The United States and China agreed on Wednesday to move ahead with a UN resolution against North Korea following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test earlier this month. US Secretary of State John Kerry, who arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, said a nuclear-armed North Korea poses a "threat to the world."

Speaking to reporters after talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Kerry said that both sides agreed on the need for a "strong resolution" against North Korea. The top US diplomat said that limiting the trade of goods and services across China's border with North Korea was one potential measure. However, Wang said that while China supported the need for a new resolution, it "should not provoke new tension in the situation, still less destabilize the Korean peninsula."

Wang also said his country will not back new sanctions against Pyongyang. Experts say China is concerned about destabilizing North Korea, fearing that millions of North Korean refugees could flow into China if the regime collapsed.


Before Wednesday's meeting, the official Xinhua news agency issued a commentary blaming the US's "uncompromising hostility" and "Cold War mentality" for the situation on the Korean peninsula.

Wang and Kerry's meeting, which lasted for nearly five hours, also addressed the strategically vital South China Sea amid rising tensions in the disputed waters.

The French justice minister has stepped down in protest at the government's controversial plan to strip convicted French-born terrorists of their citizenship if they have a second nationality. Christiane Taubira announced her resignation in a tweet on Wednesday, saying, "Sometimes to resist means staying, sometimes resisting means leaving." The minister from French Guiana became France's most senior black politician when she was named to the portfolio in 2012.

Taubira's resignation came just hours before a parliament commission debate on the contentious proposal, including a range of measures for convicted terrorists that would go from depriving them of the right to vote and the right to become a civil servant, to revoking their citizenship.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls reassured that France would respect its obligations under international law preventing people from becoming stateless. Taubira had criticized the plan, calling it discriminatory and useless in preventing the radicalization of French citizens. Jean-Jacques Urvoas, the president of parliamentary committee in charge of reviewing the legislation, was named as the new justice minister.

Following the Paris attacks, France has been under a state of emergency, giving authorities extra powers to keep people in their homes without trial and search houses without judicial approval.

He came, he saw, and he pocketed all the deals that matter. Chinese President Xi Jinping's tour of Southwest Asia - Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt - could easily be sold anywhere as your typical Chinese-style win-win.

On the PR arena, Xi did a sterling job polishing China's image as a global power. Beijing scored diplomatically on all counts, obtaining several more layers of energy security (over half of China's oil come from the Persian Gulf) while expanding its export markets and trade relations overall.

In Iran, Xi oversaw the signing of 17 politico-economic agreements alongside Iran's President Hassan Rouhani. Yet another diplomatic coup: Xi was the second leader of a UN Security Council member country to visit Tehran after the nuclear deal struck in Vienna last summer; the first was President Putin, in November. Note the crucial Russia-China-Iran interaction.

To make it absolutely clear, Xi issued a statement just before arriving in Tehran, confirming Beijing's support for Iran to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). That will solidify for good the key strategic partnership trio working for future Eurasia integration.

Robert Gates, a Republican stalwart and former US defence secretary who served under eight presidents, has derided the party's election candidates for a grasp of national security issues that "would embarrass a middle schooler".

An ex-CIA director who first joined the White House under Richard Nixon, Gates joked that if frontrunner Donald Trump wins the presidency, he would emigrate to Canada. He condemned the media for failing to challenge candidates from both parties on promises he believes are unaffordable, illegal or unconstitutional.

"The level of dialogue on national security issues would embarrass a middle schooler," Gates said of the Republican contenders at a Politico Playbook event in Washington on Monday. "People are out there making threats and promises that are totally unrealistic, totally unattainable. Either they really believe what they're saying or they're cynical and opportunistic and, in a way, you hope it's the latter, because God forbid they actually believe some of the things that they're saying."

Gates is among Republican elders dismayed by the way this year's campaign is unfolding, with establishment figures such as Jeb Bush, whose father he served as director of central intelligence, failing to gain traction against mavericks with unusual prescriptions for keeping America safe.

Iran has warned a US warship that it should leave an area in the Sea of Oman, where the Iranian navy is holding a major military exercise.

After the Islamic Republic's navy warned the vessel it quickly left the area, according to Tasnim news agency.

The tactical phase of the Velayat-94 war games kicked off Wednesday in a 3 million-square kilometer area of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, the Tasnim news agency reported. Tehran is testing its submarines, destroyers and coastal missile batteries as well as communications and electronic warfare stations.

"The maneuvers aim to show Iranian forces' strength both in ensuring security on the seas and in defending the country's sea borders in the Hormuz Strait, the Sea of Oman and the north of the Indian Ocean," Rear-Admiral Habibollah Sayyari was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

The drill comes shortly after the successful resolution of a diplomatic conflict between the US and Iran over two US Navy boats, which entered Iranian territorial waters and were detained by the Revolutionary Guards' navy.

The 10 American sailors were briefly released as Tehran confirmed that a navigational error was to blame for the incident.

Poland's new ultra-nationalist government is sharpening the European Union's internal problems. Just as EU leaders are warning that the bloc is in danger of collapse from internal tensions, the ascendant Eurosceptic Poles are pushing contradictions to the limits. In an attempt to ease the EU strain, the US-led NATO alliance is being called upon to mollify Poland's anti-EU government. However, in mitigating the EU's «Poland problem», the consequence will mean more NATO aggression towards Russia.

