Threats from countries like Russia and North Korea remain real, British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday.

"Threats from countries such as Russia and North Korea remain very real," she said.

"We need to be prepared to deter threats to our lives and our livelihoods and those of generations who are yet to be born," the prime minister added.

British lawmakers are currently considering the issue of modernizing the nuclear shield, which provides for the creation of a new submarine fleet equipped with the Trident missile systems.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plane was in the crosshairs of coup plotters' fighter jets while en route to Istanbul, Reuters reports. The incident happened as Erdogan was heading back from a holiday resort during the recent attempted military coup.

According to a former military officer cited by Reuters, "At least two F-16s harassed Erdogan's plane while it was in the air and en route to Istanbul." The officer, who reportedly has knowledge of the events, went on to say that "they locked their radars on his plane and on two other F-16s protecting him."


However, the Turkish president's plane reached its destination undamaged before dawn on Saturday. "Why they didn't fire is a mystery," the former official added. A senior Turkish official confirmed to Reuters that the incident took place. Another official is quoted as saying that Erdogan's plane had "trouble in the air," without providing further details.

Erdogan also reportedly said that the coup plotters had bombed places in the coastal town of Marmaris, where he had been staying, shortly after he left, as reported by Reuters. CNN Turk reported that some 25 soldiers descended from a helicopter while trying to capture the Turkish president at a Marmaris hotel. "[Erdogan] evaded death by minutes," Reuters quotes the second senior Turkish official as saying.

The same official told Reuters that Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was also directly targeted in Istanbul during the coup attempt but managed to escape.

The decision to deploy the American ABM system in South Korea triggered a negative reaction in the Northeast Asia. Despite Park Geun-hye's assurances that this measure was taken solely for the protection of South Korea and its population, and that THAAD ABM systems do not infringe upon the security of the neighboring countries, the reaction of the latter was far from approval.

The response of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was quite predictable. According to the statement issued by the General Staff of the Korean People's Army and published on Monday by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang will "take the most decisive physical countermeasures". North Korean armed forces "are capable of taking harsh and strong countermeasures" to stop the U.S. from unleashing a war by deploying THAAD ABM system. The statement also contains an overworked threat to turn South Korea into "a sea of fire."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation made a resolute remark commenting on the situation, "We have been consistently warning that this decision would prove hazardous," but its warning was disregarded. THAAD deployment "undermines the strategic balance established both in and beyond the Asian-Pacific Region" and is capable of "whipping up tension in the region, which will make resolution of the complicated situation on the Korean Peninsula, including its denuclearization, ever more challenging."

The head of the French General Directorate for Internal Security Patrick Calvar warns that the country is "on the verge of a civil war" due to the influx of Islamic migrants followed by a wave of horrific terror attacks. French President Francois Hollande faces stern criticism for his feckless response to the growing wave of Islamic migrants and the horrors of terrorism that have followed in their wake leading not only to a resurgence of the far-right nationalism within the country, but also leading members of his own cabinet to question whether he is overseeing the descent of France into a bloody civil war.

That was the warning provided by the nation's top security official, Patrick Calvar, in the wake of the Nice terror attack that left 84 people dead with over 300 others wounded when Tunisian born Daesh terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhel drove a 19-tonne cargo truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day - the country's national holiday of independence and liberation marking the French Revolution.

Yet, this is not the first time that Calvar has made this dreary projection for the future of France. Rather the security official has turned out to be quite prescient providing the same warning to the French parliament on July 12, 2015 - months after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, but long before horror descended upon the Bataclan Theater in Paris on November 13, 2015 and the city of Nice in the past week.

Strangely, amid the spike in racial tensions after the killing of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, and of five white police officers by a black sharpshooter in Dallas, one American reality has gone unmentioned. The U.S. has been fighting wars -- declared, half-declared, and undeclared -- for almost 15 years and, distant as they are, they've been coming home in all sorts of barely noted ways. In the years in which the U.S. has up-armored globally, the country has also seen an arms race developing on the domestic front. As vets have returned from their Iraq and Afghan tours of duty, striking numbers of them have gone into police work at a time when American weaponry, vehicles, and military equipment -- including, for instance, MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles) -- have poured off America's distant battlefields and, via the Pentagon, into police departments nationwide. And while the police were militarizing, gun companies have been marketing battlefield-style assault rifles to Americans by the millions, at the very moment when it has become ever more possible for citizens to carry weapons of every sort in a concealed or open fashion in public.

The result in Dallas: Micah Johnson, a disturbed Army Reserves veteran, who spent a tour of duty in Afghanistan and practiced military tactics in his backyard, armed with an SKS semi-automatic assault rifle, wearing full body armor, and angry over police killings of black civilians, took out those five white officers. One of them was a Navy vet who had served three tours of duty in Iraq and another a former Marine who had trained local police for DynCorp, a private contractor, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, civilian protesters, also armed with assault rifles (quite legal in the streets of Dallas), scattered as the first shots rang out and were, in some cases, taken in by the police as suspects. And at least two unarmed protesters were wounded by Johnson. (Think of that, in his terms, as "collateral damage.") In the end, he would be killed by a Remotec Andros F5 robot, built by weapons-maker Northrop Grumman, carrying a pound of C4 plastic explosive, and typical of robots that police departments now possess.

