U.S. Says U.N. Sanctions ‘Will Bite’ After North Korea Threatens Nuclear Attack

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Photo Credit: CNNThe U.N. Security Council unanimously passed tougher sanctions against North Korea Thursday targeting the secretive nation’s nuclear program hours after Pyongyang threatened a possible “preemptive nuclear attack.”

“These sanctions will bite, and bite hard,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said after the vote. China, North Korea’s key ally, could have used its veto power to block the sanctions. Instead, after weeks of negotiating, it signed on to the final draft.

“China is a country of principle,” China’s U.N. Ambassador Li Baodong said. “We are firmly committed to safeguarding peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.”

Leading up to the vote, Pyongyang ratcheted up its bellicose rhetoric. A spokesman for the North Korean foreign ministry suggested the United States “is set to light a fuse for a nuclear war.”

As a result, North Korea “will exercise the right to a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors and to defend the supreme interests of the country,” the country said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

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Kirk to Kerry: No Award for Anti-Semite

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Photo Credit: APSen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) called on Secretary of State John Kerry to rescind Egyptian activist Samira Ibrahim’s nomination for a women’s courage award following a Weekly Standard report that Ibrahim had praised terrorist attacks against Americans and Israelis on Twitter.

“If the Weekly Standard report is accurate, I urge you to immediately rescind the nomination of Samira Ibrahim and instead grant the award to a more deserving candidate, such as Nasrin Sotoudeh from Iran,” Kirk wrote in a letter to Kerry Thursday.

The State Department said Thursday it would “defer” presenting the award to Ibrahim this year so that it could “look further into” her statements.

Ibrahim has made anti-American and anti-Semitic comments on Twitter on numerous occasions, according to the Weekly Standard.

“Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning,” she wrote last September. Ibrahim reportedly tweeted, “An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news,” after five Israeli tourists were killed in a terrorist attack in Bulgaria.

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‘Appalling’ Waste And Abuse In Iraq Reconstruction

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Photo Credit: Republican Party of Shelby CountyAn “appalling” report on the misuse of U.S. reconstruction funding for Iraq shows the need for a “top-to-bottom” review of the State Department and its aid agency, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Wednesday.

“The extent of waste and abuse in the $60 billion of Iraq reconstruction funds coupled with the instability still evident in Iraq is appalling and highlights real failures of planning and execution that must be corrected to make U.S. foreign assistance a more effective tool for advancing the national interests of our country,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said. “At the same time, this final Iraq reconstruction report also highlights some approaches that worked and could be applied to future reconstruction efforts, especially the billions of dollars in remaining reconstruction funds for Afghanistan.”

“Going forward, I am committed to working with the State Department, USAID, and the administration, to provide the kind of accountability and oversight the American people deserve. We owe this not only to the American taxpayers, but also to the men and women – civilian and uniformed – that we send into dangerous and challenging environments to secure the area and implement U.S. programs.”

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Iran Orders Terrorists: Prepare For War

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Photo Credit: WNDIran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered all of the Islamic regime’s armed forces to prepare for war, WND learned Tuesday.

According to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit, the regime believes Israel is on the verge of an attack, which could then draw America into the conflict.

Hundreds of ballistic missiles are ready to be launched against Israel and U.S. military bases in the region, the source said, and all terror groups that have long been positioned in Europe and America are ready to act should war break out.

While the regime has called last week’s negotiations held in Kazakhstan “a turning point” between Iran and the 5-plus-1 countries – the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany – it is stalling for time to complete its nuclear weapons development, at which point it believes Israel and the West will have no choice but to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, the source said. However, regime officials do not believe Israel will wait it out and hence the preparations for war, he added.

WND reported exclusively on Feb. 28 about a warning by the regime’s armed forces deputy chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, that al-Qaida operatives will soon attack America and Europe, even as a second terror team sent by the Islamic regime is about to enter the U.S.

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Russians Conduct Huge Nuke Drill

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Photo Credit: APRussian nuclear forces conducted a major exercise last month that tested the transport of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons near Europe, according to United States officials.

The exercise raised concerns inside the Pentagon and with the U.S. European Command because it was the largest exercise of its kind in 20 years and involved heightened alert status of Russian nuclear forces. The nuclear drills were part of other military maneuvers in Russia carried out between Feb. 17 and Feb. 21.

The exercises followed a recent surge in Russian strategic bomber flights that include a recent circling of the U.S. Pacific island of Guam by two Tu-95 Bear bomber and simulated bombing runs by Tu-95s against Alaska and California in June and July.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley P. Miller sought to play down the nuclear exercise but declined to comment on the movement of nuclear weapons and whether nuclear forces went on a heightened state of alert. “We don’t comment on intelligence matters,” he said. Miller said the nuclear forces maneuvers were “nothing to be concerned about because the Russians, like us, have routine exercises and inspections.”

