US President Donald Trump has once again threatened to strike Iran “harder than they have ever been hit before” using what he called “by far the BEST in the World” military equipment.

Trump made the threat on Twitter hours after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites if the Iranians attempted to take retaliatory action against the US for the assassination of a senior military commander.

Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were assassinated in US airstrikes in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Friday.

Trump’s threats came after Iranian authorities said they would show a harsh response to the US strikes.

In his new tweets, Trump said that the US would use “brand new beautiful equipment” to hit the Islamic Republic “without hesitation.”

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) says a harsh vengeance “in due time and right place” awaits criminals behind the assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), in a US airstrike in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

“Iran’s Supreme National Security Council during its extraordinary session today examined various aspects of this incident and made appropriate decisions; and announces that the regime of the United States of America will be responsible for all the consequences of this criminal adventurism,” the SNSC said in a statement on Friday, following Soleimani’s assassination.

“The US should know that the criminal attack against General Soleimani was its biggest strategic mistake in West Asia, and America will not easily get away with the consequences of this miscalculation,” it added.

The IRGC announced in a statement on Friday morning that General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were martyred in the vicious operation.

Following Soleimani’s assassination, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said those who assassinated the IRGC Quds Force commander must await a harsh revenge.

Ayatollah Khamenei said the “cruelest people on earth” assassinated the “honorable” commander who “courageously fought for years against the evils and bandits of the world.”

Elsewhere in its statement, Iran’s top security body said such “blind and coward measures” would strengthen the Islamic Republic’s determination to keep up with its resistance policies.

“Undoubtedly, this crime was the revenge of Daesh and Takfiri terrorists against big commanders of the fight against terrorism which was carried out by the US against honorable symbols of the elimination of terrorism in Iraq and Syria,” the SNSC stated.

It emphasized that the martyrdom of top Iranian and Iraqi commanders would shine as another sign of an unbreakable bond between the two nations in the future.

In a statement posted on his official website, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Esmail Qaani as the new head of the IRGC Quds Force.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also said the ministry is ready to continue its cooperation with the IRGC Quds Force and its new commander.

President Donald Trump had ordered the US military to kill Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, the Pentagon has said in a statement.

Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were killed in US airstrikes in the Iraqi capital Baghdad early on Friday.

The IRGC confirmed in a statement that Soleimani and al-Muhandis were martyred in the attack carried out by US helicopters. The Iraqi pro-government group also confirmed the incident.

“At the direction of the President, the US military has taken decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force,” the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday.

“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world,” read the statement.

Meanwhile, US troops with the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Kuwait as part of the Immediate Response Force, the US Department of Defense announced.

Source: Presstv

In their New Year messages, leaders of various countries have called for courage and efforts to make 2020 a better year, and overcome challenges as we enter a new decade.

In a New Year speech delivered on Tuesday evening, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to achieve the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects for China in the “milestone” year.

Xi stressed the year as “crucial in winning the anti-poverty battle” in China, and voiced the hope for a prosperous and stable Hong Kong. “We are not afraid of winds and rains, or any kind of difficulties,” said the Chinese president.

Xi reiterated China’s commitment to peaceful development, world peace and common development, saying “we stand ready to join hands with people around the world to actively build the Belt and Road, push for the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, and work tirelessly to create a better future for humanity.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his New Year message for the Russian people: “We are living in turbulent, dynamic and contradictory times, but we can and must do everything for Russia to develop successfully, so that everything in our lives changes only for the better.”

He called for unity and concerted efforts by the Russian people, noting “our personal plans and dreams are inseparable from Russia.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her New Year’s Eve address, appealed for courage and confidence of the German people to meet the challenges of the new decade.

She emphasized the need to halt climate change, a “real” threat. The younger generation will have to live with the consequences of climate change if politicians do not act, Merkel said, adding that she will do her utmost to ensure that Germany “makes its contribution ecologically, economically, socially” to get the issue under control.

In the New Year’s Eve address broadcast live on Tuesday evening, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to push through the government’s pension reform plan, which was met with union-led national strikes in December.

