Over the past eight months, the United States has poured more than 20,000 additional troops into the Middle East to counter the escalating threat from Iran that peaked with the recent missile attack on American forces in Iraq. Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to bring troops home, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East on Thursday said the most recent forces to enter the region could be there for “quite a while.” “You’re here because I requested that you come,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie told sailors and Marines aboard the USS Bataan amphibious assault ship, his voice booming over the ship’s loudspeaker. “I’m not sure how long you’re going to stay in the theater. We’ll work that out as we go ahead.

Following French President Emmanuel Macron’s outburst at Israeli Shin Bet security officers outside the Church of St. Anne on Wednesday, several Israeli news outlets said his anger about Israeli security officials entering the church was due to the pro-BDS and anti-Semitic organization that is housed in the church. No one really knows whether that prompted Macron’s anger or he just has a bad temper but is there is a genuine reason he is so territorial about the church? The Church of St. Anne is a Roman Catholic church in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem which was given to France by the Ottoman Empire in 1856. There definitely is a reason and it’s not pretty. What is indeed known about the Church of St.

A viral illness in China that has sickened hundreds of people and prompted Chinese authorities to effectively shut down at least three cities is not yet a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said Thursday. The U.N. health agency issued its evaluation after Chinese authorities moved to lock down three cities indefinitely earlier in the day and canceled major public celebrations and gatherings in Beijing during the Lunar New Year holiday period to try to contain the evolving outbreak. During a news conference in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while the epidemic was clearly a crisis in China, “it has not yet become a global health emergency.

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional career got off to a rocky start just a year ago, with her blatantly anti-Semitic remarks on Israel and Jews stirring anger across the country and raising speculation that some other Minnesota Democrat might step forward to challenge her in 2020. That was then. Omar was kicking off her reelection campaign Thursday night with a massive bank account and no challengers who pose a serious threat from either party. Her campaign slogan – “Send her back to Congress!” – gleefully evokes President Donald Trump’s personal attacks on her. In an overwhelmingly Democratic district that where Omar took 78% of the vote in 2018, University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs gives her opponents no chance.

Three American firefighting airplane crew members were killed Thursday when the C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker they were in crashed while battling wildfires in southeastern Australia, officials said. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed the deaths in the state’s Snowy Monaro region, which came as Australia grapples with an unprecedented fire season that has left a large swath of destruction. Canada-based Coulson Aviation said in a statement that one of its Lockheed large air tankers was lost after it left Richmond in New South Wales with retardant for a firebombing mission. It said the accident was “extensive” but had few other details.

The Trump administration lifted federal protections Thursday for some of the nation’s millions of miles of streams, arroyos and wetlands, completing one of its most far-reaching environmental rollbacks. The changes will scale back which waterways qualify for protection against pollution and development under the half-century-old Clean Water Act. President Donald Trump has made a priority of the rollback of clean-water protections from his first weeks in office. Trump says he is targeting federal rules and regulations that impose unnecessary burdens on businesses. Chiefs of the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed the new rule before appearing at a builders’ convention in Las Vegas.

As an executive producer of the last Mad Max movie, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin might have been interested in the apocalyptic climate warnings of Greta Thunberg. Instead, he took a personal swipe at the 17-year-old, saying she was in no position to give advice on climate change because she hasn’t been to college yet. At a press briefing at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos, Mnuchin dismissed Thunberg’s suggestion that governments and companies need to cut back dramatically on their use of fossil fuels. When asked how that would affect the U.S. economic model, Mnuchin was swift and condescending to Thunberg, who sparked a global environmental movement after she shot to fame a year ago by staging a regular strike at her school. “Is she the chief economist?

The White House said Thursday it has invited Israel’s prime minister and his main political rival to Washington next week to discuss the “prospect of peace” with the Palestinians, who have already rejected the administration’s long-awaited peace plan. Vice President Mike Pence announced the invitation at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem after addressing an international forum on the Holocaust. He said that at Netanyahu’s request an invitation has also been issued to Benny Gantz, a former army chief and Netanyahu’s main rival in March 2 elections. The announcement indicated that the White House may be ready to release its peace plan after several delays.

Britain’s delayed and disputed Brexit bill became law on Thursday, removing the last U.K. obstacle to the country leaving the European Union in just over a week. The U.K. is finally leaving the 28-nation bloc more than 3 1/2 years after voters narrowly opted to do so in a June 2016 referendum — and after interminable rounds of political wrangling. Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans announced Thursday in the House of Commons that the Withdrawal Agreement Act had received royal assent from Queen Elizabeth II, the final formality in its legislative journey. An identical announcement was made by the speaker of Parliament’s upper House of Lords. Evans’ brief announcement, which drew cheers of “Hear!

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