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"We've been consulting broadly throughout the region for two and a half years now and I think in the coming weeks we'll announce our vision. And hopefully the world... will see that as a building block, a basis on which to move forward." Peace in the Middle East is "a difficult problem, one that ultimately those two peoples will have to resolve for themselves, but we've worked hard on that".Pompeo's comments come in the wake of the unexpected resignation on 3 September of US President Donald Trump's adviser on the Middle East, and one of the key architects of the "deal of the century", Jason Greenblatt. Greenblatt is an Orthodox Jew from Teaneck, New Jersey, one of the most Jewish communities in the United States, and attended Yeshiva University before obtaining his law degree from NYU.
The US Navy test-fired a volley of decades-old Trident II nuclear missiles, proving they can still fly days after a top official said the upgrade of bombs and warheads was lagging, and Russia offered to sell US some of its tech.See also:
The USS Nebraska, an Ohio-class missile submarine, fired two missiles on Wednesday and another two on Friday, the Navy confirmed. All four missiles splashed into the target area off the Pacific island of Guam.
The Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile was designed to last through 2024, but was recently refurbished to last into the 2040s, the Navy said. Their W76 warheads were recently upgraded as well.
The modernization push, outlined under the Obama administration but embraced with enthusiasm by President Donald Trump in 2017, is a 30-year project affecting the entire US atomic arsenal, with an estimated cost of $1.5 trillion. In addition to upgrading the missiles and warheads, the US is also developing a new stealth bomber and a long-range air-to-ground standoff missile.
US politicians may not be concerned about the cost of this kind of endeavor, even with a national debt of $22 trillion and the Pentagon budget bloating up to $750 billion a year, but Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be. Earlier this week, Putin offered - perhaps jokingly - to sell hypersonic weapons to the US to "even things out," quipping that this was preferable to the Pentagon wasting billions of US taxpayer dollars attempting to develop the technology independently.
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