Alerts: Africa

5/9/2007, The plan by the United States government to establish an Africa Command (AFRICOM), though still at the consultation stage is already generating controversies. But their resolution would re-define U.S-Africa relations and contribute remarkably to the re-shaping of a new world order.

4/24/07, China has increased its presence in Africa in recent years in a hunt for oil and other natural resources to feed its rapidly growing economy. Its forays into areas considered politically unstable, however, has exposed Chinese workers to attacks.

Alerts: Germany

5/23/07, There is a new alignment in the heavens, a conjunction of spheres that will create a new reality here on Earth. Or at least there's a huge temptation among journalists to read Europe's horoscope as planets Sarkozy and Brown hurtle onto the scene, joining the still newish Merkel. Will Brown be able, or want to resist the powerful tug of the other two?

5/11/07, An alleged plot by a group of Islamic extremists against U.S. facilities in Germany led officials to increase security last month, a senior federal official told CNN on Friday. Intelligence officials characterized the alleged plotters as "Islamic extremists."

Alerts: South America

5/10/07, Hizbullah is training for attacks on US says Florida-based TV network. Terror group training suicide bombers in secluded South American region, brainwashing locals against Israel, US; Paraguay: Mossad, FBI agents operating to thwart plan. Washington fears that Hizbullah members are planning to infiltrate the US through its breached southern border with Mexico to carry out attacks.

Alerts: Pakistan & India

5/11/07, Pakistan is preparing its next generation nuclear-capable ballistic missiles for deployment, which will give it the ability to target facilities across most if not all of India, an organisation of American scientists has said.

Alerts: U.S.A.

5/11/07, Worried Congress' support for Iraq is deteriorating rapidly, Baghdad dispatched senior officials to Capitol Hill this week to warn members one-on-one that pulling out U.S. troops would have disastrous consequences.

5/11/07, More than just a detector, the NukAlert™ is a patented personal radiation meter and alarm. Small enough to attach to a key chain, the device operates non-stop, 24/7 and will promptly warn you of the presence of unseen, but acutely dangerous levels of radiation.

5/11/07, With the arrest of a Philadelphia taxi cab driver in the Fort Dix terror plot, authorities are paying closer attention to Muslim cabbies, many of whom are militant believers, WND has learned. Muslims account for the majority of cab drivers in many major U.S. cities – including the nation's capital. And a number of them have ties to terrorism, federal and local authorities say. "If they're not suspects themselves, they pick up suspects at airports and take them to safehouses here," he told WND. "It's a jihadi network."

5/11/07, Contingencies for nuclear terrorist attack, Government working up plan to prevent chaos in wake of bombing of major city. As concerns grow that terrorists might attack a major American city with a nuclear bomb, a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program that would include the building of bomb shelters, steps to prevent panicked evacuations and the possible suspension of some civil liberties. Many experts say the likelihood of al Qaeda or some other terrorist group producing a working nuclear weapon with illicitly obtained weapons-grade fuel is not large, but such a strike would be far more lethal, frightening and disruptive than the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

5/10/07, Australia will boost its defence spending by 10.6 per cent to $18.2 Billion over the next 12 months: Canberra's biggest annual increase in military expenditure in more than 30 years.

5/9/2007, The plan by the United States government to establish an Africa Command (AFRICOM), though still at the consultation stage is already generating controversies. But their resolution would re-define U.S-Africa relations and contribute remarkably to the re-shaping of a new world order.

5/8/07, Six suspected Islamic radicals were detained on Tuesday on charges of plotting to attack the U.S. army base at Fort Dix in New Jersey with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.

5/7/07, An eight-day military training exercise in which the state coordinates with local emergency response officials will begin Thursday and use Terre Haute International Airport-Hulman Field as a forward operating base.That means the airport will initially harbor about 1,500 personnel out of an estimated 3,000 people who will participate in one of the nation’s largest training exercises for a simulated nuclear explosion. In this simulation, a 10-kiloton nuclear device explodes in Indianapolis.

5/7/07, Every week, a group of experts from agencies around the government — including the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Energy Department — meet to assess Washington’s progress toward solving a grim problem: if a terrorist set off a nuclear bomb in an American city, could the United States determine who detonated it and who provided the nuclear material?

5/2/07, Thousands more mid-level enlisted soldiers are leaving the Army than in each of the past two years, forcing the service to increase its use of pay-to-stay programs and find other ways to keep GIs in the fold.

5/2/07, The Romanian parliament has overwhelmingly approved an agreement to let the US station up to 3,000 troops in the formerly communist country.

