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US State Department Acting Spokesman Mark Toner The United States State Department’s Acting Spokesperson Mark Toner called on European and Turkish government representatives to “tone down the rhetoric” in a press conference in Washington D.C. on Thursday.Answering a journalist’s question on whether he “agrees with the behaviour of the president of Turkey (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) who threatens Europeans every day,” Toner said “I think what we have said about some of the back and forth we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks [is] that we want to see everyone get along and tone down the rhetoric.”“Look Turkey is an...

.@CJTFOIR statement on the #Tabqah Dam OP: “There is nothing easy about this – it takes audacity & courage. And the SDF has that in spades.” https://twitter.com/KonstantinKlug/status/844623180270632965

The US-led coalition has airdropped allied Syrian fighters near the Isil-controlled city of Raqqa in a surprise attempt to cut off the jihadists’ main route out. The operation aims to secure the strategic Tabqa dam across the Euphrates river and isolate the capital of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil’s) so-called caliphate from the rest of the group’s territory in Syria. Five helicopters, supported by five fighter jets, dropped dozens of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters near the northern town of Shurfa on Wednesday afternoon, according to local media reports. More at link

The government of Turkey planned to use front groups and operatives “camouflaged” as journalists to gain access to Capitol Hill and the U.S. security apparatus, hacked emails released by WikiLeaks reveal. The documents, which are from the Gmail account of Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and the son-in-law of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, show the nascent plan for what has turned into a sprawling lobbying and PR campaign undertaken by the Turkish government. Turkey’s lobbying efforts catapulted into the news last week after Donald Trump’s short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn registered as a foreign lobbyist for Turkey.

The US has agreed not to repeat claims the UK's communications intelligence agency wiretapped Donald Trump in the weeks after he won the US election. GCHQ denied allegations made by the White House that it spied on Mr Trump as president-elect. No 10 has been assured the allegations would not be repeated, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said. He said it had been made clear to US authorities the claims were "ridiculous and should have been ignored".

The U.S. attorney for Manhattan has declined to resign despite a demand from the Justice Department. Preet Bharara declined to tender his resignation on Friday part of a demand from the Justice Department for 46 U.S. attorneys to resign, according to multiple reports. Bharara previously met with President Trump at Trump Tower before the inauguration and had told reporters Trump asked him to stay on.

Istanbul (AFP) - Turkish, Russian and US military chiefs held talks on Tuesday in the southern Turkish city of Antalya to discuss regional issues including Iraq and Syria, the Turkish army said. "Common issues relating to regional security, in particular Syria and Iraq, are being discussed at the meeting," the army said in a statement, without elaborating further.

Not posting since I am unsure if we can excerpt Time. The upshot is the EU has found that the US is in violation of Visa reciprocity from Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Cyprus, and Poland and wants to force US citizens to get Visas to go there.

A high-ranking representative of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who wished not to disclose his name, has told Sputnik Turkiye that the US is "taking all necessary measures" to defend the Syrian city of Manbij from an attack by the Turkish military. It has set up a military base in the city and hung up its flag as a "warning sign" to Ankara. The US is "taking all necessary measures" to defend the Syrian city of Manbij in the Aleppo Governorate, 30 kilometers west of the Euphrates, which is currently under control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), from an attack by the Turkish Armed Forces and fighters from the...

Manbij Military Council spokesperson Shervan Derwish Tensions have mounted in northern Syria since Turkish-FSA Euphrates Shield forces captured the town of al-Bab from the Islamic State (IS) group last week.Sporadic clashes between FSA and Syrian government forces to the south of al-Bab since then have turned on Wednesday to attacks on Manbij, a city to the east of al-Bab held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).Reports of clashes in several villages to the west and northwest of Manbij have been followed by claims by pro-FSA sources that rebels have taken at least three villages from the SDF. Concurrent attacks by the IS group on...

US Central Command General Joseph Votel has promised the defence of Manbij from any possible attacks by Turkey and Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups, according to reports.In a visit to the autonomous region in northern Syria (Rojava) on Friday, which was reported by Kom News, General Votel met with Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) officials in a four hour meeting.Speaking to AFP, SDF spokesperson Talal Silo commented on the meeting saying, “We talked about the coordination between the SDF and Washington and increasing support for the SDF. They promised us heavy weapons for the upcoming...