“The pension reform will be fully carried out,” said Macron, adding he hopes to quickly find a compromise with unions.

The promise to take Britain out of the European Union by the end of January was reaffirmed, and national efforts to usher in a remarkable decade of prosperity and opportunity were urged by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his first New Year message at 10 Downing Street.

“The first item on my agenda is to fulfil the will of the electorate and take us out of the European Union,” said Johnson. “We can start a new chapter in the history of our country, in which we come together and move forward united, unleashing the enormous potential of the British people.”

For 2020, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his New Year’s statement on Wednesday made reforms a priority for his government, including creating a social security system that can help people live in a more carefree manner.

Abe also expressed his hope for a successful execution of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics to be held this summer, saying he hopes the games will be a wonderful event that will excite children and let them have dreams for the future.

When sending New Year greetings via social networks on Tuesday, Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera described 2019 as a difficult year for the South American country, which has since mid-October suffered widespread anti-government protests fueled by anger over social troubles.

“But it left us valuable lessons and opportunities so that together we can build a better Chile for all,” he said, adding that the new year is a good time to make balances and projections and work to heal the wounds of the country.

In his end-of-year address to the nation Tuesday evening, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya vowed to continue fighting armed separatists in the central African country, saying the separatists pose “one of the most urgent problems.”

Meanwhile, he said new legislations on greater autonomy to local communities and bilingual and multicultural practices are paving the way for a new Cameroon that is “adapted to present times and looks to the future.”

Zambia’s President Edgar Lungu in his New Year address broadcast on state television on Tuesday described 2019 as “a very challenging year” with extreme weather greatly affecting agricultural production and electricity generation.

He said his government has made plans to get the landlocked central African country out of a harsh economic situation, and pledged the continued empowerment of women in national development.

Source: Xinhuanet

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday said his country will continue developing nuclear programmes and introduce a “new strategic weapon” in the near future, state media KCNA said, after the United States missed a year-end deadline for a restart of denuclearisation talks.ADVERTISING

Kim convened a rare four-day meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s policy-making committee since Saturday as the United States had not responded to his repeated calls for concessions to reopen negotiations, dismissing the deadline as artificial.

Kim had warned he might have to seek a “new path” if Washington fails to meet his expectations. U.S. military commanders said Pyongyang’s actions could include the testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which it has halted since 2017, alongside nuclear warhead tests.

There were no grounds for North Korea to be bound any longer by the self-declared nuclear and ICBM test moratorium as the United States continued joint military drills with South Korea, adopted cutting-edge weapons and imposed sanctions while making “gangster-like demands”, Kim said, according to KCNA.

He pledged to further develop North Korea’s nuclear deterrent but left the door open for dialogue, saying the “scope and depth” of that deterrent will be “properly coordinated depending on” the attitude of the United States.

“The world will witness a new strategic weapon to be possessed by the DPRK in the near future,” Kim said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We will reliably put on constant alert the powerful nuclear deterrent capable of containing the nuclear threats from the U.S. and guaranteeing our long-term security.” 

(REUTERS)

Four thousand people have been trapped on a beach in southeast Australia after being forced to flee their homes as huge fires encircled swathes of territory and left no escape route by land.

The figure included tourists and locals who had sought refuge on the foreshore of the Australian town of Mallacoota, in the state of Victoria, on Tuesday as wildfires raged across the region.

Smoke in Mallacoota was reported to have turned day to night, with local authorities saying nearby fires were causing extreme thunderstorms and “ember attacks.”

Early in the morning, town officials had ordered the activation of emergency sirens to warn of the imminent fire threat, which prompted residents to rush to the seaside following an evacuation plan previously outlined in community meetings.

But the plan was to merely shelter people at the beach.

“We’ve got three strike teams in Mallacoota that will be looking after 4,000 people down on the beach there,” said Andrew Crisp, Victoria’s Emergency Management commissioner. “We’re naturally very concerned about communities that have become isolated.”

