Russia

Authored by Pepe Escobar via Asia Times,

While the US-backed 'Hunger Games' in South Korea plow on, a 'new strategy' for Afghanistan is really all about business. But China is already there...

There are more parallels between an unfinished 1950s war in Northeast Asia and an ongoing 16-year-old war in the crossroads between Central and South Asia than meet the eye.

Let’s start with North Korea.

Once again the US/South Korea Hunger Games plow on. It didn’t have to be this way.

For Netanyahu and other Israeli officials the chief concern was never the black clad death cult which filmed itself beheading Americans and burning people alive.  "Let the Sunni evil prevail," they say.

Authored by James Durso via TheHill.com,

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the one of the world’s richest men, and he may become the first trillionaire. But some think Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged $200 billion fortune surpasses Bezos’ paltry $90 billion. Who is really #1?

It depends how you count.

First, the numbers are dodgy.

Eight months after the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was shot dead in broad daylight, on Wednesday yet another Russian ambassador has died. According to Russian news agency RIA Novosti, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Sudan, Mirgayas M. Shirinskiy, was found dead in his home in Khartoum Wednesday.

Al Arabiya adds that the ambassador was found drowned in the swimming pool at his home.

The latest escalation in the deteriorating diplomatic relations between the US and Russia was unveiled this morning, when the US embassy in Russia announced it was scaling back its visa services in Russia after Moscow ordered it to sharply cut its diplomatic staff in retaliation over new U.S. sanctions, and would suspend all non-immigrant visa operations in Russia starting August 23, although visa operations will be resumed on September 1, but only in the main embassy building in Moscow.

US embassy in Moscow