The turbulent relationship between the Trump administration and China might be about to take another surprising turn, as Reuters quotes diplomats who say a deal for stronger sanctions against North Korea may have been quietly struck.
Speaking from the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin conceded that the North Korean nuclear situation is “very serious,” but added: “One must not lose his cool, but rather act in a pragmatic and delicate manner.”
Fox News reported on Monday that North Korea has been working on an international patent application for producing sodium cyanide, which can be used in nerve gas, with the help of a U.N. agency.
Speaking at a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Friday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis declared Syria has unquestionably retained chemical weapons stockpiles in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and warned dictator Bashar Assad not to use them again.
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said Monday that the United States will not ignore alleged reports coming from the mostly Muslim Russian Republic of Chechnya that homosexual men were being rounded up, detained, and in some cases tortured or even killed.
A massive chemical weapons attack hit an area of the northern Idlib province in Syria on Tuesday, followed by a bombing run on hospitals where victims were undergoing treatment.
Egyptian and Palestinian leaders are holding talks in Cairo in what Egyptian media reports are branding a “reconciliation” meeting.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said on Wednesday that the United States is “considering every option that’s on the table” in response to North Korea’s provocative launch of ballistic missiles at Japan on Monday.
The United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) issued a trilateral statement on North Korea on Monday, denouncing Pyongyang’s “flagrant disregard for multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions prohibiting its ballistic missile and nuclear programs” and calling for “strong international pressure on the regime.”
Dr. Sebastian Gorka, national security editor for Breitbart News and author of the best-selling book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, appeared on Fox News on Thursday evening to discuss his contention that the Obama administration was “the most anti-Israel U.S. administration since Israel was created.”
A grim milestone in the siege of Aleppo is reported by Sky News, which writes that “bodies are being left to rot on the streets or buried in backyards” because “there is no room left in the cemeteries.”
North Korea faces a new round of U.N. sanctions that will reduce its export revenues by an estimated 25 percent, in response to its illegal nuclear test in September.
The Middle East has few bright spots these days, but one is the budding rapprochement between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, thanks to shared threats from Iran and Islamic State.
Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres has been unanimously chosen as the next Secretary-General of the United Nations in a Security Council straw poll.
During a UN Security Council crisis meeting on Sunday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared himself “appalled” by the Syrian government’s massive attack on Aleppo, saying it “brings the violence to new levels of barbarity.”
John Kerry had heard enough. After last week’s bombing of a U.N. aid convoy in Syria dealt a death blow to a ceasefire deal in which he had invested all his diplomatic capital with Russia, the U.S. Secretary of State tossed aside a page of notes and looked at Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov across the horseshoe-shaped table in the U.N. Security Council.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday that North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat had reached a new “dimension,” menacing the peace of the entire region and meriting the strongest response from the Security Council.
For the second day in a row, Russian warplanes launched from an airbase in Iran to attack rebel targets in Syria. The U.S. government called these operations “unfortunate,” and suggested they might be a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held out the prospect on Monday of reviving a 2002 Arab peace initiative that offers Israel diplomatic recognition from Arab countries in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye has asked Iran to help convince North Korea to cooperate with U.N. Security Council resolutions for nuclear disarmament.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors engaged in a rare shouting match in the U.N. Security Council on Monday, reflecting Israel’s growing consternation at the upsurge in Palestinian attacks against civilians and Palestinian frustration at the failure
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama urged global leaders Friday not to be complacent in the face of an evolving threat from terrorists who he said are eager to unleash a devastating nuclear attack. “It would change our world,” he declared.
Iran will likely escape new United Nations sanctions, though the U.N. Security Council could issue a public reprimand for recent launches of what Western officials described as ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, diplomats said. Council diplomats said
Hard on the heels of its provocative missile tests yesterday, a U.S. official told CNN Iran could launch an even more advanced 3-stage missile “at any minute.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) test-fired two ballistic missiles on Wednesday morning that it said were designed to be able to hit Israel, defying a threat of new sanctions from the United States. The launches followed the test-firing of
Iran conducted another round of illegal ballistic missile tests on Tuesday, and they may prove to be an even more egregious violation of sanctions than the launch in October. Iran openly defied the United Nations and United States — which an Iranian general described as “our main enemy” — and threatened to walk away from President Obama’s nuclear deal.
The latest round of saber-rattling from North Korea featured dictator Kim Jong Un ordering his country’s nuclear weapons to be readied for a “pre-emptive attack.”
The U.N. Security Council has unanimously voted to impose tougher sanctions against North Korea for refusing to abandon its nuclear warhead and ballistic missile programs.
On Thursday, President Obama signed off on tougher sanctions against North Korea, as punishment for the Communist regime’s recent nuclear detonation, missile test disguised as a satellite launch, and involvement in cyber-espionage.
South Korea stepped up its criticism of North Korea’s nuclear plans this week, with U.N. Ambassador Oh Joon calling for “extraordinary” measures against the North’s “nuclear blackmail.” South Korean President Park Geun-hye warned that Pyongyang faces “regime collapse” if they continue spinning up nuclear weapons production.
The annual threat assessment from Director of National Security James Clapper included some grim news about North Korea, which is evidently restarting its plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon, and has developed missile technology that can reach any part of the continental United States.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reports that Foreign Minister Wang Yi has agreed to a new United Nations resolution against North Korean nuclear testing.
The United States, along with France, Britain, and Germany, have asked the U.N. Security Council to investigate Iran’s recent violation of a ballistic-missile test ban and take “appropriate action.”
