War

Saudi Arabia has admitted using banned cluster bombs during its airstrikes against Yemen. The Saudi’s have finally admitted that they used British-manufactured cluster bombs against Houthi rebels in Yemen, increasing pressure on the UK government which has repeatedly refused to curb arms sales to Riyadh. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have on several occasions reported the use of illegal cluster bombs by the kingdom in Yemen.

In order to identify the likely motives of the 22 years old Turkish police officer who assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, we must keep in mind the backdrop that the Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers are en route to Russia to find a solution to the five years old Syrian conflict for the first time without the participation of the US.

A truck plowed into a crowd at a busy Christmas market in western Berlin leaving at least nine dead according to Berlin police, and over 50 people injured.

Local media, citing police at the scene, said first indications pointed to an attack on the market, situated near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue and at the foot of the ruined Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church that was kept as a ruin after World War Two. A police spokesperson told German media that they are treating the truck incident in Berlin as a terrorist attack.

Barack Obama, the president who promised change, actually provided more of the same. As the 44th President of the United States prepares to exist stage left, he can congratulate himself on becoming the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to bomb seven different countries back to the Stone Age. The president who preached hope also kept the military-industrial complex in fine fettle, selling a record $115 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia, the world’s most repressive regime, and destabilized entire regions, creating vacuums for terrorists to thrive.

Syrian authorities have urged the international community to intervene after US-backed rebels were caught illegally using mustard gas on civilians. According to the government in Syria, a batch of documents proving that chemical weapons were used against Syrian citizens was handed over to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on December 12. Authorities also delivered samples from the shell containing mustard gas to The Hague. RT.com reports: “We have provided all the documents to the mission, they were vetted and accepted.