5/2/07, Moving toward a veto of a war spending bill, President Bush said Tuesday that Democrats who made the legislation a showdown over withdrawing U.S. troops could turn Iraq into a "cauldron of chaos" with their approach.

4/28/07, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey says he wants to accelerate a plan to increase the number of active duty soldiers by 65,000 in five years. Gen. George Casey says he wants those soldiers ready by 2010 instead of 2012.

Alerts: Iran

6/13/07, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said "substantial" quantities of Iranian weapons are finding their way into Afghanistan. Speaking on a visit to Germany, Mr Gates said it was difficult to believe the Iranian government was unaware, given the scale of arms involved.

6/3/07, Iran's president said on Sunday the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a "countdown button" to bring an end to Israel. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map", has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat. "With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said in a speech. "By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future," he said.

5/25/07, Iran's hard-line president warned Israel on Thursday that other nations in the region would "uproot" the Jewish state if it attacked Lebanon in the summer.

5/15/07, Iran should be attacked before it develops nuclear weapons, America's former ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday. John Bolton, who still has close links to the Bush administration, told The Daily Telegraph that the European Union had to "get more serious" about Iran and recognise that its diplomatic attempts to halt Iran's enrichment programme had failed. Iran has "clearly mastered the enrichment technology now...they're not stopping, they're making progress and our time is limited", he said.

5/14/07, Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to the agency’s top officials. The findings may change the calculus of diplomacy in Europe and in Washington,

5/14/07, The Iranian president said Monday Iran will retaliate if the U.S. strikes the country militarily. The Iranian president made a tough response to recent comments by the Vice President Dick Cheney that Washington would prevent the Islamic republic from dominating the Middle East. Ahmadinejad said the Americans had overextended their welcome in the region and were advocating tough actions that reached beyond what their Arab allies wished.

5/13/07, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led a raucous anti-American rally in the United Arab Emirates a day after a low-key visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney there in an attempt to counter Tehran's influence in the region. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering Dubai crowd Sunday that America was to blame for creating instability and robbing the region of its wealth. ''Every time your name is mentioned, hatred builds up.''

5/11/07, North Korea's "debts to Tehran are among the obstacles in the way of cooperation," the official IRNA news agency quoted Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying Friday. "The two countries can find a formula to remove this obstacle." North Korean acting Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il. He added that Iran was still interested in improving ties with North Korea "in the fields of politics, economics and culture" with North Korea.

5/11/07, Vice President Dick Cheney used the deck of an American aircraft carrier just 240 kilometers off Iran's coast as the backdrop Friday to warn the country that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting oil routes or "gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region."

5/9/07, Diplomatic sources said the U.S. military has been bolstering its presence in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in what could mark preparations for air strikes against Iran. The sources said the U.S. Air Force has been particularly active in the Kyrgyz base of Manas near Bishkek.

5/9/07, An Iranian cleric said his country would fire "tens of thousands" of missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program. "Several days ago, the stupid Israeli prime minister said: 'We can attack the Iranian nuclear industry with 10,000 cruise missiles, and delay it for another 10 years.' Our response is that if he is planning to fire 10,000 missiles, we will fire tens of thousands of missiles on Tel Aviv and Israel."

5/4/07, Having repeatedly vowed to "cut off the hand" of any attacker, Iran's president shifted to the leg on Friday to underline his determination to resist Western pressure over its nuclear program. "You, the enemies of the Iranian nation, know that this nation will break the leg of anyone who wants to violate its rights," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in the southeastern province of Kerman.

5/3/07, Iran will not bow to international pressure to halt its nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday, after world powers told Tehran to halt uranium enrichment or face a third round of U.N. sanctions.

5/2/07, Iranian authorities have reportedly arrested the country's former nuclear negotiator on charges of espionage.

5/1/07, Iran will not negotiate with the United States until it stops its "evil approach," the government spokesman was quoted as saying on Tuesday, two days before the two foes were due to attend a meeting on Iraq.

4/26/07, Iran will strike U.S. interests around the world and Israel if attacked over its disputed nuclear program.

4/21/07, A former engineer at the largest U.S. nuclear power plant was arrested on suspicion of taking software codes and using them to download details of plant control rooms and reactors while in Iran

Alerts: Vatican

5/19/07, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demanded Pope Benedict apologize to Indians in Latin America for saying this month in Brazil that the Roman Catholic Church purified them. Chavez, who regularly clashes with the Catholic Church in Venezuela but had not directly criticized the Pope before, accused the Pontiff on Friday of ignoring the "holocaust" that followed Christopher Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas.

