Portman among 47 GOP senators to sign letter to Iran WASHINGTON — In a move Democrats denounced as trying to sabotage the Obama administration’s foreign policy, Sen. Rob Portman and 46 other Senate Republicans yesterday warned Iran’s leadership that any agreement to limit Tehran’s apparent efforts to build a nuclear bomb would need Senate approval to stay in effect beyond 2016. More
Philippines mulls pullout of Syria peacekeepers The Philippine foreign secretary says he is recommending to President Benigno Aquino III to pull out all Filipino U.N. peacekeepers from the Golan Heights following the abduction of four by Syrian rebels. More
Iran president still a force even as his era ends When many struggling families in this eastern Iranian city take stock of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's legacy, it's not about the oratory full of bluster and menace or his tussles with Iran's ruling clerics that are known to much of the world. More
Kerry: Russia sells missile defense to Syria Secretary of State John Kerry says the transfer of advanced missile defense systems from Russia to Syria would be a "destabilizing" factor for Israel's security. More
Iran Claims Successful Space Launch Amid Western Nuclear Fears The launch took place at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Semnan province, the hub of Iran's civilian space program. According to Iranian state media, the Simorgh rocket delivered an "orbital ... 12/5/2024 - 10:21 pm | View Link
Ukraine on Wednesday halted Russian gas supplies to European customers through its pipeline network after a prewar transit deal expired at the end of 2024 and almost three years into Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.
Even as Russian troops and tanks moved into Ukraine in February 2022, Russian natural gas kept flowing through the country’s pipeline network — set up when Ukraine and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union — to Europe, under a five-year agreement.
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Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom earned money from the gas and Ukraine collected transit fees.
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, confirmed Kyiv had stopped the transit “in the interest of national security.”
“This is a historic event.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircrafts operated by the country’s airlines, as they struggle to determine what caused a plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier.
Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades, triggered an outpouring of national sympathy.
For President Jimmy Carter, morality was a personal obligation that became a national calling. A deeply religious man, he taught Sunday school for most of his adult life until the point in 2020 when he physically couldn’t anymore, and he projected that same moral leadership from his entry into politics through his ascendance to the presidency.
Moo Deng might seem to most people like just an adorable viral baby hippo, but to the government of Thailand, where she’s from, she’s a cultural ambassador and shining example of the country’s push to boost what it calls its “soft power.”
The term soft power was coined at the height of the Cold War by American political scientist Joseph Nye, who used it to describe “when one country gets other countries to want what it wants” without the use of force, in contrast to the hard power “of ordering others to do what it wants.”
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But in the last year and a half, since the Pheu Thai party came to power in August 2023, Thailand has sought to redefine soft power instead as getting others to want what it has—with a particular emphasis on highlighting the country’s cultural prominence to attract tourists and foreign investment.
Moo Deng isn’t alone.
SEOUL, South Korea — A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy. Most of the 181 people on board died in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.
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The Jeju Air passenger plane crashed while landing in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul.
More illnesses and deaths reported in Democratic Republic of Congo outbreak involving malaria CNNMystery Disease In Congo Caused By Acute Respiratory Infections, Says WHO ForbesDRC: a mysterious epidemic puts Kwango on high alert SenenewsInfections, malaria, malnutrition behind DR Congo deaths: WHO Medical Xpress