World News

Two Russian strategic bombers conducted practice cruise missile attacks on the United States during a training mission last week that defense officials say appeared timed to the NATO summit in Wales.

The U.S. military said Sunday it launched airstrikes around Haditha Dam in western Iraq, targeting Islamic State insurgents there for the first time in a move to prevent the group from capturing the vital dam.

President Obama said that while the Islamic State can’t be defeated without boots on the ground, those boots will not be members of the American military.

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres emerged from a Vatican City audience with Pope Francis Thursday after proposing a kind of United Nations for religions.

General Thomas McInerney acknowledged that the United States “helped build ISIS” as a result of the group obtaining weapons from the Benghazi consulate in Libya which was attacked by jihadists in September 2012 in an interview with Fox News.

Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa.

Libya’s toothless outgoing government admitted it has in effect lost control of Tripoli to armed militias.

One of Islam’s most revered holy sites – the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad – could be destroyed and his body removed to an anonymous grave under plans which threaten to spark discord across the Muslim world.

Syria’s bloody civil war has spawned a separate rift with ramifications well beyond the region known as the Levant — a battle for the very soul of the global jihad movement.

Russian soldiers, tanks and heavy artillery began rolling into southeastern Ukraine in earnest Thursday, the Ukrainian government said, as well-armed detachments captured key towns, burned buildings and sent the underequipped Ukrainian forces into full retreat — a show of military force that the United States now considers an invasion in all but name.

Iran has supplied weapons and ammunition to Iraqi Kurdish forces, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Arbil, capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region.

NATO is to deploy its forces at new bases in eastern Europe for the first time, in response to the Ukraine crisis and in an attempt to deter Vladimir Putin from causing trouble in the former Soviet Baltic republics.

Ukrainian security services on Monday released video footage purporting to show Russian servicemen who were captured by Ukrainian government forces while fighting alongside pro-Moscow rebels in Ukraine.

After the Islamic State has seized control of the Syrian Air Force base at Tabqa, the Raqqa province is the first to full fall out of government hands as it seeks to establish a capital for its caliphate.

Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have been accused of launching air strikes on Islamist militias in Libya.

The Islamic State terrorist army’s brutality and threats against America on Aug. 19 are signs it’s focusing on entrenching its so-called Muslim caliphate — without interference.

Fighters from Islamic State (IS) have taken control of a key Syrian government airbase, activists say.

President Obama, reacting to the brutal execution of an American journalist by Islamic State terrorists, called for a “common effort” across the Middle East to “extract this cancer so it does not spread” as U.S. fighter jets and drones stepped up attacks against IS. Meanwhile, IS threatened to awaken sleeper cells in the West and promised America to “drown all of you in blood.” Along the U.S.-Mexico border, concern is being raised as Mexican drug cartels are in negotiations with the terrorist organization, according to a U.S. Congressman.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani told the visiting head of the UN nuclear watchdog said Tehran’s long-range missile program will not be discussed as part of talks aimed at resolving a decade-long nuclear dispute. Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister did not believe a final-status agreement would be made with the West by the time the next deadline comes in four months.

The Islamic State continued to massacre scores of ‘infidels’ in its ‘caliphate’ over the weekend as U.S. lawmakers called on President Obama to expand military operations against the jihadist organization. Over the weekend, President Obama informed Congress that he authorized U.S. airstrikes in Iraq to help retake control of the Mosul Dam. On Sunday Kurdish forces, with the aid of over two dozen U.S. and Iraqi airstrikes, were able to retake control of Iraq’s largest dam from IS jihadists, who captured the dam less than two weeks ago.