The United States and Russia have announced that a planned cessation of hostilities in Syria will come into effect at midnight on 27 February, according to an official joint statement. Their statement said the truce did not include ISIS and the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. The announcement follows multiple explosions on Sunday in the Syrian cities of Damascus and Homs which claimed the lives of more than 1oo people.
President Obama is fully aware of the fragile coalition that exists between the U.S. and Russia which has enabled the Syrian regime to gain the upper hand. But he is also aware of the threat from Saudi Arabia and Turkey of wanting to intervene militarily on the ground in Syria, and takes the threat of invasion from NATO ally Turkey seriously. The Syrian war is reaching a climax and the battle lines are changing.
Submitted by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,
During a sombre visit to Germany last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi urged the international community to help boost his country's crisis economy in the face of plummeting crude oil prices, underscoring a desperate situation in which Iraq has lost 85 percent of its oil revenues.
Iraqi oil revenues have fallen to just 15 percent of what they used to be, the embattled prime minister said, despite a boost in production ordered last year.
Israel and the U.S. have begun a large-scale military exercise as part of their biennial ballistic missile defence drills – Juniper Cobra. The exercise is designed to prepare both militaries for an incoming missile attack. Timesofisrael.com reports: Over “1,700 U.S. Service members, civilians and contractors” will take part in the multi-day drill, the eighth such exercise since the Juniper Cobra program began in 2001. “This exercise is our nation’s premier exercise in the region, and EUCOM’s highest priority exercise for 2016,” said Maj.-Gen.
by Ron Paul
The use of the US military overseas seems to have become so commonplace that the Obama Administration can bomb a country with no Congressional input and very little media interest at all. Such was the case on Friday, when the US military killed some 49 people in a bombing run near Tripoli, Libya.