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Africa
April 24, 2019 Billions of dollars’ worth of gold is being smuggled out of Africa every year through the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East – a gateway to markets in Europe, the United States and beyond. Customs data shows that the UAE imported $15.1 billion worth of gold from Africa in 2016, more than any other country and up from $1.3 billion in 2006. The total weight was 446 tonnes, in varying degrees of purity – up from 67 tonnes in 2006. In 2015, China – the world’s biggest gold consumer – imported more gold from Africa than the UAE. But during 2016, the latest year for which data is available, the UAE imported almost double the value taken by China. With African gold imports worth $8.5 billion that year, China came a distant second. Switzerland, the world’s gold refining hub, came third with $7.5 billion worth. Today, gold trades at over $40,000 per kilo, which is below a peak from 2012 but still four times the level of two decades ago. Much of the gold was not recorded in the exports of African states. Large amounts of gold are leaving Africa with no taxes being paid to the states that produce them. African governments such as Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia complain that gold is now being illegally produced and smuggled out of their countries on a vast scale. Ghana is Africa’s second-largest gold producer. Most of the gold is traded in Dubai, home to the UAE’s gold industry. Trading in gold accounts for nearly one-fifth of UAE’s GDP. Limited regulation in UAE means informally mined gold can be legally imported, tax-free. Gold can be imported to Dubai with little documentation. Burkina Faso has banned small-scale mining in some areas where al Qaeda-linked Islamists are active. Ghana and Zambia have sent security forces into mining areas to halt operations so miners can be registered and regulations put in place. Ghana, concerned that a rush of mainly Chinese-led ventures is harming the environment, has arrested hundreds of Chinese miners and expelled thousands in the past six years. Much of the gold is smuggled from landlocked Burkina Faso to its Atlantic coast neighbor Togo. In Togo, virtually no taxes are imposed on gold. (Source: Reuters)
Iran
April 22, 2019 Iran raises stakes in U.S. showdown with threat to close Hormuz. Secretary of State Pompeo delivered the decision that no waivers from sanctions will be renewed to importers of Iranian oil. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway carrying a fifth of the world’s traded oil that Iranian officials have threatened to block in retaliation for sanctions targeting the country’s nuclear program. The U.S. has said it would move to stop any Iranian attempt to block the waterway. (Source: Bloomberg)
Iraq (?)
April 29, 2019 New video, potentially worrisome. islamic state leader Baghdadi is showing his face for the first time in five years, appearing on a video posted to the internet today by the terror group’s al-Furqan media division. Baghdadi acknowledges the fall of the last is-held territory in Baghuz, Syria and also talks about the Easter Sunday terror attack in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people. He describes the terror group’s fight now as a “battle of attrition” and promises is will seek revenge for the killing and imprisonment of its fighters. (Source: VoiceofAmericaNews)
Saudi Arabia
29th April 2019 The Sharia law-run state has advertised for eight new executioners to handle the projected rise in public beheadings. No special qualifications are needed for the jobs whose main role is “executing a judgement of death” but also involves performing amputations on those convicted of lesser offences. The macabre job advert was reportedly posted on the country's civil service jobs portal. Saudi Arabia has one of the world’s highest rates of execution: suspects convicted of terrorism, homicide, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking face the death penalty. It has carried out nearly 600 executions since the start of 2014, more than a third of them in drug cases. More than 140 people were put to death in the kingdom last year, where convicts are usually beheaded using a huge curved sword. Public beheadings will typically take place around 9am when the convicted person is walked into a square and made to kneel in front of the executioner. (Source: TheSun)
