Saudi warplanes hit the positions of the forces allied with the Saudi-led coalition in Southern Yemen, and killed a large number of militants loyal to fugitive former President Mansour Hadi, in what has come to be known as "routine" shooting and bombing of friendly troops by Saudi forces.

Tens of pro-Hadi militias were killed in the Saudi fighter jets' air raid on their positions in the town of Sabr al-Mavadem in Ta'iz province in Southern Yemen, the Arabic-language media quoted eyewitnesses as saying.

In a similar incident on November 17, the Saudi warplanes killed scores of militias loyal to Mansour Hadi.

Also on October 18, the Saudi fighter jets killed 30 pro-Hadi militants in Ta'iz province.

Also on August 10, the Saudi fighter jets killed 20 other friendly militias from pro-Hadi militant groups.

In a similar incident on July 28, Saudi Arabia killed 15 pro-Hadi militants. Saudi fighter jets conducted airstrikes on hills overlooking the al-Anad air base near the city of al-Houta, located about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the strategic Southern port city of Aden, leaving 15 militants dead and at least 40 others wounded.

Kuwait is ready to send an artillery battalion to protect Saudi Arabia against cross-border incursions by Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Qabas reported.

Kuwait is part of the anti-Houthi coalition in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, which wants to bring back to power ousted President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who fled from the Shiite insurgents in January.

"Kuwait decided on the participation of its ground forces, represented by an artillery battalion, in operations to strike at positions of Houthi aggression against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," the newspaper wrote on Tuesday, citing an informed source.

Petro Poroshenko will inspect employees of his administration and other senior officials. "The great purge" is scheduled for the coming summer. The procedure shall take place in accordance with the law "regarding the cleansing of power". This was reported on the website of the Ukrainian President.

It is already known who Poroshenko decided to check first: the President's press Secretary, assistants and advisers, and a representative of the Ukrainian President on Crimea and its deputies, and also head of Secretariat of National tripartite social and economic Council and Chairman of the National service of mediation and reconciliation.

A US aircraft carrier came within about 1,500 yards of Iranian rockets in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, US military officials said.


As the USS Harry S. Truman was transiting the strait, which connects the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were conducting a live-fire exercise, officials told NBC News.

The Truman reportedly was being escorted through the strait by a US destroyer and a French frigate. Other commercial traffic was in the area as well.

International Military Review - Syria-Iraq battlespace (Dec. 29)

I'm feeling more and more in recent months that, as difficult as it may be to believe, our world is moving away from seemingly endless wars. Make no mistake, we haven't seen the end of wars at all. The dynamic and the war energy is changing, however. Not without a frenzy of self-conceit does the so-called Western World throw forks, china, pots, pans, rolling pins - anything it can get its bloody hands on - like a spoiled child throwing a gargantuan temper-tantrum. It tries to deny this reality over which it has less control by the second. The world is moving away from wars, from an, if-you-will, patriarchal psychosis of control - a matrix of fear, shame, guilt, rage, hate. What is beginning to emerge in what we in the West have egoistically termed the East, is construction, building new great projects to uplift a sector of mankind ignored for more that a thousand years. This transformative positive motion is what, if anything, will save our humankind from the mass death and destruction some in the West so devoutly wish for us.

I want to illustrate this with recent developments out of what was centuries ago called in Chinese, "zhōngguó" or "the center of civilization." It may well become that again if present trends with China, Russia and other Eurasian nations continue.

China is moving forward with an impressive array of major international infrastructure projects, including with Russia and the other states of the Eurasian Economic Union, even on to the European Union. Beijing is, with customary Chinese speed, linking its economy by land and by sea lanes to all Eurasia, from the East China Sea to the Black Sea, from the Malacca Strait to the Gulf of Finland, to Piraeus in the eastern Mediterranean.

The origin of jihadism is prohibited from being reported truthfully - this truth is prohibited by all of the Establishment 'press,' including almost all 'alternative news' sites - in the West, because it challenges all of the «sensitive» buttons (all of the bigotries, to put the matter in plain terms); and, though this fact (the Establishment's bigotries, and its hypocrisy to preserve and protect the bigotries even while condemning them) will prevent almost all of the news-media that I send this to from publishing it, nothing prevents me from writing it; so, here that is (in whatever media turn out to be gutsy enough to publish this Western cultural and political samizdat):

First, here's what the origin of jihadism isn't: It's not the «Arab-Israeli conflict», nor is jihadism a response to the West's support of the barbarous way that Israel's apartheid government (and the vast majority of Israel's Jews) treat, and historically have treated, Palestinians. Even without that Israeli-Jewish barbarism and its support by Western countries, jihadism would exist, not much different than it today is.

In order to understand where jihadism really comes from, what's necessary first is to understand the relationship that the Sauds, who are the royal family of Saudi Arabia, have with their clergy, who are the Wahhabist Islamic preachers, a relationship between the aristocracy and clergy in that area, which began in 1744, and which was subsequently combined with the oil-for-weapons trade and an alliance with the United States, that began in 1945, and that then was ignited by the petrodollar after Richard Nixon's de-dollarization of gold in 1973. That's what laid the ground for it.

Iraqi security sources disclosed on Tuesday that the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group has received military aid and other supplies dropped by unknown planes near the city of Kirkuk, Northern Iraq.

"After the US army's special heliborne operations in Southwestern Kirkuk, unknown planes dropped military supplies and other aids for the ISIL in the Southern part of Kirkuk," an Iraqi security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told FNA on Tuesday.

The official did not disclose more details about the identity of the planes, but said that it might have been US or Turkish.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law regulating legal protection of a foreign state and its property in the Russian Federation, and the text of the document has been posted on the official website of legal information.

Russian legislation is currently based on the concept of absolute immunity, which means that the property of a foreign state is not arrested and a court ruling against it is not enforced.

The law for the first time sets the limits of immunity for foreign states and their property in the Russian Federation and defines cases when the state and its property do not enjoy jurisdictional immunity.

The document has been developed in line with modern approaches and court practice of foreign states, and its adoption will boost the efficiency of judicial protection of Russia's interests and property when considering disputes.

Journalist Seymour Hersh's new report on contradictions between President Obama and the US military regarding rebels in Syria was a bombshell. Hersh spoke with RT about the US military's view of Syria's Bashar Assad and Obama's relationship with Turkey.

Writing for the London Review of Books, Hersh reported that, in a classified document from Summer 2013, the highest echelons of the US military establishment outlined their opposition to the Obama administration's strategy of arming so-called "moderate" rebels to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. From 2013 to September 2015, in an effort to truly counter extremists in Syria, US military leaders fed US intelligence to Russia, Germany, and Israel, which then sent it to Assad, he reported.