Vice-foreign minister says Pyongyang will conduct nuclear test when it sees fit as China appeals to US to avoid pre-emptive strike North Korea’s vice-foreign minister blames US for tensions – video North Korea has accused Donald Trump of raising tensions in the region and warned that the regime would conduct a nuclear test when it sees fit, as China issued a plea to Washington not to use pre-emptive military action. In an interview with the Associated Press in Pyongyang, North Korea’s vice-foreign minister, Han Song-ryol said Trump’s “aggressive” tweets aimed at the regime were “causing trouble”, adding that the mounting crisis on the peninsula was now locked in a “vicious cycle”. Han warned that North Korea would not “keep its arms crossed” in the event of a US pre-emptive strike. North Korea preparing for nuclear test, satellite images suggest China issued a plea against military action in North Korea before an anticipated sixth nuclear test on Saturday to mark

PressTv UserThis file photo, released by the US Air Force, shows a formation of US Navy F-18E Super Hornets after receiving fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker. Reports coming out of Syria suggest that hundreds of people, including civilians, have lost their lives after an airstrike by the US-led coalition hit poison gas supplies belonging to Daesh terrorists. The General Command of the Syrian Army and Armed Forces, in a statement released on Thursday, announced that the airstrike had taken place in the eastern village of Hatla, near the city of Dayr al-Zawr, at around 5:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT) the previous day. The statement, published by Syria’s official news agency, SANA, added that a cloud of thick white smoke covered the area after the strike, before it turned yellow. The assault also caused a fierce blaze, which continued until late in the evening on Wednesday. According to the Syrian Army statement, hundreds of people, including a large number of local villagers, were kille

By Moon Of Alabama  5667 days after the beginning of the war between the mightiest military of the world and local Afghan farmers, Pentagon reporters were excited to report: Lara Seligman‏ @laraseligman BREAKING: US drops largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan - GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast The U.S. generals demand, as they always do, more troops to "break the stalemate". But there is no stalemate. The Afghan farmers are winning. The Taliban control more areas now than they ever controlled since 2002. Dropping 22,000 lbs of high explosives on some shack will not change that trend. So what can the U.S. do but blaming Russia and Iran on dubious grounds. Those countries -like China and other nearby countries- see the obviously coming U.S. retreat and prepare for it. The U.S. will have to leave and to acknowledge that it joins the long lists of empires that tried to conquer Afghanistan and were defeated.

The U.S. military dropped the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal Thursday on a cave and tunnel complex that it said was used by Islamic State fighters in eastern Afghanistan, a stark reminder of a U.S. war now in its 16th grinding year. The behemoth bomb, officially called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB, is also known as the "mother of all bombs." It is 30 feet long, weighs nearly 11 tons and produces a devastating above-ground explosion that sends a mushroom cloud roiling high in the sky. Originally developed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the MOAB has never been used in combat before. Like the U.S. retaliatory missile strike in Syria last Friday, however, use of the monster munition in Afghanistan is more symbolic than tactical since it is unlikely to change the course of America’s longest war. President Trump praised the attack as a "very, very successful mission." He indicated that he had given the Pentagon a free hand to use the weapon as pa

© Omar Sobhani / Reuters Originally appeared at ZeroHedge It appears that Mike Cernovich, who earlier this week wrote that Trump’s national security advisor, Gen. H.R.McMaster, was planning on sending as many as 150,000 troops to Syria, may have been right again. According to Bloomberg commentator Eli Lake , who has now made a habit of confirming Cernovich “conspiracy theories” (he did so previously with the Susan Rice scoop ), Trump may be on the verge of escalating the proxy war in Syria by sending anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 troops on the ground, and – if Cernovich is indeed correct – as much as three times more. Per Lake , after U-turning on attacking Syria last week and on a variety of economic policies yesterday, the Donald Trump’s “biggest foreign policy surprise may be yet to come.” Specifically, he says that McMaster, has been quietly pressing his colleagues to question the underlying assumptions of a draft war plan against the Islamic State that would maintain only a l