Patrick deHahn
I'm a "rising star in journalism," as seen in HuffPo.
Have a question or a tip? Please submit here.
I'd love to work for you. Email me.
I also tweet a lot. Tweet tweet.
The battle to keep Tibetans under control is inflicting severe psychological damage on Chinese armed police, an internal training document has revealed.
Give it a read, it’s rather quite interesting.
An op-ed from a hunger striker Guantánamo Bay, sharing details on his case and his force feedings, citing that “the situation is desperate now.”
Cyber attacks and cyber espionage have supplanted terrorism as the top threats to the United States in an annual “worldwide threat” assessment released on Tuesday by the U.S. intelligence community.
However, in testimony prepared for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, played down the likelihood of catastrophic attacks on the United States by either cyber attackers or foreign or domestic militants in the immediate future.
In what has become an annual ritual, Clapper presented to the Senate panel a 34-page paper that ran through a wide variety of threats covered by U.S. intelligence agencies.
From reuters:
North Korea threatened on Tuesday to scrap an armistice that ended the 1950-53 civil war and sever a military “hotline” with the United States if South Korea and Washington pressed on with two-month-long war games.
It was a notable sharpening in the North’s often bellicose rhetoric and followed word from U.N. diplomats that the United States and China had struck a tentative deal on a draft U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution that would punish North Korea for its third nuclear test, which it conducted last month.
“We will completely nullify the Korean armistice,” the North’s KCNA news agency said, quoting the Korean People’s Army (KPA) Supreme Command spokesman.
Read on: North Korea threatens to scrap armistice ending war
Per @BSyria, the area viewed here in Raqqa, “the square was bombed and casualties were reported” just after the statue of Hafez al-Assad fell.
Video of the Hafez al-Assad statue falling in Raqqa of Syria today.
From reuters:
Iran said on Wednesday it had started installing a new generation of machines for enriching uranium, an announcement likely to annoy the West and complicate efforts to resolve a decade-old dispute over its nuclear program.
It came on the day the U.N. nuclear watchdog began talks in Tehran to try to advance a long-stalled investigation into suspected military dimensions of the program.
Iran had already told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it planned to introduce new IR2-m centrifuges to its main enrichment plant near the central town of Natanz - a step that could significantly speed up its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to develop a nuclear weapon.
Read on: Iran says it has begun upgrading uranium centrifuges
From reuters:
North Korea has told its key ally, China, that it is prepared to stage one or even two more nuclear tests this year in an effort to force the United States into diplomatic talks with Pyongyang, said a source with direct knowledge of the message.
Further tests could also be accompanied this year by another rocket launch, said the source who has direct access to the top levels of government in both Beijing and Pyongyang.
The isolated regime conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday, drawing global condemnation and a stern warning from the United States that it was a threat and a provocation.
“It’s all ready. A fourth and fifth nuclear test and a rocket launch could be conducted soon, possibly this year,” the source said, adding that the fourth nuclear test would be much larger than the third at an equivalent of 10 kilotons of TNT.
Read on: North Korea tells China of preparations for fresh nuclear test
“A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of al-Qaida or ‘an associated force’ — even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.”