5/13/07, Pope Benedict XVI blamed Marxism and unbridled capitalism for Latin America's problems on Sunday, and urged bishops to mold a new generation of Roman Catholic leaders in politics to reverse the church's declining influence in the region.

5/11/07, “In an age so full of hedonism,” Benedict said the world needs clear souls and pure minds, adding: “It is necessary to oppose those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage.”

5/10/07, Pope Benedict XVI urged tens of thousands of young Catholics packing a soccer stadium Thursday to resist the temptations of wealth, power and other "snares of evil," and told them to promote life from "its beginning to natural end."

4/28/07, / The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences says there are seven "signs of the times" which cause concern for the future of international relations.

4/27/07, Pope Benedict XVI is planning to visit New York City for a trip to the United Nations headquarters.

4/15/07, Pope Benedict XVI marked his 80th birthday Sunday with a mass before thousands of worshippers in which he spoke of "darkness" threatening the world in the form of war, oppression and hate.

Alerts: Israel

5/20/07, Jordan's King Abdullah has urged the world to act to end what he described as the continuing suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. "There can be no more delay," he told some 1,000 politicians and businessmen at the World Economic Forum in Jordan. "This suffocating situation has brought poverty, malnutrition, frustration and radicalisation," King Abdullah said. He urged the gathering to prepare investment plans for the "day after peace" in the Middle East.

5/18/07, The US House of Representatives authorized Friday night a sum of $205 million dollars for financing joint US-Israel missile defense system projects, Israel Radio reported. 205 million dollars will go to projects currently being developed in Israeli factories. According to the report, the defense systems are meant to be able to withstand missiles developed by Iran.

5/17/07, A Palestinian working for an aid group was charged Thursday with gathering intelligence on Ehud Olmert as part of a plot to assassinate the Israeli prime minister.

5/17/07, Palestinian medics say four Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip Friday, as Israel continues to retaliate for Hamas rocket attacks. Hamas has launched scores of rockets into southern Israel in recent days, but Israel has vowed to defend itself.

5/16/07, One year from now, Iran could possess the means of producing a nuclear bomb - that was the chilling message delivered by Ambassador Dore Gold during an interview with Ynetnews Tuesday

5/16/07, At least 16 Palestinians were killed in fierce factional fighting in Gaza on Wednesday and Israel launched an air strike on a Hamas compound that killed at least four gunmen.

5/16/07, The international Red Cross has privately accused Israel of reshaping Jerusalem to further its own interests, in violation of international law. A leaked ICRC report says Israeli policy has far-reaching humanitarian consequences for Palestinians living under occupation in East Jerusalem.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, and the territory is regarded as occupied land under international law.

5/16/07, In a new book that "totally contradicts everything that has been accepted to this day" about the Six Day War, two Israeli authors claim that the conflict was deliberately engineered by the Soviet Union to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed.

5/6/07, When Egypt and Syria launched a surprise joint offensive in 1973, many Israelis braced for a fight to the finish. "In 1973, Israel's nuclear option transformed what could have been an existential war into a contained conflict," said Israeli military historian Michael Oren. "A nuclear-armed Iran would risk transforming a contained conflict into a regional and global conflict." While Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has fuelled war fears by urging Israel's elimination and questioning whether the Holocaust happened. The potential for extortion and major regional instability is mind-boggling," the official said. Israeli mistrust will likely grow, given several Arab states' declarations they may pursue civilian nuclear programmes.

4/30/07, Israel's policy of so-called "strategic ambiguity" means that it neither admits nor denies possessing nuclear weapons. Based on Vanunu's revelations more than 20 years ago, nuclear experts concluded that Israel possessed hundreds of warheads, making it the sixth-largest nuclear power in the world.

4/28/07, "Iran's nuclear program can be thrown back by years in a ten day attack using thousands of Tomahawk cruise missiles," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying in an interview published online by the German magazine Focus on Saturday.

4/23/07, Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets and mortar shells toward Israel on Tuesday and said they considered a five-month truce with Israel to have ended.

4/21/07, An Egyptian court convicted an Egyptian-Canadian dual citizen on Saturday of spying for Israel and sentenced him to 15 years in prison, saying he had been "seduced by Satan" into selling out his country.

4/18/07, Syria Threatens War, Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday that Syria is ready for a war with Israel.

4/15/07, On the eve of 2007's Holocaust Memorial Day, a poll showed that 37 percent of Israel's youth feel another Holocaust is possible.

