China Draws ‘Red Line’ on North Korea, Says Won’t Allow War on Peninsula

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/STRINGERChina declared a “red line” on North Korea on Saturday, saying that China will not permit chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, and that peace can only come through denuclearization.

China is North Korea’s most important diplomatic and economic supporter, though Beijing’s patience with Pyongyang has been severely tested following three nuclear tests and numerous bouts of saber rattling, including missile launches.

“The Korean peninsula is right on China’s doorstep. We have a red line, that is, we will not allow war or instability on the Korean peninsula,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on the sidelines of China’s annual largely rubber-stamp parliament.

Wang called upon all parties to “exercise restraint”, adding that “genuine and lasting peace” on the peninsula was only possible with denuclearization.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited China last month and said after talks in Beijing that China and the United States were discussing specific ways to press North Korea to give up its nuclear program.

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Central European Nations Appeal to Congress for Faster Exports of US Natural Gas

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Photo Credit: REUTERSCentral European nations are now appealing to Capitol Hill leaders to get the United States to increase its natural gas exports should Russia cut off its supply to Ukraine, amid the political turmoil in that country.

Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic sent a letter Friday to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. And a similar letter is expected to be sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada.

Ambassadors from the four countries — known as the Visegrad Group — want Congress to support faster approval of natural gas exports, arguing the supply is essential to the region’s economic stability.

“The presence of U.S. natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe,” they told Boehner. “And congressional action to expedite [liquefied natural gas] exports to America’s allies would come at a critically important time for the region.”

The concern has grown over the past few months amid the political upheaval in the Ukraine that resulted last month in residents ousting President Viktor Yanukovych and became a major concern several days ago when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into the country’s Crimea region.

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Russia, China Expanding Their Militaries As U.S. Shrinks

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Photo Credit: APAs the United States prepares to draw down its military to, if President Barack Obama gets his way, pre-World War II levels, countries around the world that do not exactly share our interests are building up their militaries.

First up on the build-up list – Russia. Even as Russia continues to occupy Crimea, and even as France is hosting talks to defuse that crisis, France began sea trials of the first of two Mistral-class amphibious assault/helicopter carrier ships the Russian Navy bought in 2011 for $1.6 billion, the Vladivostok. The Vladivostok is still on track for a fall 2014 delivery to the Pacific Fleet, with its sister ship, the Sevastopol (yes, it’s named after that Sevastopol in Crimea), due for delivery to the Black Sea Fleet in 2015.

The Mistral-class ships can accomodate 900 troops on a short-term basis along with a normal compliment of 16 helicopters. Ominously, when the Russians ordered the ships, GlobalSecurity.org noted Russian media quoted a Russian naval commander as saying the Mistral would have done in under one hour some of the tasks it took the existing Black Sea Fleet over a day to do during the Russian incursion into Georgia.

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Twenty-Seven Illegal Aliens Convicted of Child Sex Crimes Arrested Near Mexican Border

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Twenty-seven illegal immigrants and convicted sex offenders were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents in February. 15 illegal immigrants who are members of violent street gangs were also taken into custody that month. The arrests happened in the Rio Grande Valley area.

Two additional men, one convicted for murder and another convicted for voluntary man slaughter, were also arrested in the area that month.

11 of the arrested gang members belong to the Los Angeles-based Mara Salvatrucha gang, better known as MS-13. The four others men were members of the 18th Street gang.

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Putin Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti/KremlinRussian President Vladimir Putin will appear on the Nobel committee’s agenda for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, possibly alongside several Russian dissidents.

Putin is one of 278 candidates — a record for the prestigious prize – who have been nominated and the nominees include such notables as Edward Snowden, Pope Francis and the individual formerly known as Bradley Manning.

Putin is believed to have been nominated for his role in averting a Western military strike on Syria and negotiating the agreement with the Bashar al-Assad regime to surrender its arsenal of chemical weapons.

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‘Delusional’: Krauthammer Slams Obama Admin’s Belief that Putin has ‘Blinked’ on Ukraine

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Photo Credit: Screenshot By Brendan Bordelon.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer dismissed as “delusional” the Obama administration’s belief that Vladimir Putin has halted his advance in Ukraine, claiming the Russian president is “lying through his teeth.”

Krauthammer spoke with Fox News’ Bret Baier to discuss the Russian invasion of Crimean region in southern Ukraine. Many assumed Putin would follow up this action with a full-scale invasion of eastern Ukraine. But in a rambling press conference Tuesday, the Russian president indicated there may be no reason to further escalate the situation.

