Russia will respond accordingly if neighboring Finland joins NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. However, he added that Moscow will try to begin a dialogue with NATO despite its expansion towards Russia's borders.

"The Finnish president came up with the proposals today on the first steps aimed at enhancing confidence and preventing conflicts [in the Baltic airspace]. I have already said that I agree with this. We will try to begin the dialogue with NATO at the summit in Brussels," Putin said on Friday.

Putin and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto agreed to develop a set of security measures to control flights over the Baltic Sea. Finland's president said military flights should avoid turning off their identification devices in the region, which is frequented by both Russian and NATO planes.

"We all know the risk with these flights and I have suggested that we should agree that transponders are used on all flights in the Baltic Sea region," Niinisto said.

The early 19^th Century saw the development of an international competition between the British and Russian Empires over control and influence in Islamic Central Asia: Afghanistan, Persia, and the khanates south of Russia. This more than century-long struggle, popularized by the likes of Rudyard Kipling, among others, became a cornerstone of the foreign policy of both empires who saw in each other mortal threats to their own power. And so, with seemingly everything at stake, they engaged in various forms of political intrigue, geopolitical posturing, and strategic subversion. The Great Game, in no small part, helped to shape modern Asia.

Today we see a similar competition emerging between a truly global empire led by the United States, and the emerging global power China, with Russia playing a critical, though secondary, role. But in today's globalized political and economic landscape, the competition is not restricted solely to Central Asia. Indeed, as many political observers have noted these last two decades, increasingly the focus has turned to Southeast Asia, a region seen as one of the main drivers of the global economy.

And so, it is both Southeast and Central Asia where the US is employing soft power to counter the influence of China whose economic development initiatives have made it the single most important player on the continent. This political sea change has ushered in a new approach from Washington which seeks to use academia, and education more broadly, as a critical lever of US power: political, economic, and cultural.

The University as a Weapon in Vietnam

President Obama's recent visit to Vietnam was seen as a momentous occasion by many who interpreted the President's appearance as a signal that Vietnam was finally being allowed to fully normalize its relations with the US, and the West generally. Much ink was devoted in the New York Times and other beacons of the corporate media to the fact that the arms embargo, a relic of the bygone era of US military hostility against the people of Vietnam, will be fully lifted, allowing Vietnam to become a customer of the US and western military-industrial complex. While undoubtedly a boon to the likes of Raytheon, Lockheed, and other weapons manufacturers, the true motives for Washington were less about profit than about expanding influence in a region seen by China as within its sphere of influence.

But military weapons are only part of the true arsenal at Washington's disposal. Indeed, perhaps equally potent is the establishment of the first private, western-style university in the country: Fulbright University Vietnam.

President Barack Obama is expected to announce the number of civilians killed by "illegal" US drone strikes Friday, but only in countries where the world's biggest military hasn't officially declared war.

Several news outlets reported, citing leaks from US officials, that the number is expected to be just 100, a tiny fraction of those estimated by investigative journalists and human rights groups who track the "violations of international law."


The White House will only reveal civilian casualties in countries that are technically not at a US battlefield, like Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Those killed by US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria will not be featured in the total. The US has deployed thousands of drones in these countries.

Jennifer Gibson from the human rights organization Reprieve, which has brought drone survivors to the US to testify, estimates more than 4,000 people have been killed by drones including hundreds of children and said the Obama administration's estimation of casualties "is unlikely to be worth the paper it's printed on."

Brexit continues to have far-reaching consequences, among which is the potential for normalised relations with Russia. Austria is seeking a leading role in this push. EurActiv Germany reports.

The alpine republic's government met in full in Vienna on Monday (27 June) to discuss the ramifications of the Brexit vote. Austria's new chancellor, Christian Kern, and his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sebastian Kurz, emphasised that the EU must now act quickly to reassert itself. To this end, the focus has to be on security, migration, growth, employment, investment and the environment.

Special attention also has to be paid to Russia. Members from three of the country's parties, the SPÖ, ÖVP and the Greens voted in favour of submitting an application to change the nature of the sanctions in place against Russia and in favour of a graduated model.

The Obama administration's troubling arms trade and military relationship with the oppressive regime is being questioned by the US Senate, but a change in policy is unlikely. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of US Senators called on the State Department to reconsider military aid to Bahrain, citing the deteriorating state of human rights in the country following an escalation in crackdowns against pro-democracy demonstrations that have been ongoing for five years.

The letter, from Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) comes in the wake of a June 21 State Department report to Congress that blasted the Bahraini monarchy for its wanton aggression against peaceful civilians. "The lack of due process and the criminalization of the exercise of free expression continue to undermine the progress Bahrain has made since 2011," said State Department spokesman John Kirby after fielding questions about the United States' stance towards the Bahraini government.

The monarchy has moved in recent months to outlaw the leading Shiite opposition party, al-Wefaq, by freezing its assets, imprisoning and torturing its members, and doubling the prison term for the party's secretary general, Ali Slaman. He will now serve nine years in prison for "promoting forceful change of the political regime." Additionally, in recent months the Sunni-led monarchy has moved to revoke citizenship of opposition members, including the country's most prominent Shiite religious leader, Sheikh Isa Qassim, rendering individuals stateless and without proper human rights protections.

While the US State Department has rhetorically savaged Bahrain's regime for its acts against peaceful opposition members, the Obama administration continues to funnel heavy weapons into the Middle Eastern country. Many of these are used against the country's citizens.