In other words, this incident was capped by the first use of deadly force by a drone in the United States. Consider that a war-comes-home upping of the ante. Already, reports the Defense One website, makers of military-grade robots -- a burgeoning field for the Pentagon -- are imagining other ways to employ such armed bots not only on our distant battlefields but at home in a future in which they will be "useful, cheap, and ubiquitous," and capable of Tasing as well as killing.

Of course, among the many things that have also come home from the country's wars, Predator and Reaper drones are now flying over "the homeland" on missions for the Pentagon, not to mention the FBI, the Border Patrol, and other domestic agencies. So the future stage is set. Once you've used any kind of drone in the U.S. to kill by remote control, it's only logical -- given some future extreme situation -- to extend that use to the skies and so consider firing a missile at some U.S. target, as the CIA and the Air Force have been doing regularly for years in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. And of course, in our domestic arms race, with small drones commercially available to anyone and the first of them armed (no matter the rudimentary nature of that armament), it's not hard to imagine a future Micah Johnson, white or black, using one of them sooner or later. After all, Johnson was already talking about planting "IEDs" (the term for insurgent roadside bombs in our war zones) and a flying IED is a relatively modest step from there.

According to statements made at last weekend's summit in Warsaw, NATO regards Russia as a bigger threat than ISIS. Of course, that's ludicrous but when you scratch beneath the surface, the use of these falsehoods makes perverted sense.

Gleb is a Russian student in Dublin. Recently, at the request of a mutual friend, I've been helping him with his university thesis which focuses on the reasons Ireland is one of the few Western European countries that has resisted NATO membership. A distinction that most Irish people are extremely proud of.

As an Irishman myself, I've always been baffled by why so many members of the British and continental European elite see NATO as a good thing. After all, where's the glory in being dictated to by an external power whose interests are often at marked variance with your own? Like right this moment, when it's plainly obvious the biggest threat to Western Europe is Islamic fundamentalism and the fallout from a destabilized Middle East. But the US remains somewhat impervious to these issues, which it largely helped to ferment, and instead continues to be, bizarrely, focused on Russia.

Now, I owe Gleb this mention for noticing something I missed after last week's NATO summit in Warsaw. On Saturday afternoon, the club issued two important statements. The first was titled 'The Warsaw declaration on Transatlantic Security' and it outlined the core agreements reached in the Polish capital. Curiously, and this is really interesting, it mentions Russia four times but references ISIL only once.

The coup this weekend that rocked Turkey was a particularly spectacular geopolitical development. Theories abound regarding who was behind it and their motivations for carrying out what ultimately proved an apparently failed attempt at removing the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Still, it is too early to tell, as facts are far from forthcoming. However, it is possible to discern the most plausible possibilities based on the subsequent actions taken by various potential players who may have been involved in the coup attempt.

US Faces Serious Accusations

The most significant of these actions is President Erdogan's own accusations against the United States for having engineered the coup in collaboration with self-exiled Turkish political figure, Fethullah Gulen.

The UK Independent in its article, "Turkey coup: Tensions between US and Erdogan administration rise after failed power grab," would report that:

Tensions between Turkey and the US have escalated following the attempted coup against the Erdogan administration, with the country's leader demanding the extradition of a US-based cleric accused of orchestrating the violence. Another senior official has directly blamed the United States.

Indeed, tensions "rising" might seem like an understatement if Turkey truly believed the US was behind the coup attempt. In essence, Turkey is accusing the United States of backing an attempted assassination of Turkey's president, the bombing of the Turkish parliament building, the strafing of Turkish citizens from the air, and the deployment of heavy armor in Turkey's streets. In essence, Turkey has accused the United States of an overt and egregious act of war.

The Russian government has approved a deal to loan up to $11.38 billion to build the Rooppur nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

The project is expected to cost $12.65 billion with the rest of the funding coming from Bangladesh.

The loan will be used to pay for the construction of the plant from 2017 to 2024. Bangladesh will repay the money over 20 years in equal semi-annual installments starting from March 15, 2027.

The Rooppur nuclear power plant will be located on the east bank of the Ganges River 160 kilometers from Dhaka, the country's capital.

Around 9,000 officials were removed from their posts following a military coup attempt in Turkey, including 30 governors, Anadolu Agency quoted the Interior Ministry as saying on Monday.

Among those removed from posts are 7,899 police officers, 614 gendarmerie officers, 30 governors and 47 heads of municipalities.

A group of insurgents attempted a coup in Turkey overnight to Saturday. Bombs were dropped on the parliament building and the presidential palace in Ankara. The country's leadership later said that the coup was quashed. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that the situation is under the control of the official government.

According to latest reports, 290 people died and 1,440 more were injured, not including participants in the coup attempt. Over 6,000 people were arrested after a failed coup attempt.

Turkish prosecutors and police are conducting searches at Turkey's Incirlik air base in connection with the failed coup, Turkish media reported. The base is used by both the Turkish and US air forces.

The authorities entered the base in southern Turkey on Monday, state-run Anadolu news agency reported, adding that the investigation is connected with the coup attempt.

Over the weekend, the airbase's commander, General Bekir Ercan Van was detained at Incirlik by Turkish authorities along with over a dozen lower ranking officers. They all stand accused of complicity in the attempted coup.