April 23, 2019 Mass execution. Saudi Arabia today beheaded 37 Saudi citizens in a mass execution across the country for what it described as terrorism-related crimes, publicly pinning the body of Tuwaijri and its severed head to a pole as a warning to others. The individuals were found guilty of attacking security installations with explosives, killing a number of security officers and co-operating with enemy organizations against the interests of the country, the Interior Ministry said. The executions bring the number of people executed since the start of the year to 95, according to official announcements. Last year, the kingdom executed 125 people, most of them drug smugglers. The kingdom faced a wave of al-Qaida attacks more than a decade ago, but its security forces crushed the group inside the kingdom before it built a presence in Yemen and became known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years, local affiliates of the islamic state group and Saudis inspired by its ideology launched attacks in Saudi Arabia, killing dozens of people, including security officers and Shiite worshippers. The group, like al-Qaida in the past, is determined to bring down the U.S.-allied royal family of Saudi Arabia. Some 2,500 Saudis, many of them young and well-educated, fought in Syria at the start of that country’s civil war before the kingdom criminalized fighting abroad in early 2014. More than 650 returned during an amnesty period, disillusioned with fighting. (Source: TheProvince)
Sri Lanka
April 23, 2019 islamic state claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks in Sri Lanka that killed 321 people. Sri Lankan intelligence officials had been warned hours earlier by India that attacks by Islamists were imminent. Indian intelligence officers contacted their Sri Lankan counterparts two hours before the first attack to warn of a specific threat on churches. The government has said at least seven suicide bombers were involved. Junior minister for defense Wijewardene told parliament two Sri Lankan Islamist groups - the National Thawheed Jama’ut and Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim - were responsible for the blasts. The first six bombs - on three churches and three luxury hotels - exploded within 20 minutes of each other. Two more explosions - at a downmarket hotel and a house in a suburb of the capital, Colombo - took place in the early afternoon. Sri Lankan government and military sources said a Syrian had been detained among 40 people being questioned over the bombs. In a statement, islamic state named what it said were the seven attackers who carried out the attacks. (Source: Reuters)
April 21, 2019 At least 207 people have died after suspected suicide bombers blew up churches and five-star hotels in an Easter Sunday terror attack in Sri Lanka targeting Christians, hotel guests and foreign tourists, leaving at least 450 people wounded. At least 35 foreigners are feared to have been killed in the attacks. Seven suspects have been arrested, as it emerged the country's police chief had warned of an Islamic extremist plot to target 'prominent churches' just 10 days earlier, but no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. The bombings targeted the luxury Cinnamon Grand, Shangri-La and Kingsbury hotels as well as St Anthony's Shrine in Colombo, all frequented by tourists. Other blasts were reported at St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, a majority-Catholic town, and at Zion Church in the eastern town of Batticalo. Later in the afternoon, two died in a strike at a hotel in the south of Colombo, before a suspected suicide bomber killed police officers in the suburb of Orugodawatta in the north of the capital. Sri Lanka has long been divided between the majority Sinhalese, who are overwhelmingly Buddhist, and minority Tamils who are Hindu, Muslim and Christian. The country remains deeply scarred by its 1983-2009 civil war, when Tamil rebels fought to create an independent homeland. The rebels were eventually crushed but a religious divide has taken hold in recent years. A Christian group said there had been 86 cases of discrimination, threats and violence against followers of Jesus last year, with another 26 so far this year. The U.S. State Department warned in a 2018 report that Christians had been pressured to close places of worship after they were deemed 'unauthorised gatherings'. The report also said Buddhist monks regularly tried to close down Christian and Muslim places of worship. There have also been attacks on Muslims, with the government forced to declare a state of emergency amid a spate of anti-Muslim rioting. Hard-line Buddhist groups accuse Muslims of forcing people to convert and destroying sacred Buddhist sites. One radical Muslim group, the NTJ, has been linked to the vandalisation of Buddhist statues and has also reportedly plotted to attack Christian churches. Out of Sri Lanka's total population of around 22million, 70 percent are Buddhist, 13 per cent Hindu, 10 per cent Muslim, and seven per cent Christian, according to the country's 2012 census. The magnitude of the violence recalls the bombings perpetrated by the separatist Tamil Tigers that targeted a bank, a shopping centre, a Buddhist temple and hotels popular with tourists a decade ago. Only around six percent of mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka is Catholic, but the religion is seen as a unifying force because it includes people from both the Tamil and majority Sinhalese ethnic groups. (Source: Mail)
