Pakistan ruled out Tuesday the possibility of again providing its military bases to the United States for future counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan after U.S. troops leave the conflict-torn neighbor by September 11.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi made the remarks to reporters in Islamabad, explaining that his government has adopted a policy that allows it to become “only partners in peace” and not join any future U.S. war.
The retrograde from Afghanistan is going well, but U.S. officials are being careful as the effort is still in its early stages, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said today.
U.S. Central Command officials estimate that they have completed between 6% and 12% of the retrograde process. Airlifters have flown out the equivalent of 104 C-17s worth of materials; U.S. personnel have turned over more than 1,800 pieces of equipment to the Defense Logistics Agency for destruction; and the U.S. has officially handed over one facility to the Afghan National Army.
The Palestinians are upset because Jews are being permitted to tour the Temple Mount. The Palestinians do not want to see Jews visiting their holy site; they do not want to see Jews in Jerusalem, and they do not want to see any Jew at all in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
No one is disputing the Palestinians’ right to protest Israeli policies. Yet when the protests turn into large pro-Hamas demonstrations, with calls for bombing Tel Aviv and killing Jews, they expose the true deadly intention of the protesters.
European and Chinese leaders are urging swift ratification of the trade deal they agreed to in December, after tensions over accusations of human rights abuses in China delayed approval of the deal by European Union lawmakers.
The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) took seven years of negotiations and was finally agreed to in principle December 30, 2020, following a virtual summit between EU and Chinese leaders. Europe said it was the most ambitious trade deal China had ever undertaken with a third party.
NATO members from Eastern Europe have pushed for a larger allied military presence on the bloc’s eastern flank, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said on May 10 after a virtual summit of those states that was also joined by U.S. President Joe Biden.
“The worrying situation in the Black Sea, which we discussed in detail, proved that we have to keep being vigilant,” Iohannis said in Bucharest.
A Russia-linked cyberattack targeting the largest U.S. fuel pipeline system is a “criminal act, obviously,” President Joe Biden said Monday.
“The agencies across the government have acted quickly to mitigate any impact on our fuel supply,” the president said at the White House at the start of remarks about his economic agenda.
On May 10, 2021, Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) fast in-shore attack craft (FIAC), a type of speedboat armed with machine guns, conducted unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers and failed to exercise due regard for the safety of U.S. forces as required under international law while operating in close proximity to U.S. naval vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
In April, Olivier Dubois, an experienced French journalist, was kidnapped in Gao, a Malian city on the Niger River. Though his disappearance was soon known by the Malian and French authorities, and by the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, nobody went public with the crime, ostensibly to facilitate the victim’s quick release. Those efforts appear to have failed, and in early May a jihadi group with alleged ties al-Qaeda released a video. In it, the victims pleads with his family and the French authorities to secure his release. The French authorities are seeking to authenticate the video.
wenty Palestinians, nine of them children, were killed in Israeli bombing attacks in the Gaza Strip on Monday night.
This came at the end of a day of violence that began in occupied East Jerusalem, where Israeli forces assaulted worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, injuring hundreds.
Scenes of brutality in Jerusalem generated outrage and solidarity among Palestinians and around the world.
