Headlines

• House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, Rep. Peter King and Rep. Ron DeSantis announced the probe after alleged FBI unconfirmed reports about Russian nuclear officials engaging in bribery and spying schemes ahead of the deal

Washington DC, Oct.24.– A pair of House committees are opening a probe into a uranium deal involving a Russian company approved during the Obama administration.

A confidential informant came forward, sparking the House intelligence and oversight committees to look at whether there was an FBI investigation into the deal, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Tuesday.

Kyodo, Oct.10.– Nearly 40 percent of ruling Liberal Democratic Party candidates  planning to run in the Oct. 22 general election support U.S. military action against North Korea if nuclear and missile issues cannot be resolved peacefully, a recent Kyodo News survey showed.

The survey, released Sunday, also showed that 72.5 percent of candidates expected to run on the ticket of the newly formed Kibo no To (Party of Hope) led by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike are against amending Japan’s pacifist Constitution while Shinzo Abe remains prime minister.

Barcelona, Oct.9.– Pressure mounted on Monday against Catalan plans to declare independence after hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied to defend Spanish unity.

The protests followed days of soaring tensions after police cracked down on voters during a banned 1 October Catalan independence referendum, prompting separatist leaders to warn they would unilaterally break away from Spain in days.

Terrorism, oil, the crisis in Iraq, the Syrian civil war and geopolitics all weigh against the birth of a new Kurdish state.  

The recent referendum for the independence of Kurdistan, only applies to the white region (Basûr) in the map

Oct. 4.– The Kurds have been scourged by history (as well as by British and French imperial designs, with their 1920s “peace to end all peace,” as David Fromkin termed it in his remarkable 1989 book).

In drawing up the borders that followed the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, despite earlier promises, left them stateless, split between Turkey, Syria, Iran and the – by now – fictitious country that is Iraq. But the stability of the latter has become crucial to the entire region.