After months of whispered warnings, Russia’s economic troubles made global headlines when its currency collapsed halfway through December. Amid the tumbling price of oil, the ruble has fallen to record lows, bringing the country to its most serious economic crisis since the late 1990s.
The Pentagon recently released a new report sounding the alarm on the national security threats posed by climate change. Like previous reports on the subject, this one makes clear that Department of Defence (DoD) planners believe that global warming will seriously challenge our nation’s military forces.
The U.S. military over the weekend formally began to support the international response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Signalling a somewhat more modest global U.S. military posture, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel Monday called for sharp reductions in the size of the U.S. Army, the service that has borne the brunt of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan over the past dozen years.
The U.S. Department of Defence is announcing that reported cases of sexual assault in the U.S. military last year rose again to 3,374, a six percent increase over 2011 and a record high.
Reversing attempts to eliminate the U.S. military’s advanced biofuels programme, both houses of Congress on Tuesday approved major legislation that now presents no obstacles to broad-reaching Defence Department plans to mainstream and spread the use of alternative fuels throughout its operations.
In 1998, the Defence Department vetoed a delegation of prominent U.S. nuclear specialists to go to Iran to investigate its nuclear programme at the invitation of the government of newly-elected Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, according to the nuclear scientist who was organising the mission.