When Poland's new President Andrzej Duda was received in Brussels this week there was a palpable sense of strained relations with the 28-member EU bloc. The EU announced that it was going ahead with a formal inquiry into fresh laws enacted earlier this month by the ruling Justice and Law (PiS) party. The party came to power in Polish elections last October on a platform of anti-EU rhetoric and socially conservative policies, propelled by Poland's largely Catholic electorate.

The new Polish laws in question allow Duda's government to sack or appoint senior managers of the country's publicly owned media networks and also to weaken the constitutional court. The latter is seen as a move towards giving the ruling party more power to enact its brand of conservative policies. The EU formal probe into Poland's new laws will determine if they contravene the bloc's «democratic standards». More Brussels-Warsaw confrontation is on the way.

At least 22 people have been killed and over a hundred wounded in two terrorist blasts in a residential area of the Syrian city of Homs, state TV reported. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack.

According to provincial Governor Talal al-Barazi, two explosions occurred with a difference of a few minutes in the residential area of Al-Zahra. He said at first a car stuffed with explosives was blown up, parked in a densely populated quarter, then almost on the same spot a suicide bomber blew himself up.

Barazi said "the aim of the terrorists was the checkpoint of the Syrian security forces." He added that "among the dead there were several on duty policemen at the checkpoint, but most of the victims are civilians."

The explosions have caused damage to residential buildings and infrastructure of the neighborhood, SANA correspondent reported.

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the attack. According to Reuters, the terrorist group said in an online statement that one of its fighters drove a car loaded with explosives to a security checkpoint in the Al-Zahra neighborhood and blew himself up.

Late last month two terrorist attacks hit the Al-Zahra area, killing 19 civilians and injuring over 40.

The recent Telegraph exclusive publishing specious claims by 'anonymous US sources' that Russia is covertly 'undermining EU unity', specifically by conducting "Kremlin influence operations" and infiltrating political parties, is the latest in a long line of hysterical nonsense from the self-styled 'exceptional' rulers of the world. Can you believe the gall of these idiots? Their lies are so obvious, you can only shake your head at how desperate they have become.

By the time we came of age, the paranoid insanity of the "Red Menace" had long become something to look back and cringe at. 'Russian spies dividing Europe' was the hallmark of a Cold War in which every subversive (and often violent) act of US foreign policy was justified because 'the Russians are doing it'. The US has been, and is, infiltrating various European political parties - and even Russian ones - via its Orwellian "Non-Governmental Organizations", spreading US influence and buying politicians who will be subservient to the Empire. And that's just the 'soft power' stuff. There's also a sordid history of overthrowing governments, rigging elections, bribing (and even assassinating) leaders - and it's an unbroken chain right up to the 2014 overthrow of the Yanukovich government in Kiev. So it is rather galling to see the US State Department accusing others of doing something for which it is infamous.

The Telegraph article is itself an example of the Western elites doing what they accuse the Russians of doing. Not only are these Anglo-American hypocrites spreading false information, in the process they are projecting what they are doing onto the Russians, whose 'crime' is to take an independent stance on certain global issues. Others have already ripped the claims to shreds, so we just want to draw your attention to a couple of points.

Here we have a British 'newspaper of repute' (one that is notorious for operating as an arm of British intelligence) announcing that American intelligence will conduct a "major investigation" - led by US Director of National Intelligence James "not willfully" Clapper - into the Kremlin's 'infiltration' and alleged secret funding of European political parties over the last decade. Additionally, The Telegraph informs us, Washington is "becoming concerned about" Moscow's alleged efforts to undermine NATO, block US missile defense and undo the Western sanctions imposed on Russia after it rescued Crimea from Ukraine's deadly embrace with Western 'civilization'.

Russia has good reasons to consider NATO a threat, according to a Polish member of the European Parliament.

It's Washington that keeps positioning its troops closer and closer to Moscow and not vice versa, Polish MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke pointed out.

He also criticized the actions of the Polish Law and Justice (PiS), Poland's ruling political party, which actively promotes establishing a NATO military presence in the country. According to Korwin-Mikke, the Polish government's policies remind him of those of pre-WWII Poland, which, as it became apparent in September 1939, ultimately proved to be rather reckless and dangerous.

In the past 14 years, Washington's road to the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa has been littered with banana peels; although the Pentagon's strategy has yielded nothing but disaster in the regions, it seems the White House is unwilling to change its foreign policy, Peter Van Buren notes.

The prospect of America continuing its military involvement in the Middle East and putting more "boots on the ground" is a recipe for disaster, not a solution to a problem like Daesh (Islamic State/ISIL) according to Peter Van Buren, a US author and 24-year veteran of the US State Department.

"Time to remind him or her [US presidential candidates] that Washington's war on terror strategy has already sent at least $1.6 trillion down the drain, and left thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Muslims dead. Along the way we lost precious freedoms to the ever-expanding national security state," Van Buren writes in a recent article for his WeMeantWell.com site.