President Obama seized on the comments, saying he hopes Putin may at least take a “pause.” But not everybody is buying it.

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Photo Credit: Dmitry Lovetsky/AP PhotoJohn McCain’s Advice to Obama on Russia: Wake Up! Get Real!

By Arlette Saenz.

Sen. John McCain blasted President Obama today for his handling of Russia, saying the crisis in Ukraine should serve as a wake-up call for the president about the Russian president’s intentions.

“It’s time we woke up about Vladimir Putin. It’s time this administration got real,” McCain, R-Ariz., said on the Senate floor. “We are on the verge of possibly of seeing a move to re-assert the old Russian empire, which is Mr. Putin’s lifelong ambition.”

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Russia test-fires ICBM amid tension over Ukraine

By Reuters.

Russia said it had successfully test-fired an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) on Tuesday, with tensions running high over its military intervention in Ukraine’s Crimea region.

A U.S. official said the United States had received proper notification from Russia ahead of the test and that the initial notification pre-dated the crisis in Crimea. The Russian Defence Ministry could not be reached for comment.

The Strategic Rocket Forces launched an RS-12M Topol missile from the southerly Astrakhan region and the dummy warhead hit its target at a proving ground in Kazakhstan, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov told state-run news agency RIA.

The launch site, Kapustin Yar, is near the Volga River about 450 km (280 miles) east of the Ukrainian border. Kazakhstan, a Russian ally in a post-Soviet security grouping, is further to the east.

Russia conducts test launches of its ICBMs fairly frequently and often announces the results, a practice seen as intended to remind the West of Moscow’s nuclear might and reassure Russians that President Vladimir Putin will protect them.

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N.Korea Poses ‘Growing’ Threat to US: Pentagon

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-JeNorth Korea poses a mounting threat to the United States due to its pursuit of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, the Pentagon said Tuesday in its latest strategy document.

Describing the regime in Pyongyang as “closed and authoritarian,” the Defense Department said the US military would maintain a major presence in the region and keep up investments in missile defense.

The North represents “a significant threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and is a growing, direct threat to the United States,” said the Quadrennial Defense Review, an update of the military’s global strategic outlook.

US forces would continue to collaborate closely with South Korea’s military “to deter and defend against North Korean provocations,” it said.

The release of the Pentagon’s strategic review came as North Korea flexed its military might three times over the past week, firing short-range Scud missiles and rockets into the sea. The test launches were timed to coincide with joint US-South Korean drills that Pyongyang opposes.

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Under Threat, Syria’s Christians Sign Accord with Islamists

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe city of Raqqa in northern Syria was once the residence of Harun al-Rashid, the famed fifth caliph of the Abbasid empire. That was the golden age of Islam, which produced the poetry, scientific thought and philosophy in which the moderate Hanafi stream flourished. The city subsequently went through centuries of ups and downs, through times of ruin and of prosperity, until last week it seemed to return to days of old, to the era of the great Islamic conquests, when a radical Islamist organization seized control of it.

For the first time in many generations, a dhimma (protection agreement) was signed between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – an Islamist branch of Al-Qaida – and leaders of Raqqa’s several thousand Christians. Members of ISIS gave the latter three options: accepting the agreement, converting to Islam, or risking death.

According to the 12 clauses in the accord, the Christians will commit to pay a twice-yearly poll tax of “four gold dinars” – which at today’s rate, comes to about $500 per person – with the exception that members of the middle class will pay half this amount, and the poor will pay a quarter of it, on condition they do not conceal their true financial situation.

The agreement permits the Christians to follow their religious practices, but they are prohibited from building new churches or rebuilding destroyed ones.

Furthermore, the accord states that Christians may not prevent members of their community from embracing Islam if they so desire. They are forbidden from bearing arms, from engaging in commerce involving pork with Muslims, and from acting against Muslim interests – for example, by giving shelter to spies or persons wanted by ISIS. Moreover, if Christians learn of a plot against the Islamic State, they must report it.

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DHS Will Not Deport German Christian Homeschoolers, The Romeike Family

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Photo Credit: APThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has verbally informed the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) that the Romeike family, German homeschoolers who sought legal asylum in the United States, has been granted indefinite deferred action status, which means that the order for their removal from the United States will not be acted upon.

