Politics

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump appears to agree with our perspective on Jill Stein's money-raising effort, lashing out this afternoon in an official statement calling her request for a recount of votes in Wisconsin a "scam" by the Green Party.

Until now, as AP reports, Trump had been ignoring Green Party nominee Jill Stein's fight to revisit vote totals in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin officials announced late Friday they are moving forward with the first presidential recount in state history.

As tensions once again grow between Iran and the US, with both countries unsure if Donald Trump will extend Barack Obama's landmark "nuclear deal" which in January 2016 lifted Iran's sanctions (imposed previously by the same Obama regime) and allowed Iran to export three times as much crude oil as the country did one year ago, Iran has fallen back to the same diplomacy that marked the darker periods of diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.

The president-elect’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. has reportedly met with a leading secular figure in the Syrian opposition to discuss ending Syria’s civil war. Russia expects to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria with the help of the new US administration. Trump Jr. met with Randa Kassis, a Syrian politician who strongly supports Russian intervention, at a high profile meeting in Paris last month and discussed a “way to cooperate with Russia” to stop the war in Syria, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Iranian military officials are considering setting up naval bases overseas in Yemen and Syria, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reports. Iran’s armed forces chief, Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri says, “Maybe at some point we will need bases on the shores of Yemen and Syria.” He told a gathering of navy commanders that Iranian naval presence in the Indian Ocean is 10 times more important as deterrence than nuclear power. Daily Mail reports: He said “Having naval bases in remote distances is not less than nuclear power. It is ten times more important and creates deterrence.” Gen.

Fidel Castro, RIP

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara led a people’s rebellion against Fulgencio Batista, who had established himslf as a dictator in a military coup in 1952. In 1959 the Batista regime collapsed.