However, a U.S. official said the exercise was a concern within the U.S. national security community because of the scale of the exercise and the number of weapons being moved. “Certainly it’s a concern when you have this kind of exercise going on,” this official said.

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Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President, Dead At 58

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesHugo Chavez, Venezuela’s fiery and controversial socialist president who came to power on wave of popular sentiment and befriended some of the world’s most notorious dictators, has died at the age of 58, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said today.

Chavez had been fighting cancer, recently seeking treatment at a clinic in Cuba.

A self-described champion of the poor who first tried to overturn Venezuela’s powerful elites in a failed 1992 coup, Chavez was democratically elected in 1999, with huge support from the country’s poor.

During his time in office, he became one of Latin America’s most well-known and polarizing figures. A constant thorn in the side of the United States, he commanded headlines in newspapers around the world. A populist who suppressed free speech, he remained immensely popular among his country’s poor.

From the time he won election in 1999, Chavez held onto power through tightly controlling the media and through a series of populist elections and referenda, including one that allowed him to seek a limitless number of terms.

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Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner

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Photo Credit: du.eduA Chinese general who once threatened to use nuclear weapons against hundreds of U.S. cities will visit the Pentagon this week as part of a U.S.-China military exchange program.

Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, who is head of China’s National Defense University, will take part in a “familiarization exchange,” Maj. Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told the Free Beacon.

“The delegation will visit Hawaii and D.C.,” she said. “A military delegation from the U.S. Pacific Command will visit China later this year for a reciprocal exchange.”

Zhu will lead a group of 10 senior colonels from all branches of the Chinese military, Wilkinson said. She declined to provide the names of the officers.

Zhu is best known for inflammatory comments made to two foreign news reporters in 2005 when he said China would use nuclear weapons against the United States in any conflict over Taiwan. A State Department spokesman at the time called the comments “highly irresponsible.”

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Why China’s Property Market Is Getting Scary

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Worries that China’s home market is over heating are spreading beyond mainland policymakers — who recently unveiled a slew of cooling measures — with key industry players including the head of the country’s largest real estate developer warning of huge risks in the sector.

Wang Shi, CEO of Vanke said on the CBS News’ “60 Minutes” show over the weekend that China’s property sector was already in a bubble state.

China has seen a boom in the property sector recently, with some cities seeing a 10-fold increase in prices, that have driven the average home buyer out of the market. According to estimates, the cost of a home in Shanghai would be around 45 times the average resident’s annual salary.

Shi added that if the property bubble were to burst, it would be a “disaster,” with a plunge in home prices sparking an “Arab Spring” type social unrest.

Real estate is among the most popular investment vehicles in the country, given volatility in the domestic equity markets, so a steep decline in prices would impact millions of local investors.

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China Defence Budget To Rise 10.7% In 2013

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Photo Credit: APChina’s defence budget is set to rise 10.7 percent this year, state media said on Tuesday as the national parliament’s annual gathering opens, a slight drop from a 11.2 percent increase in 2012.

“China plans to raise its defence budget by 10.7 percent to 720.2 billion yuan” ($115.7 billion) in 2013, the Xinhua news agency said, citing a budget report that will be reviewed by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature.

China’s military budgets have risen steadily in recent years along with the country’s booming economic growth, and experts say the actual totals are usually substantially higher than the publicly announced figures.

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Hamas Steps Up Threats On Obama’s Israel Trip

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Photo Credit: WNDDespite there being no information President Obama plans to ascend the Temple Mount on his upcoming trip to Israel, Hamas last night stepped up its threats regarding Palestinian rumors the U.S. president may visit the sacred site.

“Visiting of Obama with Israeli soldiers entering the Al Aqsa Mosque will actually touch the deep and the tender part of the Palestinian, Arabic and Islamic countries all over the world,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas’s senior leader in the Gaza Strip, stated.

Zahar apparently was alluding to previous Palestinian and Arab rioting instigated after then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 2000.

Zahar continued: “If he is looking to have this visit it means he is accepting Israel as a legitimate occupation, which is undermining his morality and his credibility. Jerusalem up to this moment and all of the Palestinian land is under occupation.” The Hamas leader was speaking Sunday night on WABC Radio’s “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”

Zahar said his group doesn’t have “any hope of any results from his visit to the region.” Asked if his expects Obama to open dialogue with Hamas during the president’s second term, Zahar replied, “Up to this moment there is no indication about this.

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