Syria
27th April 2017 Two British jihadi health workers carried out sickening Nazi-style medical experiments on isis prisoners in Syria, in the former isis strongholds of Mayadin and Deir Ezzor between 2015 and 2017. Abuanza, 40, was appointed isis health minister after fleeing to Syria from Sheffield in 2014. He appointed Birmingham-born pharmacist Miah, also 40, to help him remove organs from helpless captives. These body parts were then transplanted into wounded jihadists - or sold on the black market to fund terror. Leftover organs harvested from tortured prisoners would also be tossed into the cells of other hostages to torment them, it's alleged. The ten-man medical team led by Abuanza and Miah have also been accused of performing warped chemical tests on live inmates detained as isis rampaged across the region between 2014 and 2017. Syrian activist group Sound And Picture, whose members lived under the jihadis’ rule, made the series of staggering accusations. Abuanza is now thought to be hiding in caves near the village of Baghouz. Miah is being held by Kurdish opposition forces along with six other Brits including two suspected members of the notorious "Beatles" torture gang who beheaded western hostages. (Source: TheSun)
Tibet
Apr. 25, 2019 Tibet is good for observing the staggeringly energetic photons that crash into Earth from unidentified objects across the universe. The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) is an ambitious new observatory on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. LHAASO will join a worldwide search for the highest energy photons in the universe: gamma rays that, in rare cases, can exceed the energy of Earth's most powerful particle accelerators. When gamma rays strike the atmosphere, they create a cascade of secondary particles spreading in a cone until they hit the ground. Higher energy photons create more secondary particles, which shower across a wider footprint. To catch particles from lower energy photons, LHAASO will use three 5-meter-deep pools of water covering an area larger than 14 U.S. football fields. When the particles hit the water, they will spark faint flashes of blue Cherenkov light spotted by detectors at the bottom of the pools. Thousands of cheaper detectors spaced out across the 1.3-kilometer site will watch for higher energy gamma rays. An additional 1170 buried detectors will look for particles called muons, which can help discriminate between gamma ray showers and showers caused by cosmic rays, charged particles that can also reach extraordinary energies. The paths of gamma rays are unaffected by magnetic fields, making it possible to trace them back to their distant sources. LHAASO should also detect photons from gamma ray bursts (GRBs), brilliant outbursts that appear out of nowhere and fade within days. "It opens some very exciting prospects," says Mészáros, a theoretical astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University in State College. IHEP's Ali CMB Polarization Telescope (AliCPT), under construction in the plateau's west, will start its hunt for signs of primordial gravitational waves next year. AliCPT perched at 5250 meters to elude the atmospheric water vapor that can block microwaves from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the afterglow of the big bang. Its antenna will funnel CMB photons to thousands of sensors to search for a telltale pattern in the light's polarization. That pattern would be evidence for the gravitational waves generated by a hypothesized growth spurt in the newborn universe, known as inflation. This year, the National Space Science Center will begin to build the Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT), which will study the Sun's violent outbursts. To capture radio waves emitted during those eruptions, the DSRT's 401 4.5-meter parabolic radio antennas are spaced in a 1-kilometer-wide circle - the best arrangement for imaging the Sun, says Yan, chief engineer of the project. Traveling at light speed, the radio waves outrace the particles, which means the DSRT could help forecast the havoc the outbursts can wreak when they crash into Earth's magnetic field 2 to 3 days later. And the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) in Beijing is studying sites on the northwestern rim of the plateau for a 12-meter Large Optical-Infrared Telescope (LOT), larger than any existing telescope. (Source: ScienceMag)
United States