Two years ago, when Saudi Arabia launched an unprecedented campaign to crush high-cost oil producers, in the process effectively putting an end to the OPEC cartel (at least until last year's attempt to cut production), it made a bold bet that U.S. shale producers would be swept under when the price of oil tumbled, leading to a tsunami of bankruptcies, as well as investment and production halts. To an extent it succeeded, but where it may have made a glaring error is the core assumption about shale breakeven costs, which as we reported throughout 2016, were substantially lower than consensus...

A group of nearly 100 prominent Iranian dissidents is demanding that Congress launch investigations into clandestine efforts by the Islamic Republic to influence U.S. policy using a network of lobbyists and propaganda pieces placed in Voice of America's Persian service, according to a letter sent to leading lawmakers and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The group of dissidents, composed of prominent Iranian voices that oppose the hardline regime in Tehran, says that Congress is not doing enough to expose the Iranian regime's lobbying efforts in D.C. and propaganda network, which is said to include some at VOA Persia. Iranian-American...

As Turkish leaders continue to make hawkish noises about Raqqa, a high-level delegation seeking to persuade the United States to exclude the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from a planned offensive to liberate the city from the Islamic State left Washington empty-handed, Al-Monitor has learned. The team headed by Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Umit Yalcin and comprising the heads of the ministry’s US, Iraq and Syria departments along with senior members of the Turkish Armed Forces and the national spy agency MIT, pushed their case against the YPG in separate meetings on Feb. 13-14 with US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom...

Besides the stunning political upsets of 2016, the U.S and the U.K have something else in common: a foreign aid budget that is unpopular, unhelpful and doesn’t actually do much good for anyone. With billions of dollars being used as “soft diplomacy” (bribes) to both friendly and unfriendly nations, the aid budget has taken the place of proper foreign policy and real diplomatic measures. Should you choose to type “US foreign aid budget” into Google, your top two responses will be articles by the Washington Post and NPR, delightfully telling you how racist and ignorant people are when questioned on...

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview released on Friday that the United States is welcome to join the battle against "terrorists" in Syria — as long as it is in cooperation with his government and respects the country's sovereignty. Speaking with Yahoo News, Assad said he has not had any communication — direct or indirect — with President Donald Trump or any official form the new U.S. administration. But the Syrian leader appeared to make a gesture to the new U.S. president in the interview, saying he welcomes Trump's declaration that he will make it...

Multinational beer and spirits company Diageo, which owns Guinness and Harp, among many other famous brands, is planning on opening a brand new Guinness brewery in Baltimore County, Maryland in the fall. It will be the first Guinness brewery in the US in 60 years. Diageo is planning on investing $50 million (€46 million) in this project and will begin construction this spring at a former bottling plant in Relay, MD, which closed in 2015. The project is expected to create 70 new jobs in brewing, warehousing and packaging, as well as in the visitor experience side of the operation.

1-31-17: Patrol officers on route to a person allegedly stuck on the border wall in the water. Officer: "Obviously with Trump's executive order there's a lot of focus right now on the US/ Mexico border. We're heading down Monument road right near the border to check it out." At 16:24: "Three people tried to cross, one got stuck on the fence...we don't know of his citizenship." Fascinating to hear how the officers verbally process the situation and interact with dispatch. A little taste of what our excellent officers deal with on a regular basis.

President Donald Trump is taking his ‘America First’ energy plan from the campaign trail to the White House website, vowing to achieve energy independence from OPEC and any nations hostile to U.S. interests. Trump is not the first U.S. President to have promised energy independence. At the height of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Richard Nixon suggested a project to ensure that by the end of the 1970s, “Americans will not have to rely on any source of energy beyond our own”. More than 40 years later, America continues to rely on foreign oil imports, and is a large importer...

President Barack Obama announced Thursday he is ending a longstanding immigration policy that allows any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil to stay and become a legal resident. The repeal of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy is effective immediately. The decision follows months of negotiations focused in part on getting Cuba to agree to take back people who had arrived in the U.S. "Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities," Obama said in a...