4/5/07, A homemade bomb exploded outside a Jewish community center in Montreal in the middle of Passover week.
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Video: Benjamin Netanyahu on Nuclear Iran

Alerts: Russia

11/24/12, Russia sends ships to Gaza coast in preparation for violence escalation.  The detachment of combat ships of the Black Sea Fleet, including the Guards missile cruiser Moskva, the patrol ship Smetliviy, large landing ships Novocherkassk and Saratov, the sea tug MB-304 and the big sea tanker Ivan Bubnov, got the order to remain in the designated area of the Eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea for a possible evacuation of Russian citizens from the area of the Gaza strip.

6/9/07, Vladimir Putin, whose term as Russian president ends next year, does not rule out running again in 2012, a leading Russian daily reported on Saturday. The future plans of the 54-year-old Putin, by far Russia's most powerful and popular politician, are the hottest topic of the Russian presidential succession.

5/31/07, President Vladimir Putin issued an acerbic warning Thursday to the United States, saying the recent test of a new Russian missile was a direct response to US actions and condemning "imperialism" in world affairs. "Our American partners have quit the ABM Treaty," Putin told reporters after meeting his Greek counterpart, referring to the landmark 1972 US-Soviet treaty limiting the missile defenses of the Cold War superpower foes.

5/29/07, Russian President Vladimir Putin has cautioned against turning Europe into a "powder keg", referring to Washington's plans to deploy elements of its missile defense system in Europe.

5/17/07, Russia on Wednesday launched a $22.5bn claim against a US bank for alleged collaboration in tax evasion, opening a new front in a widening political conflict with the west. The move comes on the eve of a Russia-European summit which itself has been overshadowed by bitter arguments between Moscow and Brussels. Many concede relations between Russia and the west have hit their lowest point since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

5/16/07, A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications. Relations between the Kremlin and the west are at their worst for years, with Russia engaged in bitter disputes not only with Estonia, but with Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Georgia

5/16/07, In a new book that "totally contradicts everything that has been accepted to this day" about the Six Day War, two Israeli authors claim that the conflict was deliberately engineered by the Soviet Union to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed.

5/13/07, Who was President Vladimir Putin talking about when he said the world faces threats to peace like those that led to World War II? Putin’s statement at a Victory Day parade on Red Square on Wednesday was artfully phrased to be both blunt and vague — but political observers have little doubt that one target was the United States.

5/11/07, While this issue has sparked large debate, the dangerous hypocrisy lies in the fact that President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not tackling a much larger neo-Nazi problem at home. According to human rights watchdogs, hate crimes across Russia were up 33 percent year-on-year on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday last month.

5/11/07, Their faces encased in Darth Vaderesque helmets, phalanxes of riot police descend on peaceful demonstrators, swinging their truncheons at anyone opposing President Vladimir Putin's increasingly authoritarian rule.

5/10/07, President Vladimir Putin of Russia obliquely compared the foreign policy of the United States to the Third Reich in a speech Wednesday commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, in an apparent escalation of anti-American rhetoric within the Russian government.

5/6/07, The pursuit of science in President Vladimir Putin's Russia is driven by profit alone and there was less government interference even under Josef Stalin, a Russian Nobel Prize winner said in a interview.

5/2/07, Journalists will mark World Press Freedom Day on 3 May amid growing concern about what campaigners say is a continuing global decline in media freedoms. Russia is again singled out, as a country whose government is allegedly taking aggressive measures to curb media freedom.

5/2/07, Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Bush he could not account for all of Moscow's nuclear weapons at the same time al Qaeda was seeking to purchase three Russian nuclear devices on the black market, former CIA Director George J. Tenet said.

5/1/07, Mankind's second race for the moon took on a distinctly Cold War feel yesterday when the Russian space agency accused its old rival Nasa of rejecting a proposal for joint lunar exploration.

4/29/07, The head of Russia's space agency Sunday said the US has rebuffed an offer from Moscow to jointly explore the moon, while announcing a separate contract with NASA for nearly one billion dollars for the International Space Station.

4/27/07, President Vladimir Putin on Friday renewed criticism of U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe, saying Russia would take "appropriate measures" to counter the system.

4/26/07, President Vladimir Putin charged Thursday that foreigners seeking to thwart Russia's resurgence are increasingly interfering in its affairs.

4/26/07, A row between the United States and Russia over U.S. plans to build a missile shield in eastern Europe escalated on Thursday when President Vladimir declared a moratorium on a key European arms treaty.