Large numbers of residents and visitors, enjoying summer holidays, were also forced to seek refuge in towns up and down a 200-kilometer strip of coast in southeast Australia, with some taking to the sea with boats in the hope of surviving from the country’s months-long bushfire crisis.

Australian media reports said dozens of properties had been destroyed since late Monday and at least seven people were missing in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria states.

“In some places the flames were so intense, the smoke so thick, and the fire-provoked dry lightning storms so severe that aerial reconnaissance and waterbombing had to be halted,” the Rural Fire Service in NSW was quoted as saying by AFP.

More than 900 homes have been destroyed in NSW alone, and the number will likely increase as firefighters struggle to contain the massive fires.

Australia’s bushfires have been burning for months, destroying more than 10 million acres and killing nine people since October, including three volunteer firefighters.

The crisis has also impacted the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne, home to several million people.

Bushfires are common in Australia’s hot, dry summers, but the ferocity and early arrival of the fires in the southern hemisphere this year is unprecedented, with experts saying climate change has left bushland tinder-dry.

The US has carried out air strikes against a pro-Iran militant group in Iraq, killing 19 fighters, two days after a rocket attack that killed an American civilian contractor.

The Pentagon said on Sunday it targeted weapons caches or command and control facilities linked to Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) in Western Iraq, as well as Eastern Syria, in response to a barrage of 30 or more rockets fired on Friday.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “we will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy”.

Four US service members and Iraqi security forces were also wounded in Friday’s attack at the K1 Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, an oil-rich region north of Baghdad.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Sunday the air strikes were successful, and he did not rule out further action to “deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran”.

Esper also said that he and Pompeo had travelled to Florida, where President Donald Trump has been spending the Christmas holidays, to brief him on the latest Middle East events.

“KH has a strong linkage with Iran’s Quds Force and has repeatedly received lethal aid and other support from Iran that it has used to attack” coalition forces, the Pentagon said earlier, referring to the external arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Nineteen fighters were killed by the US strikes in western Iraq, while several were wounded, according to an official from the Tehran-backed Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

A few hours later, four rockets exploded near a base housing US troops close to Iraq’s capital without wounding anyone, an Iraqi security official told AFP.

The military spokesman for Iraq’s outgoing prime minister Abel Abdel Mahdi decried “a violation of Iraqi sovereignty”.

Another powerful pro-Iran faction, Assaib Ahl al-Haq—whose leaders were recently hit with US sanctions—called for Americans to withdraw from Iraq.

“The American military presence has become a burden for the Iraqi state and a source of threat against our forces,” it said in a statement.

“It is therefore imperative for all of us to do everything to expel them by all legitimate means.”

‘Caught in the middle’

US-Iran tensions have soared since Washington pulled out of a landmark nuclear agreement with Tehran last year and imposed crippling sanctions.

Baghdad—which is close to both countries —risks being caught in the middle. 

In Iraq’s neighbour Syria, Shiite powerhouse Iran backs the government of President Bashar al-Assad in an eight-year civil war.

Friday’s attack on the K1 base in Kirkuk involved a direct hit on an ammunition depot caused secondary explosions, and four more rockets were found in their tubes in a truck at the launch point, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Federal security forces, Shiite militia units and IS sleeper cells all have a presence in Kirkuk province, which is claimed by both Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region and federal authorities.

Friday’s attack and the US retaliation come as Iraq is gripped by its biggest anti-government street protests since the US-led invasion of 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

Protesters, many of whom grew up in the post-Saddam era, have vented their anger at a government they consider inept, corrupt and beholden to Iran.

Protest-related violence has claimed about 460 lives, most of them demonstrators, and left some 25,000 people wounded, but rallies and sit-ins have continued.

Since October 28, at least 11 attacks have targeted Iraqi military bases where US soldiers or diplomats are deployed, including five rockets that hit Al-Asad air base on December 3, just four days after US Vice President Mike Pence visited troops there.

