World

Russia should have the best-armed forces in face of the "aggressive" plans of the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

"Russia should be among the leading states, and in some areas -- the absolute leader in building the army of a new generation, the army of the new technological era," Putin said at a meeting of senior Defense Ministry officials.

"This is of utmost importance for ensuring our sovereignty, peace and security of our citizens, for a confident development of the country and for an open and independent foreign policy in the interests of our country," he said.

He called the new security strategy recently outlined by the U.S. Administration "offensive" and "aggressive", saying that the Russian military should take this into account in their practical work.

He said that although Russian nuclear forces had a level that provided "reliable strategic deterrence", they should be developed further.

By 2021, the Russian ground-based nuclear forces should be 90 percent equipped with new missile systems that can confidently overcome existing and prospective missile defence systems, Putin said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the meeting that the budget of Russia's defence spending in 2018 will amount to 46 billion U.S. dollars, 2.8 percent of its gross domestic product.

Russia's military spending in 2017 was set at 3.05 trillion rubles (about 52 billion U.S. dollars), equaling 3.3 percent of the GDP, according to the 2017 federal budget.

Source : Xinhua

Disasters in 2017 caused losses of $306bn (£229bn), according to estimates from insurance giant Swiss Re.

The figure represents a 63% jump from last year and is well above the average of the past decade.

The Americas were hardest hit, with hurricanes in the Caribbean and the southern US, earthquakes in Mexico and wildfires in California. Despite the rise in the financial cost of disasters, there was no significant increase in the loss of lives.

Swiss Re said more than 11,000 people died or went missing in disaster events in 2017, which is similar to 2016's figure.

Insurance coverage

A report by the firm's research arm Sigma found insured losses amounted to $136bn (£102bn) - more than double last year's total and the third highest on record.

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria together caused insured losses of about $93bn (£70bn) according to the report.

But Swiss Re said the insurance industry had demonstrated that it could cope very well with such high losses, despite gaps in protection remaining.

"If the industry is able to extend its reach, many more people and businesses can become better equipped to withstand the fallout from disaster events", said Martin Bertogg, head of catastrophe perils at Swiss Re.

 Source: BBC

The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea in response to its recent ballistic missile tests.

The US-drafted resolution includes measures to reduce the nation's petrol imports by up to 90%.

China and Russia, North Korea's main trading partners, voted in favour of the resolution.

The country is already subject to a raft of sanctions from the US, the UN and the EU.

Tensions have risen this year over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, which it has pursued despite pressure from world powers to stop.

The Trump administration says it is seeking a diplomatic solution to the issue, and drafted this new set of sanctions:

• Deliveries of petrol products will be capped at 500,000 barrels a year, and crude oil at 4 million barrels a year
•  All North Korean nationals working abroad will have to return home within 24 months under the proposals, restricting a vital source of foreign currency
•  There will also be a ban on exports of North Korean goods, such as machinery and electrical equipment

 Source : BBC

Action has been taken against an alleged Islamist terror plot in the UK that could have happened at Christmas, counterterrorism sources say.

Four men were arrested early on Tuesday in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire.

An Army bomb disposal team cordoned off a street in Chesterfield where a 31-year-old man was arrested. Nearby homes were evacuated.

Three other men aged 22, 36 and 41 were arrested in the Burngreave and Meersbrook areas of Sheffield.

All four suspects were detained on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

They have been taken to a police station in West Yorkshire for questioning. The cordon in Chesterfield was later lifted.

The cordon around one of the properties - the Fatima community centre on Brunswick Road in Burngreave - was extended on Tuesday afternoon and the bomb disposal unit attended.

A large number of police vehicles and officers were outside the two-storey building. The main door appeared to be broken on the ground.

 Source : BBC

The UN General Assembly has decisively backed a resolution effectively calling on the US to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The text says that any decisions regarding the status of the city are "null and void" and must be cancelled.

The non-binding resolution was approved by 128 states, with 35 abstaining and nine others voting against.

It came after US President Donald Trump threatened to cut financial aid to those who backed the resolution.

Before the vote, the Palestinian foreign minister urged member states to reject "blackmail and intimidation".

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile said it would reject the anticipated result "outright" and dismissed the UN as a "house of lies".

 Source: BBC

The Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen's Houthi rebels says it has intercepted a ballistic missile near Riyadh, Saudi state media report.

Witnesses in the Saudi capital said they had heard an explosion and posted videos on social media showing a cloud of smoke in the air.

The Houthi movement's al-Masirah TV reported that its fighters had fired a Burkan-2 missile at the Yamama Palace.

Last month, a similar missile came close to hitting Riyadh's airport.

 Source : BBC

A fire at a sports centre in South Korea has killed 29 people and left many others injured.

The fire, which started in the basement of an eight-storey building, occurred in the southern city of Jecheon.

