestinians a potential “state”, but with severe restrictions.
Standing next to the smiling Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced details of the 181-page plan to cheers and applause. Palestinian leaders were absent from the launch, having pre-emptively rejected his proposal, citing flagrant bias.
The US president launches his plan for peace in the Middle East, saying the 80-page proposal offers a 'realistic two-state solution' that has already been agreed to by Israel as the basis for negotiations. Despite the absence of a Palestinian presence at the launch, Trump says the US will support Palestine if the president, Mahmoud Abbas, 'chooses the path to peace'
‘Get rid of her. Get her out tomorrow,’ president seems to say of ambassador to Ukraine
Donald Trump demanded the dismissal of Marie Yovanovitch, then US ambassador to Ukraine and now a key figure in the president’s impeachment trial, according to a video recording released to the media.
The footage was reportedly taken during an April 2018 donor dinner at a hotel and released to news media by an attorney for Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Secretary of state screamed obscenities and demanded host Mary Louise Kelly find Ukraine on a map, journalist says
Mike Pompeo is said to have unleashed a foul-mouth tirade at a well known US radio host after she asked him questions about Ukraine in an interview.
Mary Louise Kelly, a respected broadcaster on National Public Radio (NPR), sat down for a pre-arranged interview with the secretary of state on Friday, whose wrath was apparently triggered by a string of questions about Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Kelly asked Pompeo whether he owed Yovanovitch an apology for not defending her in the face of a smear campaign orchestrated by Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his associates.
‘Ultimate deal’ reported to be extremely favourable to Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader to visit next week
Donald Trump has invited Israel’s prime minister and leader of the opposition to Washington for talks on the “prospects of peace”, signalling that the White House was preparing to share details of its long-awaited “ultimate deal” for Israelis and Palestinians.
Mike Pence, the US vice-president who is visiting Jerusalem for a Holocaust remembrance forum, said after a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu that he had asked the leader to fly to Washington next week.
“President Trump asked me to extend an invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu to come to the White House next week to discuss regional issues as well as the prospect of peace here in the Holy Land,” he said. Opposition leader Benny Gantz would also visit, he added, although it was not clear if at the same time.
No Palestinian representatives appeared to have been invited.
Remark came as US revealed 11 of its troops had been injured in 8 January missile attacks
Iran’s supreme leader has delivered a rare sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran in which he described Donald Trump as a “clown” who pretended to support the Iranian people but would push a poisonous dagger into their backs.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei struck a defiant tone following weeks of domestic and international turbulence, including the US killing of a top general, missile attacks on US military bases in Iraq and the accidental downing of an airliner that killed 176 people.
President signs first phase of new agreement with China, hours after Democrats named team that will prosecute him in Senate
Donald Trump has signed the first phase of a new trade agreement with China after two years of tension between the two superpowers that have rattled economies around the world.
Hassan Rouhani’s threat to western allies comes amid fears of reimposition of sanctions
Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani has warned that European soldiers in the Middle East could be in danger after the UK, France and Germany triggered a dispute mechanism in the nuclear agreement that could lead to the reimposition of international sanctions on the country.
Rouhani’s remarks on Wednesday were the first direct threat he has made against European powers as tensions have grown between Tehran and Washington since Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the nuclear deal more than 18 months ago.
A plane crash that killed 57 Canadians amid Trump-stoked tension with Iran is the latest sign that Canada cannot rely on its US ally
When a Canadian business magnate sent off a flurry of tweets blaming Donald Trump for provoking the crisis which eventually led to the accidental shooting-down of a Ukrainian passenger jet, the posts quickly went viral.
Michael McCain, the billionaire CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, used the company’s branded Twitter account to describe the US president as a “narcissist” and described the 176 passengers and crew as “collateral damage” from Trump’s “irresponsible, dangerous, ill-conceived behaviour”.
