Новости за 13.12.2015

Each day, about 15,000 people pass through MacDill’s four gates into the home of U.S. Central Command, which runs military operations in the Middle East, and U.S. Special Operations Command. But not everybody who shows up at the gates belongs there.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command will celebrate 60 years of success on Christmas Eve when hundreds of volunteers gather at Peterson Air Force Base to help the command and children around the globe track Santa's sleigh on its toy-bearing trip.

During the bloody battle for Fallujah in 2004, Marines took heavy casualties clearing the Iraqi city house by house, room by room, never knowing where a deadly ambush might be waiting. Now there’s a small robot capable of reducing that risk.

Faced with sorting out nearly six decades of financial claims and counterclaims against one another that run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, diplomats from the United States and Cuba last week resorted to a time-honored custom of their profession: They agreed to talk again later, then packed up their briefcases and went home.

The Battle of the Bulge was fought from December 1944 into January 1945 in the forests of Belgium and Luxembourg. It was the last major offensive of the German army, a last-ditch attempt to cut off the supply lines of the advancing Allied troops.

Before he launched into his lecture on the long-term consequences of “the blast,” Alan Peterson, a clinical psychologist, took a moment to pay tribute to his subjects — and to get his audience’s attention.

A visit to NASA Glenn Research Center’s satellite campus, the sprawling 6,400-acre Plum Brook Station in Erie County’s Perkins Township, is a science nerd’s paradise.

“I think it is a great idea,” said board chairwoman Carolyn Meadows. “We thought that it was appropriate to honor African-Americans who fought, regardless of which side they were on.”

The program is designed to enable veterans who can't see a doctor within 30 days or live more than 40 miles from a VA facility to access a local provider. But several Northwest Indiana veterans say they've had trouble accessing the program, being kept on hold for long periods of time and not having their calls returned.

“I think the face of radicalization has changed,” said counterterrorism expert Scott Mann, a former Green Beret and retired lieutenant colonel. “It’s a hybrid now — a hybrid, robust network to mobilize people to action to commit acts of violence under the banner of compelling narratives.”

The last British resident held at Guantanamo Bay has denounced extremism in his first interview since being released in October.

Fears of terrorism are hanging over America's holiday season, and President Barack Obama is trying to allay concerns about his strategy for stopping the Islamic State group.

Historical activists are refusing to surrender in their efforts to prevent the development of a privately owned portion of a Revolutionary War battlefield in New Jersey.

The 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which a mentally troubled young man killed 26 children and teachers, served as a rallying cry for gun-control advocates across the nation.

An underwater search for a computer hard drive and anything else linked to the husband-and-wife shooters who killed 14 in the California attacks has concluded.

Operation Christmas Drop is an annual tradition dating back 64 years. What began a small U.S. Air Force squadron’s spontaneous act of holiday cheer has turned into a highly choreographed humanitarian and training effort that involves several air forces, hundreds of volunteers and months of planning.

China's push for a global climate pact was due in part to its own increasingly pressing need to solve serious environmental problems, observers said Sunday.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the newly passed international climate change agreement as a major achievement that could help turn the tide on global warming, but got a quick reminder that Republicans will fight it all the way.

The world is about to go on a carbon diet. It won't be easy — or cheap. Nearly 200 nations across the world on Saturday approved a first-of-its-kind universal agreement to wean Earth off fossil fuels and slow global warming, patting themselves on the back for showing such resolve.

The last British resident held at Guantanamo Bay has denounced extremism in his first interview since being released in October.

The main Western-backed Arab rebel group in Syria appears on the verge of collapse because of low morale, desertions, and distrust of its leaders by the rank and file, threatening U.S. efforts to put together a ground force capable of defeating the Islamic State and negotiating an end to the Syrian civil war.

Some 50 police cars were also damaged in the riots Saturday evening, which started after hundreds of leftwing activists demonstrated against a rally by far-right protesters in Leipzig.

SANA says Sunday's shells were fired by gunmen entrenched in an eastern suburb of the capital.

Rebels entrenched in an eastern suburb of Damascus fired volleys of mortar shells into the Syrian capital on Sunday, killing three people, including a child, and wounding 33, Syria's state-run news agency and residents said. Government forces hit back with airstrikes that activists said killed at least 28 people.

Jawad Khaki, a 57-year-old entrepreneur and philanthropist who worked for 20 years at Microsoft, calls on Iran and Saudia Arabia to tone down language, address radicalism.