War

One of the alliance’s most senior retired generals has warned that Nato risks a nuclear war with Russia within a year if it does not increase its defence capabilities in the Baltic states. Banging the war-drum, General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as Nato’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe between 2011 and 2014, said that an attack on Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia, which are all Nato members, was a serious possibility and that the West should act now to avert “potential catastrophe”.

As reported over the weekend, in what may well be one of Maduro's last desperation steps, the Venezuela president announced the would implement a state of emergency, and also threatened to seize closed factories as well as arrest their owners. 

During an impassioned rally, the embattled Venezuela ruler boomed: "Comrades, I am ready to hand over to communal power the factories that some conservative big wigs in this country have stopped. An idled factory is a factory handed over to the people. We are going to do it, fuck it!"

After a month-long scare campaign waged by Saudi Arabia, and in no small part the Obama administration, which went so far as to threaten it would dump its US Treasurys (which the NYT previously had quantified as $750 billion however which the Treasury just yesterday disclosed for the first time in 41 years as only $117 billion suggesting the Saudis would likely also have to sell US stocks and any other US-denominated assets), if the US were to pass a bill that would hold it legally liable for the Sept 11 attacks, it will be up to Obama to veto the bill because moments ago the Senate unanimo

The US Senate has approved legislation that would allow victims of the 9/11 terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, despite vocal opposition from the White House. On Tuesday the Senate unanimously adopted a proposed bill allowing Americans to sue nation-states for terrorist attacks on US soil, defying opposition from the White House and allies such as Saudi Arabia. Dubbed “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act,” the bill sailed through the upper chamber of Congress without opposition is now heading to the House of Representatives, which  lawmakers have their own version of the proposal.

At least 72 people were killed and more than 140 injured in Baghdad when three bombs went off Tuesday, according to police and medical sources. The explosions hit Shia-dominated neighbourhoods in the north and south of the Iraqi capital as well as the Sadr City district. RT reports: The three blasts, which appeared not to be connected, struck different areas of Baghdad, and extend a deadly spate of attacks that the Iraqi capital has had to endure this year. The worst explosion hit a district in the north of Baghdad, killing 38 people and injuring at least 70 others.