A US source has said pro-Iran factions in Iraq are now considered a more significant threat to American soldiers than IS, whose sweeping offensive in 2014 saw Washington deploy thousands of troops to the country.

(AFP)

Public support for Donald Trump’​s removal from office is the highest it has ever been, according to a new poll.

Fifty-five percent of those asked said they were in favor of the US president’s conviction by the Senate, a figure which has shot up from 48 percent the week before.

Meanwhile, the number of people against Mr. Trump’s removal has dropped to an all-time low, according to the MSN poll. 

On Christmas Day, 40 percent were opposed to the Senate voting to convict the president, who has been impeached over his dealings with Ukraine and an alleged subsequent attempt to obstruct congress.

The gap between the two views has become much wider since last week, when there was little to divide them (48 percent in favor of Mr. Trump’s removal, 47 percent against).

David Rothschild✔@DavMicRot

MSN Poll matches all-time high for support of conviction 55%, and opposition plummets to all-time low: Many people moving from “opposition” to “don’t know”, big moment will be if they reach support for conviction.

The percentage of respondents who neither supported nor opposed conviction also grew.

David Rothschild, an economist at Microsoft Research, said the numbers of people shifting from opposition to removal to “don’t know” was significant. “When you follow polling daily, you learn people rarely make big jumps from Opposition to Support,” he said.

“This polling is a clear sign that [the] Republican policy of complete obstruction is not selling well to [the] voting public.”

Republicans and Democrats have disagreed over how the Senate should conduct the trial into the US president. Mr. Trump is accused of asking a political favor from Ukraine – to investigate his 2020 rival Joe Biden – in return for aid and a state visit to the White House.

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has not yet sent the impeachment case to the Republican-controlled Senate given the strong likelihood that the upper house would find in Mr. Trump’s favor.

The party leaders of the Senate have clashed over the trial’s witnesses, after Republican Mitch McConnell said he would not allow top White House officials to testify in line with Democrat requests.

(Source: The Independent)

Typhoon Phanfone pummeled the central Philippines on Christmas Day, bringing a wet and miserable holiday season to millions in the mainly Catholic nation.

Thousands were stranded at shuttered ports or evacuation centers at the height of the festive season on Wednesday, and residents cowered in rain-soaked homes as Phanfone leapt from one small island to another for the second day.

The typhoon toppled houses and trees and blacked out cities in the Philippines’ most storm-prone region, but no deaths were reported.

Though weaker, Phanfone was tracking a similar path as Super Typhoon Haiyan — the country’s deadliest cyclone on record which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.

More than 10,000 people spent the night in schools, gyms and government buildings hastily converted into evacuation centers as the typhoon made landfall Tuesday, civil defense officials said.

“It was frightening. The glass windows shattered and we took cover by the stairs,” Ailyn Metran told AFP after she and her four-year-old child spent the night at the local state weather service office where her husband worked.

A metal window frame flew off and fell onto a car parked outside the building, she said.

With just two hours’ sleep, the family returned to their home in the central city of Tacloban early Wednesday to find their two dogs safe, but the floor was covered in mud and a felled tree rested atop a nearby house.

The weather office said the typhoon strengthened slightly overnight Tuesday and was gusting at 195 kilometers (121 miles) an hour, velocities that can knock down small trees and destroy houses made of light materials.

More islands along its projected path are expected to be hit with destructive winds and intense rainfall before blowing out into the South China Sea early Thursday, it added.

More than 25,000 people trying to get home for the traditional Christmas Eve midnight dinner with their families remained stranded at ports on Christmas Day with ferry services still shut down, the coast guard said.

Scores of flights to the region also remained cancelled, though the populous capital Manila, on the northern edge has so far been spared.

The Philippines is the first major landmass facing the Pacific cyclone belt.

As such, the archipelago gets hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year, killing scores of people and wiping out harvests, homes and other infrastructure and keeping millions perennially poor.

A July 2019 study by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank said the most frequent storms lop one percent off the Philippine economic output, with the stronger ones cutting output by nearly three percent.

(Source: AFP)