Footage showed dark plumes of smoke as the blaze, which has now largely been extinguished, engulfed the property.

Most of the victims were trapped in a sauna on the second floor. Officials say the death toll could rise as firefighters continue their search.

"The fire produced so much toxic smoke so quickly, leaving many people unable to evacuate," a spokesman at the National Fire Agency said.

Some 20 people were rescued from the rooftop after taking refuge from the fire. Several of the survivors were taken hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation, officials said.

As many as 60 firefighters attended the scene on Thursday in the city, 168km (104 miles) southeast of Seoul, they added.

Heavy smoke continues to hamper the search and rescue operation, the authorities said.

The building houses a fitness centre, restaurants and a public sauna.

Source : BBC

A US passenger train that derailed, killing three people, was travelling at 80mph (130km/h) on a curve with a speed limit of 30mph, data from the train's rear engine indicates.

It happened in Washington state during rush hour on Monday and officials say 72 people were taken to the hospital.

A number of those injured are reported to be in a serious condition.

Authorities said all carriages had now been searched, but would not rule out a rise in the number of dead.

A spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said investigators had arrived at the scene on Monday night local time and would probably be there for a week or 10 days.

Bella Dinh-Zarr said the 12-carriage train had engines at the front and rear. The back engine's data recording had been retrieved, she said, and "preliminary indications are that the train was travelling at 80mph on a 30mph track".

"Our hearts go out to everyone who is affected by this very tragic accident," she said.

Warning signs

Passengers say the train rocked and creaked as it took the bend fast before barrelling off a bridge on to a motorway packed with traffic.

Seven vehicles, two of them lorries, were hit on the I-5 highway below. Several people were injured in their vehicles but none died.

State transport spokesperson Barbara LaBoe was quoted in the Seattle Times newspaper as saying the limit on most of the track was 79mph (128km/h) but drivers were supposed to slow dramatically at the spot where the train derailed.

She said warning signs were in place two miles before the lowered limit.

It was Amtrak's first passenger service to run on a new, shorter route. Amtrak is the name of the company that runs most passenger trains in the US, with some government funding.

The derailment happened on a section of the track previously only used for freight trains.

A safety system called Positive Train Control (PTC) was not operational on the train in question, the president of Amtrak told reporters. Using GPS tracking, PTC automatically warns the driver of speed limits and other local conditions and applies the train's brakes if the warnings are not heeded.

Congress originally legislated for PTC to be installed by the end of 2015 but it is still not even halfway complete.

The cost of implementing the system fully on all tracks and vehicles is reported to be more than $22bn (£16bn).

Train 501 had left Seattle, heading south for Portland, at 06:00 local time (14:00 GMT).

One passenger carriage could be seen dangling from the bridge, while others were strewn across the road and the wooded area next to the track.

There were 86 people on board, including 77 passengers and seven Amtrak crew members, as well as a railway technician.

Police say 19 people were taken from the scene uninjured. Of the 72 transferred to hospital for evaluation, 10 were considered to have serious injuries.

 Source : BBC

North Korea is beginning tests on mounting anthrax onto intercontinental ballistic missiles that would strike the U.S., a report said on Wednesday just two days after the White House’s U.S. National Security Strategy stated Kim Jong Un is pursuing chemical and biological weapons.

The Hermit Kingdom is beginning experiments to test out if anthrax can endure immense heat and pressure it will have to endure when loaded into an ICBM and launched toward the earth’s atmosphere, Japan’s Asahi newspaper reported, citing an unidentified person connected to South Korea’s intelligence services.

“North Korea has started experiments such as heat and pressure equipment to prevent anthrax from dying even at a high temperature of over 7,000 degrees generated at the time of ICBM's re-entry into the atmosphere,” the report stated. “In part, there is unconfirmed information that it has already succeeded in such experiments.”

North Korea is beginning tests to place anthrax onto ICBMs, a report said. (KCNA via Reuters)

 NORTH KOREA, STOCKPILING WEAPONS, MOCKS 'LUNATIC' TRUMP WHO HAS 'WAR FEVER'

On Monday, the White House released its U.S. National Security Strategy that said North Korea is “pursuing chemical and biological weapons which could also be delivered by missile.”

“North Korea—a country that starves its own people—has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that could threaten our homeland,” the document said.

North Korea vehemently denied the report and accused the U.S. of cooking “up untruths as truths” and using biological weapons during the Korean War.

“Properly speaking, it is the U.S. stereotyped method to cook up untruths as truths, stubbornly insisting that black is white and fabricating anything for satisfying their aggressive greed,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency stated. “And the U.S. itself is an empire of evils full of plots, fabrications, lies and deceptions.”