4/22/07, Russia’s largest independent radio news network: opposition leaders will not be mentioned on the air and the United States is to be portrayed as an enemy.

4/20/07, Trust between the EU and Russia has reached its lowest level since the end of the Cold War, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has warned.

4/14/07, In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack upon one of their most politically 'connected', and legendary, radio hosts named Don Imus after his threats to release information relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks upon that country.

4/14/07, Riot police beat and detained protesters as thousands defied an official ban and attempted to stage a rally Saturday against President Putin's government, which opponents accuse of rolling back freedoms Russians have enjoyed since the end of Soviet communism.

4/14/07, Pakistan and Russia pledged to boost economic ties and signed two cooperation agreements.

4/13/07, Russia's parliament alleged on Friday that the United States was helping train radical political groups which threatened the country's stability.

4/13/07, Billionaire Boris Berezovsky said he's helping to plan a revolution in Russia to overthrow President Vladimir Putin.

4/12/07, Deployment of U.S. missile-defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic is an attempt by the U.S. to control Europe, the former Soviet president said Thursday. "It is all about influence and domination in Europe," Mikhail Gorbachev said. "I believe it is wrong that America did not even bother to consult its NATO allies." Asked how Russia could respond to these plans, he only said: "Time will show."

4/12/07, The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday expressed its annoyance to Tehran over an Iranian air defense exercise near a Russian-built nuclear plant.

Alerts: China

11/24/12, The Philippines' top diplomat has told the country's future military leaders that they must stand their ground in any territorial disputes with China.  China has enraged several neighbors with a map printed in its newly revised passports that show it staking its claim on the entire South China Sea.

6/15/07, New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.

6/13/07, China is seeking to unseat the United States as the dominant power in cyberspace, a U.S. Air Force general leading a new push in this area said Wednesday. "They're the only nation that has been quite that blatant about saying, 'We're looking to do that,"' 8th Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Robert Elder told reporters.

6/10/07, For almost six decades, U.S. military power has frustrated the ambition of China's ruling Communist Party to unite Taiwan with the mainland. With this U.S. security blanket in place, Beijing has been largely powerless to prevent the prosperous, self-governing island from becoming independent in all but name. But, an increasingly wealthy China is now building a military force tailored specifically to challenge any attempt by the United States to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan, Western and Chinese military analysts say.

5/25/07, China's modernizing military will make it a more muscular player in world events, a U.S. Defense Department report says. China's developing capabilities "will increase Beijing's options for military coercion to press diplomatic advantage, advance interests or resolve disputes," the Pentagon says in its annual report to Congress on China.

5/16/07, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has rejected criticism that his country is only interested in Africa because of its huge wealth of raw materials. He told a meeting of the African Development Bank in Shanghai that China was committed to helping the continent develop socially and economically.

5/16/07, North Korea is developing a new long-range ballistic missile that may be capable of hitting the U.S. territory of Guam, a Japanese official said Wednesday.

5/11/07, The new head of the U.S. Pacific Command said on Saturday that China's anti-satellite test sent a "confusing signal" about its military intentions, adding he would push for deeper exchange and openness between the countries' forces. China's military modernization and expanding defense budget have been a source of friction with the United States. "They're getting better. The equipment, the hardware that China's fielding, is improving."

5/10/07, Jurors on Thursday convicted a Chinese-born engineer of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China, including data on an electronic propulsion system that could make submarines virtually undetectable.

5/8/07, U.S. fish farms may have been given meal laced with melamine, expanding an investigation that already has found the industrial chemical in food for pets, pigs and chickens, officials said on Tuesday. China shipped tainted ingredients to Canada, which produced fish meal that was later sold to several fish farms in the United States.

5/8/07, China acknowledged on Tuesday that two Chinese companies had illegally exported contaminated wheat gluten and rice protein for pet food blamed for a spate of animal deaths in the United States.

5/8/07, China and Russia are supplying arms to Sudan that are being used to fuel the violence in the Darfur region in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, a human rights group said in a report Tuesday. China and Russia quickly rejected the report and Sudan's government said it was "not justified."

4/24/07, China has increased its presence in Africa in recent years in a hunt for oil and other natural resources to feed its rapidly growing economy. Its forays into areas considered politically unstable, however, has exposed Chinese workers to attacks.

4/13/07, Surgeons in Taiwan have reattached a vet's arm, after it was bitten off by a crocodile as he gave it an anaesthetic.

4/11/07, China's use of a missile to destroy a satellite in January put vital U.S. national-security satellites at risk, the top U.S. Air Force general said.