Spanish Navy servicemen inspect aircraft on board the assault ship-aircraft carrier LHD Juan Carlos I during a NATO military exercise in the Baltic Sea on June 13.
Credit: Ints Kalnins/Reuters
BRUSSELS—The imminent collapse of a U.S.-Russia missile treaty is forcing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to grapple with a Russian missile system that can target Western European cities—without getting caught in an arms race.
European heavyweights France and Germany and other allies have backed the U.S. plan to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty on Friday unless Russia destroys missiles that the U.S. says violate the pact. Moscow has shown no sign of complying with the deadline.
“We don’t want to escalate,” said a senior European diplomat at NATO. “But we need to show we are united and ready. We need to talk to Russia from a position of strength.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia June 7, 2019.
Credit: Reuters/Maxim Shemetov
UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is concerned by rising tensions between nuclear-armed states, warning “the world will lose an invaluable brake on nuclear war” with the expiration of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on Friday.
“This will likely heighten, not reduce, the threat posed by ballistic missiles,” Guterres told reporters. “Regardless of what transpires, the parties should avoid destabilizing developments and urgently seek agreement on a new common path for international arms control.”
Barring a last-minute decision by Russia to destroy a new medium-range missile that NATO says violates the INF, the United States is set to pull out of the accord on Aug. 2, arguing that it needs to develop its own warheads to deter Moscow.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Adelanto, Calif., is one of the detention facilities operated by GEO Group Inc.
Credit:Richard Vogel/AP
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have drawn condemnation, but increasingly the criticism has also turned to a web of companies that are part of the multibillion-dollar industry that runs detention facilities housing tens of thousands of migrants around the country.
Businesses that supply goods and services to support those detention centers face increasing public and political scrutiny from investors, employees and activists.
Last week, employees at Wayfair protested after one worker discovered the Boston-based company was supplying bedroom furniture to a facility housing migrant children seeking asylum.
And Bank of America said it would stop financing private prison and immigration detention companies, following similar declarations by JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Such lending is vital to the construction and expansion of detention facilities, though the industry still has plenty of other options; SunTrust, Barclays, BNP Paribas and other smaller regional banks have not cut ties with the industry.
After American Airlines discovered […]
Credit: Daily Kos
Two former top staffers to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have lobbied Congress and the Treasury Department on the development of a new Kentucky aluminum mill backed by the Russian aluminum giant Rusal, according to a new lobbying disclosure.
The disclosure comes as Democrats are pushing the Trump administration to review Rusal’s $200 million investment in the Kentucky project — concerned that the mill will supply the Defense Department — and as McConnell weathers criticism for helping block a congressional effort to stop the investment.
The Russian firm was only able to make the investment after it won sanctions relief from penalties the Treasury Department initially imposed in April 2018 on Rusal and other companies owned by Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and Kremlin ally accused of facilitating Moscow’s nefarious activities, such as seizing land in Ukraine, supplying arms for the Syrian regime and meddling in other countries’ elections.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced in December that the department would lift the sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, […]
Comparison of satellite images of the western edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet about 250 miles across, one acquired in 2018 on July 30, and the other on July 31 of this year. Vastly expanded areas of blue in this year’s image are indicative of water at the surface. The gray area, known as the “ablation zone,” is where ice is exposed and experiencing melting.
Credit: NASA Worldview. Animation: Tom Yulsman
As forecast, the dome of heat that brutalized Western Europe has moved over Greenland, where it has triggered a massive spike in surface melting of snow and ice.
In coming days, the abnormal heat could also cause the Arctic’s floating lid of sea ice — which is already trending at record low levels for this time of year — to shrivel even further.
But if you pay attention to Twitter, it almost seems as if we’ve entered the Arctic Apocalypse. So with this story, I decided to take a deep breath and report as dispassionately as I could on what’s happening.
I started […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