North Korea launched an ICBM and said it could carry a "super-heavy warhead." (KCNA via Reuters)

It added, “It is none other than the U.S., chattering on ‘morality’ and ‘civilization,’ the criminal state that massacred the Korean people by bacteriological weapons during the Korean War and inflict sufferings upon the innocent people by continuing even now to openly use the internationally prohibited weapons.”

South Korea has long suspected North Korea was developing biological weapons. A report by Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfar Center for Science and International Affairs stated the dictatorship may have “anthrax and smallpox” pathogens that could be turned into weapons.

KIM JONG UN'S BIZARRE NORTH KOREA PROPAGANDA PHOTOS

North Korea is believed to have started its chemical and biological weapons program in the early 1960s and began possibly weaponizing biological agents in the 1980s, according to the report.

Kim Jong Un’s scientists launched its “greatest” ICBM in late November that the regime claimed could carry a “super-heavy nuclear warhead” that could strike “the whole mainland of the U.S.” However, North Korea has set to perfect its re-entry technology. A U.S. official told Fox News the Hwasong-15 ICBM did not survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

(Fox News)

At least eight women and two girls heading home from a wedding have been killed in an air attack in central-west Yemen, a health official has told Al Jazeera.

Saba news agency, aligned with Yemen's Houthi group, cited a security source as saying that the women's vehicle was struck by three Saudi-led coalition air raids late on Saturday.

The attack reportedly took place at around 11pm local time (20:00 GMT) in the Harib al-Qaramish district of the Marib governorate, east of the capital, Sanaa, where the wedding had taken place.

So far, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels has not commented on the alleged air attack.

Mohammad al-Sheab, head of the health bureau in Marib, told Al Jazeera that the victims were all from the Haysan family. He said the women were between 30 to 50 years old, without providing an age for the two girls.

In a post on Twitter, Mohammad Abdel Salam, spokesperson for Ansar Allah, the political arm of the Houthis, called the attack a "massacre".

In previous tweets, Abdel Salam also accused the Saudi-led coalition of carrying out "three bloody massacres in [the towns of] Taiz, Saada and Hodeidah" over the weekend. He added that more than 70 people were killed in those attacks.

Humanitarian catastrophe
Saudi Arabia has been leading a coalition at war in Yemen since March 2015, when the oil-rich Kingdom intervened to push back Houthi rebels and allied troops, and reinstate the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Despite being mired in the war for more than two years, the coalition has so far failed to achieve its stated aims as Houthi rebels continue to hold Sanaa and control the country's north.

The war has taken a huge toll on Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country.

More than 10,000 civilians have been killed, and millions of Yemenis have been left without basic necessities.
Last week,the UN warned that some 8.4 million people "are a step away from famine" in Yemen, which is already battling a massive cholera epidemic.

(Al Jazeera)

PIC: An image purportedly showing the vehicle targeted by the Saudi-led coalition [Media Committee in Sanaa]

Voting is underway in the Spanish region of Catalonia to elect a new government, in a litmus test of the independence movement legitimacy after its provocative attempt to break away from Spain.

Madrid called the snap regional election with the hope of having a new government to deal with after Catalonia's Parliament declared unilateral independence in October.

Spain was plunged into its worst political crisis in decades when the Catalan government held an illegal referendum on October 1 on independence, triggering a months-long standoff with Madrid.

Madrid responded to the Catalan government's provocations by firing the government, dissolving the region's Parliament and imposing direct rule.

Thursday's vote is being treated as a legal version of the referendum, and polls suggest it's on a knife-edge, with support for parties that are for and against independence split right down the middle.

Polls close at 8 p.m. (2 p.m. ET) and exit polls are expected shortly after.

Source : CNN

Information provided by the CIA helped Russian security services foil an attack on St Petersburg Kazan cathedral, the Kremlin says.

The attack was allegedly planned to take place on Saturday, officials say.

In a phone call, President Vladimir Putin thanked Donald Trump for the CIA's intervention, the Kremlin said.

Mr Putin told Mr Trump that Russia's special services would hand over information on terror threats to their US counterparts, it added.

Russia's FSB security service said in a statement on Friday that it had detained seven members of a cell of Islamic State supporters and seized a significant amount of explosives, weapons and extremist literature.

The cell was planning to carry out a suicide attack at a religious institution and kill citizens on Saturday, the FSB statement said.

The group was preparing explosions targeting the cathedral and other public places in Russia's second city, the Kremlin statement said.

It added that Mr Putin had asked the US president to pass on his thanks to the CIA director and the operatives involved.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed that Mr Trump and his Russian counterpart had spoken on Sunday. More details are expected soon.

An explosion on St Petersburg's metro system in April, which killed at least 13 people, is thought to be linked to jihadists.

Returning militants from Syria pose a real threat to Russia, the head of the FSB was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

Security services had already prevented 18 terrorist attacks in 2017, Alexander Bortnikov said in comments reported by Itar-Tass news agency.

Source : CNN