Global Issues and Updates

The killing of a top Kashmiri commander and his comrade by New Delhi forces has sparked massive protests and violent clashes across the Indian-controlled  Himalayan  valley. Police spokesman Manoj Pandita said on Tuesday that Abu Dujana, of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)  militant  group, was gunned down with an accomplice during a pre-dawn operation in Pulwama district, which is located to the south of the region's summer capital Srinagar. Police Inspector-General Muneer Ahmed Khan confirmed that the two were killed after troops cordoned off on a tip the southern village of Hakripora during the early hours of Tuesday. The two trapped people fired at the Indian troops, triggering a  gunfight  that  lasted  at least two hours, Khan said. Dujana, who had orchestrated several attacks against Indian forces in southern Kashmir, had a  cash reward  of 1.5 million rupees (about $23,400) on his head. Read more...

As Trump reissues his  “lock her up”  talk against Hillary Clinton and assaults the Justice Department, FBI, and media, the Brennan Center recently had a prescient meeting about what to do if President Trump uses some pretext to launch a state of emergency. The room was full of lawyers from past administrations and Congress who had dealt with just this sort of legal issue. Read more...

GETTY Mr Trump was highly critical of past presidents, accusing them of allowing the country to “make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade yet they do nothing for us with North Korea”. He added: “We will no longer allow this to continue. China could easily solve this problem!” But Beijing retorted that the problem did not arise in China and that all sides need to work together to find a solution. China is North Korea's closest ally, but Beijing has expressed its anger over despot Kim Jong-Un’s continued nuclear and missile tests. And the eastern bloc has also become increasingly frustrated with American and Japanese criticism that it should do more to rein in the tyrants. The hermit Read more...

(CNN) Chinese President Xi Jinping has emphasized the Communist Party's control over the military as he prepares for a key leadership reshuffle later this year. Speaking Tuesday at Beijing's Great Hall of the People on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Xi said the military should "carry forward and implement the Party's absolute leadership." "As comrade Mao Zedong once pointed out, our principle is to have the Party command the military, not the military command the Party," Xi said. His words came after a major display of military force Sunday in a grand parade at a base in Inner Mongolia, on China's northern border, in which 12,000 troops, and more than Read more...

At a parade touting  Beijing's massive military might  on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army, China rolled out it's newest intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-31AG. Unlike the DF-31 before it, the DF-31AG boasts a range extended to above 6,800 miles, which means that most of the continental US is in range,  according to the Center for International and Strategic Studies . Read more...