War

Can Russia Survive Washington’s Attack?

Paul Craig Roberts

The US House of Representatives has passed a $610 billion military budget to fund Pentagon programs and US-led military conflicts. The bill, approved in a 277-147 bipartisan vote on Wednesday, sets the Pentagon’s base budget at $551 billion while giving it another $59 billion for overseas contingency operations, in other words, war funding. Press TV reports: On Monday, the White House threatened to veto the bill over the Republican attempts to shift $18 billion from the war fund to cover expenses in the base military budget.

The French parliament has extended the state of emergency for another two months to the end of July in order to cover the Euro 2016 football tournament and the Tour de France cycling race. It is the third time the state of emergency has been extended since the November 13 attacks on Paris. Press TV reports: Lawmakers in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, voted to endorse the extension by 46 votes to 20 on Thursday, a week after it was approved by a large majority in the upper house Senate.

China has called on the United States to stop its close reconnaissance activities after the Pentagon reported that two Chinese fighter jets intercepted a US military spy aircraft over the South China Sea. “Two tactical [J-11s] aircraft from the People’s Republic of China” intercepted the Navy EP-3 Orion, a US maritime reconnaissance aircraft, which was on a “routine patrol” in international airspace, Defense Department spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Michelle Baldanza told NBC News. Baldanza said: “The Chinese jets flew by the US aircraft at a distance of approximately 50 feet (15 meters).

A female Turkish journalist has lost custody of her children after she was convicted for uploading a video related to the 2014 controversy over Turkey’s intelligence services allegedly transferring weapons to Syrian rebels. Arzu Yildiz was sentenced to 20 months in jail and lost her parental rights after exposing a video related to a weapons-smuggling scandal denied by the Turkish government. Her lawyer said it was “an act of revenge” by the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.