• Obama delays troop withdrawal from Afghanistan


    Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama announced Thursday that U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan at their current levels throughout much of 2016, yet another delay in their scheduled withdrawal and an acknowledgment that America’s longest war won’t be concluded on his watch. Obama campaigned as the president who would end two wars, and Thursday’s decision was a major political reversal. – CNN Politics

  • Fake CIA officer Wayne Simmons arrested by the Feds

    Wayne Simmons claimed to be something of an American James Bond, and if you watched TV or ran his name through Google, you’d have no reason to doubt him. In his public speaking engagements and frequent appearances on Fox News, the purported former CIA operative spoke authoritatively about terrorism and clandestine intelligence operations, which he claimed he helped run for nearly three decades. – The Washington Post

  • The Rise of China

    IN JUNE THIS year Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, a giant Chinese e-commerce firm, addressed the Economic Club of New York, whose members include many Manhattan luminaries and Wall Street chiefs. Mr Ma’s message was that… – The Economist

  • Russia ramping up information warfare

    Russia has intensified its ongoing information war against the West since the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014. Finnish author Saara Jantunen says the campaign cannot be reduced to a few crazies blowing off steam, because at its worst the goal is to encourage public mayhem via false information. She also claims people in Finland who call attention to the looming threat are being silenced. – yle

  • How Moscow invests in frozen conflicts

    A rebel of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on the territory of the market in a town in Dobas destroyed by shelling. Photo: RIA Novosti

    Russia’s involvement in the military confrontation in Syria has fueled the debates about Moscow’s role in resolving severe ethno-political and civil conflicts. The situation is made more acute by the fact that since the collapse of the Soviet Union right up until September 2015, Russia had only intervened in conflicts in the post… – Russia Direct

[Featured image: A man walks across the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building at the CIA headquarters in McLean, Va. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)]