The situation has deteriorated in Bahrain to the point that the monarchy has openly welcomed the Saudi government to intervene against the civilian protesters. It has also asked Takfiri Islamists, including members of Daesh, to kill demonstrators these radical Muslims view as apostates.

New Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who has recently declared "a bloody war" on drug cartels, has called on willing Filipinos to "go ahead and kill" drug addicts, amid concerns that "getting their parents to do it would be too painful."

Duterte, who said during his campaign that some 100,000 criminals would die in his crackdown, their bodies dumped in Manila Bay, has been conspicuously deaf to criticism that he was promoting a "culture of death" in his native country.

After taking his oath inside the Malacanang presidential palace, Duterte, 71, continued his defiance and threats against drug traffickers in front of a crowd of some 500 people gathered in a Manila slum Thursday night.

"These sons of whores are destroying our children. I warn you, don't go into that, even if you're a policeman, because I will really kill you," the outspoken Philippines leader told the crowd, AFP reported.

"If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful," he added.

There is one path back from the abyss, but it's a narrow one.

In a normal country, the stunning rebuke the British public delivered to the country's political establishment last week by voting to leave the European Union would be an occasion for humility, soul searching, and, above all, a recognition that it wasn't only the pollsters who kept predicting a "Remain" victory that were fatally out of touch. For a few hours on Friday morning, as the implications of what had just happened sunk in—the likely unraveling not just of Britain's ties to the rest of Europe, but of the United Kingdom itself, with Scottish independence back on the agenda, Northern Ireland's Good Friday agreement seriously undermined, and the whole European Union now at risk of dissolving under a rising tide of nationalism—Britain was that country. London, a cosmopolitan capital that voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, was a city in shock. Prime Minister David Cameron, who'd bet his own political future on a "Remain" vote, had resigned. The pound was in free fall, and as the scale of the self-inflicted damage to the economy became clear—the FTSE 100 Index lost £120 billion, its biggest drop since the 2008 financial crisis—the national mood was one of desperation rather than celebration.

By Monday, mourning and melancholia had given way to mania. In Britain, the rush to sign an online petition calling for a second referendum was so intense that it crashed Parliament.uk. The Belfast post office ran out of application forms for Irish passports. In Wales—which, despite getting more EU funds than any other part of the UK except Cornwall, voted to leave by a 2.5 percent margin—the Labour government scrambled to protect the region's already precarious economy. And Cornwall itself, which also voted to leave, issued a plaintive plea to "protect" its EU subsidy. Meanwhile, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage admitted that his campaign's claim that leaving the EU would free up £350 million a week to spend on the National Health Service was a "mistake," and Daniel Hannan, a leader in the Tory Brexit camp, said that voters who expected the winners to deliver on their pledge to restrict EU immigration were "going to be disappointed."

Brexit could seriously impact the Israeli economy and its bilateral trade with Britain as UK becomes free from being a signatory to the EU-Israel Association Agreement that gives unrestricted access to Israeli exporters from the Middle East into the British market.

Britain's decision to leave the EU will enable more accurate identification of those lobbyists in and around the House of Commons whose agenda it is to influence Members of Parliament to pass legislation and trade deals that are advantageous not to the UK but to Israel.

This is particularly relevant to the pharmaceutical and defence procurement sectors where millions of pounds of contracts are concluded with Israeli firms by the NHS and government defence departments as a result of pernicious lobbying by pro-Israel interests in both Brussels and London.

All this will now change as any remaining future British trade with Israel will now need to be far more transparent and based on open competition instead of free trips to Israel and other often covert inducements offered by lobbyists in order to secure UK government contracts.

An anti-ship missile fired from a Taiwanese patrol boat towards mainland China by mistake hit a Taiwanese fishing boat many kilometers away. The Chinese military made no retaliatory move amid Communist Party anniversary celebrations.

The Hsiung Feng III (HF-3) missile fired from a 500-ton Chinchiang patrol boat, which was undergoing inspection at a military base at the time, traveled some 40 nautical miles (75 kilometers), only to send a Taiwanese fishing vessel to the bottom.

Although the missile did not explode, it proved deadly enough, kinetically piercing the fishing vessel, killing its captain, and injuring three crew members, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry reports.

The incident took place in waters off the Taiwanese islands of Penghu situated in the strait separating the self-proclaimed island nation and mainland China, China's official Central News Agency (CNA) reported. The erroneous launch was likely due to failure to follow proper procedures, CNA said.

The European Union has formally extended economic sanctions against Russia until January 31, 2017, the EU Council announced in a statement on Friday. The sanctions limit access to EU capital markets for a number of Russian financial institutions, as well as energy and defense firms. Restrictions on arms trading and certain types of oil production technology will also be extended.

"On 1 July 2016, the Council prolonged the economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy until 31 January 2017," said the Council statement. Relations between Moscow and the West deteriorated during the 2014 Ukraine crisis. The United States, the European Union and their allies accused Russia of involvement in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, claims the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

Washington and Brussels introduced several rounds of sanctions against Russian individuals, as well as the energy, banking and defense sectors. In response, Moscow banned food imports from countries that joined anti-Russian sanctions. On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree prolonging the embargo on Western products until the end of 2017. The Council plans to discuss EU-Russia relations and sanctions during a meeting in the fall.