As Breitbart News reported Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court had denied the Romeike family’s petition for certiorari, or review. According to a press release Tuesday by HSLDA, however, news of the Supreme Court’s denial sparked “an immediate and unprecedented reaction.” Fox News informed HSLDA that it recorded one million page views of the story about the Romeike family within 24 hours – an all-time high.

“We are happy to have indefinite status even though we won’t be able to get American citizenship any time soon,” said Uwe Romeike. “As long as we can live at peace here, we are happy. We have always been ready to go wherever the Lord would lead us – and I know my citizenship isn’t really on earth.”

“This has always been about our children,” Romeike continued. “I wouldn’t have minded staying in Germany if the mistreatment targeted only me – but our whole family was targeted when German authorities would not tolerate our decision to teach our children. That is what brought us here.”

HSLDA Director of International Affairs Michael Donnelly observed that the only reason the Romeike family had to come to America was because of Germany’s repressive policy towards homeschoolers.

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Russia Ignores U.S. Threats of Isolation (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP / Pablo Martinez MonsivaisBy Dave Boyer and Ashish Kumar Sen.

President Obama warned Russia on Monday of possible U.S. sanctions over its military land grab in Ukraine, but Moscow brushed aside international threats, tightening its stranglehold on Crimea and calling audaciously for a national unity government in Kiev.

In Washington, Mr. Obama said the world is “largely united” against Russia’s military action and he is considering economic and diplomatic steps that would gradually isolate Russia. He criticized the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin for being “on the wrong side of history.”

“What cannot be done is for Russia with impunity to put its soldiers on the ground and violate basic principles that are recognized around the world,” Mr. Obama said. “Over time, this will be a costly proposition for Russia.”

But the U.S. and European Union floundered for solutions — while global markets panicked over the prospect of violent upheaval in the heart of Europe. Fears grew that the Kremlin might carry out more land grabs in pro-Russian eastern Ukraine, or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, adding urgency to Western efforts to defuse the crisis.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry was heading to Kiev in an expression of support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, and the EU threatened a raft of punitive measures as it called an emergency summit on Ukraine for Thursday. In Congress, lawmakers prepared to move on an aid package for Ukraine.

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US says it is suspending trade talks and all military-to-military engagements with Russia over Ukraine

By Fox News.

The U.S. announced late Monday it was suspending trade and investment talks with Russia as well as all “military-to-military engagements” as penalties for its actions in Ukraine.

The twin measures were announced only hours after America’s U.N. ambassador blasted Russia for its “dangerous military intervention” in Ukraine, calling it a violation of international law and saying: “It must stop.”

A spokesperson for the office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed to Fox News “due to recent events in Ukraine, we have suspended upcoming bilateral trade and investment engagement with the government of Russia that were part of a move toward deeper commercial and trade ties.”

Earlier, the Pentagon said the U.S. was putting on hold “all military-to military engagements” with Russia, including exercises, bilateral meetings, port visits and planning conferences.

President Obama also met with his National Security Council Monday to discuss the situation. A spokeswoman said Obama and his team discussed what actions the U.S. and its foreign counterparts could do to further isolate Russia, and reinforce the fact that Moscow faces more repercussions if it does not take steps to de-escalate the situation.

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Sen. Inhofe on Russia: ‘I Warned This Day Was Coming and It Is Here’

By Craig Bannister.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of Senate Armed Services Committee, today criticized President Obama’s response to Russia and policies that have weakened the current state of the United States military.

Inhofe said that he had warned that trouble with Russia was coming due to Pres. Obama’s efforts to disarm the U.S. military – and now that trouble is here…

The arrogant actions of President Putin and Russia in recent days is a direct result of President Obama’s disarming of America since the beginning of his Administration.

Five years ago, I went to Afghanistan to respond to President Obama’s first budget knowing he was going to disarm America. In that first budget, he canceled our only fifth generation fighter, the F-22; he cancelled our C-17; and he cancelled our FCS. That was just the first year. Since then he has taken $487 billion out of our national security. His disarming of America over the past five years limits our options in Ukraine today. I just returned from Georgia in January, and they fear Russia will further invade their territory next.

Throughout this Administration, I have also warned that if the United States does not maintain a ready and capable military, we would surrender our global influence and leave a vacuum that will be filled by Russia. I warned this day was coming, and it is here. President Obama’s attempt to seek peace through apologetic diplomacy while defunding and dismantling our military has failed. Today our enemies don’t fear us and our allies no longer respect us.

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