04/27/2019 In accordance with the 'Open Skies' treaty, Russia carried out its latest reconnaissance flight over American territory. A Russian Tu-214ON spy plane made a reconnaissance tour over the southwestern US, capturing images of military bases and nuclear and chemical weapons caches. The plane is reported to have flown over the Kirtland Air Force Base, home of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, and functions as a nuclear storage site. In Colorado, the plane passed over the Pueblo Chemical Depot, one of the last two sites in the US with chemical munitions and materials. Tu-214ON is an updated version of the regular Tu-214. Its cockpit can fit two more people, which allowed the manufacturer to install more modern electronics. Its range has increased to a reported 6,500km. The aircraft boasts three sensor arrays that include a digital photo camera, an infrared camera, and a TV camera complete with a sideways-looking synthetic aperture radar. (Source: ZeroHedge)
April 26, 2019 Why are whistle-blowers being jailed while reporters who publish their prohibited leaks win awards? In 2010 - and this is when the sin for which Mr. Assange has been jailed was supposedly committed - WikiLeaks provided some of the world’s most respected news organizations with accurate information of deep public importance that exposed outrageous, even murderous, wrongdoing. Mr. Assange then submitted - perhaps gracelessly, but submitted nonetheless - to their editorial judgment as to how much of that information should be published and in what form. This included a vast trove exposing the American war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan as killing many more civilians than our government had ever acknowledged. A further batch included a huge number of reports from our own diplomats on the corruption and double-dealing of foreign governments. Pretty good stuff, on balance. Still, there’s little sympathy in the media for the idea that jailing Mr. Assange is a violation of First Amendment press freedom - while there’s broad agreement that prosecuting the news organizations that published the material he provided would be unthinkable. If the handing over of secrets can be prosecuted, why should the publication of those same secrets be protected? (Source: TheNewYorkTimes)
April 26, 2019 President Trump announced today that he would un-sign the global arms pact known as the Arms Trade Treaty in the latest illustration of his aversion to international pacts and world governance. The treaty seeks to prevent illicit arms transfers that fuel destructive conflicts, making it harder to conduct weapon sales in violation of arms embargoes. About 100 countries, including U.S. allies in Europe, have ratified the treaty while more than 30 others have signed but not ratified. Countries that have shunned the treaty entirely include Russia, North Korea and Syria. The origins of the treaty, which sets out international rules for sales and transfers of everything from small arms to large planes and ships, date to the Bush administration. It was negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations and signed in 2013 under President Obama but has never been ratified by U.S. lawmakers. (Source: msn)
April 23, 2019 The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with "unidentified aircraft," a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings - and destigmatize them. The Navy and the U.S. Air Force takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report. (Source: Politico)
April 21, 2019 The FBI had arrested Hopkins, the leader of an armed group that is stopping undocumented migrants after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border into New Mexico. UCP members have helped U.S. Border Patrol detain over 5,600 migrants in the last two months. (Source: Reuters)
Globalization
In 2018 the USA and China accounted for half of the world's military spending. U.S. military spending rose 4.6 percent last year to reach $649 billion, leaving it still by far the world's biggest spender. 2018 marked the first increase in U.S. military spending since 2010. It accounted for 36 percent of total global military expenditure, nearly equal to the following eight biggest-spending countries combined. China, the second biggest spender, saw military expenditure rise 5.0 percent to $250 billion last year, the 24th consecutive annual increase. The other top spenders are, in declining order, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia, Britain, Germany, Japan and South Korea. Military spending equalled 1.2 percent of GDP in Germany - Europe's largest economy. Britain and France spent 1.8 percent and 2.3 percent of GDP respectively on defence in 2018. Military expenditure by all 29 NATO members amounted to just over half of global spending. Russian spending recorded its first annual decline in nearly two decades in 2017, with a fall of 20 percent in real terms, in 2018 following an annual decline of 3.5 percent. (Source: Reuters)
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