Canadian PM says victims would still be alive if not for rising tensions party triggered by US
Victims of an Iran-downed jetliner would still be alive if not for a recent escalation of tensions partly triggered by the United States, Justin Trudeau has said.
“I think if there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” the Canadian prime minister said in an interview with Global television.
It is not clear Trump is ready to adapt any US policies based on latest developments in Tehran
Donald Trump hailed footage of Tehran students refusing to walk over a US flag as “big progress”, but there is little sign his administration is prepared to offer more than verbal encouragement to what the US president called “wonderful Iranian protesters”.
Amid the furious popular backlash to the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, students at Shahid Beheshti University took pains to walk around the big US and Israeli flags painted on a concrete campus thoroughfare, a gesture of defiance to all-pervasive state propaganda.
This was an unacceptable breach of the Vienna convention and it needs to be investigated. We are seeking full assurances from the Iranian government that this will never happen again. The FCO has summoned the Iranian ambassador today to convey our strong objections.
In a series of viral tweets, the head of a Canadian packaged meat company has lashed out at Donald Trump, suggesting the US president bears culpability for Iranian missiles that brought down Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 last week. Most of the 167 passengers on board were bound for Canada.
“U.S. government leaders unconstrained by checks/balances, concocted an ill-conceived plan to divert focus from political woes. The world knows Iran is a dangerous state, but the world found a path to contain it; not perfect but by most accounts it was the right direction,” wrote Michael McCain, the chief executive of Maple Leaf Foods, calling Trump a “narcissist”who has destabilised the Middle East.
I’m Michael McCain, CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, and these are personal reflections. I am very angry, and time isn’t making me less angry. A MLF colleague of mine lost his wife and family this week to a needless, irresponsible series of events in Iran...
Iranian general’s assassination has led to an eerie calm rather than the predicted turmoil
Qassem Suleimani’s wrecked car was still smouldering when the predicted consequences of his death started to rebound across the Middle East. There would be chaos, outrage, instability – maybe even war. Among those who opposed the killing and those who cheered it on, there was more or less consensus: things would never be the same again.
One week on, that maxim still holds in a region still grappling with it’s impact. Yet the aftermath of the most significant assassination of modern times has not created the turmoil that many had predicted. If anything, the heartland areas of the Iranian general’s extraordinary sphere of influence are, thus far, eerily calm. His home front, on the other hand, remains unsettled and reeling – not so much as a result of his death, but because of those of 176 passengers onboard a Ukrainian airliner shot from the sky in the panicked days that followed.
Trainees not involved in attack but reportedly accused of having extremist links or possessing child abuse images
The US will expel at least a dozen Saudi military students accused of extremist links and possessing child sexual abuse images, after an investigation into a shooting rampage by a Saudi officer in Florida, according to media reports.
In December Mohammed Alshamrani, who was in the US as part of a Saudi military training program, opened fire in a classroom at the Pensacola naval air station, killing three sailors and wounding eight other people before being shot dead by police.
Ben Wallace says US withdrawal from international leadership under Donald Trump ‘keeps me awake at night’
Britain must be prepared to fight future wars without the US as its principal ally, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said.
Wallace said the increasing withdrawal of America from international leadership under Donald Trump meant Britain needed to rethink the assumptions underpinning its defence planning for the past decade.
Roadside bomb explosion seems certain to stall Taliban talks
Two US service members wounded, military says
Two US service members were killed and two injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Saturday.
In keeping with defense department rules, the military did not identify the service members.
The strike on Suleimani represented a significant victory for Pompeo, his outsize influence on Trump and his Iran fixation
When the US embassy in Baghdad was mobbed on the last day of 2019, a rattled Donald Trump turned to his most hawkish aide, Mike Pompeo, and finally agreed to the extreme measure the secretary of state had long advocated: the assassination of Qassem Suleimani.
The drone strike on the Iranian general a week ago may well turn out to be one of the most consequential decisions of the Trump presidency. It represented a significant victory for Pompeo, reflecting his ascendancy in foreign policy and national security spheres.