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The United States had implored Israel to think carefully and strategically when weighing a response to the hundreds of missiles and drones Iran launched at Israel overnight Saturday-Sunday. Amid the limited reliable information emerging Friday about Israel’s reported retaliation, insistent official silence in Jerusalem, and the military censor’s requirement that any allegation and detailing of an Israeli retaliatory strike be attributed to overseas media reports, it appeared that the government had indeed taken that advice to heart.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Israel risks a “strategic defeat” if it does not work to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza amid its war on militant group Hamas in the region. “The center of gravity is the civilian population and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” Austin said in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif., on Saturday.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong appreciated the upgrade of the bilateral relations between Vietnam and the US to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

The Biden administration is likely to send Ukraine long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to help in its fight to repel the Russian invasion of its territory, according to U.S. officials. "They are coming," said one official who had access to security assistance plans. The official noted that, as always, such plans are subject to change until officially announced. A second official said the missiles are "on the table" and likely to be included in an upcoming security assistance package, adding that a final decision has not been made. It could be months before Ukraine receives the missiles, according...

The Biden administration’s top energy official held multiple talks with a Chinese Communist Party official linked to an oil company counting investment from Hunter Biden’s private equity firm just days before the U.S. moved to release oil from its strategic reserve in 2021. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm controversially spoke with China National Energy Administration chairman Zhang Jianhua one-on-one multiple times in meetings that had not previously been reported, according to internal Energy Department calendars obtained by Fox News. Granholm and her Chinese Communist Party counterpart met on November 19th and 21st, 2021, just days before the White House announced its...

Ukrainian forces pressed their counteroffensive through the Russian-occupied southeast on Thursday, capturing the village of Staromaiorske in a campaign to drive a wedge through Russian defensive positions. The counteroffensive has focused on securing villages on the southward push and areas around the eastern city of Bakhmut, taken by Russian forces in May after months of battles. Ukrainian officials have reported slow, steady progress. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged intensified Ukrainian attacks over the last few days, but said they had made no headway.

Prices could continue to rise, expert says.. The average price of gas in Oregon is up to $5 per gallon again after prices spiked by nearly 40 cents in the last week. After a summer of declining prices, AAA reports that statewide prices jumped from $4.64 per gallon to $5 per gallon in the last seven days. Prices are also up 20.3 cents per gallon in the Portland-Vancouver area this week, with an average price of $4.98 per gallon, GasBuddy.com petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan noted. ... gas prices shooting up in several regions amidst myriad refinery issues from the...

With flu season approaching in the US, murmurs of a potential "twindemic" brewing are once again starting to surface. "This could very well be the year," Vanderbilt infectious disease expert Dr. William Schaffner told NPR's Up First on Friday, "we have a surge in COVID, and simultaneously an increase in influenza." One big reason that infectious disease experts are especially worried this year is because Australia's 2022 flu season was pretty bad, and what happens during the Southern Hemisphere's winter flu surge often forshadows the US flu season well.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday said Russia’s strategic objectives in its attack on Ukraine have “been defeated.” “The war is not over, but so far the Russian strategic objectives have been defeated,” Milley said at a news conference alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Biden has released millions of barrels of oil from the country’s strategic oil reserves. While the oil has been released to stabilize global energy markets and lower the prices of gas, of late the oil reserve release has been controversial. The U.S. sold some oil to China’s Sinopec, which has been connected to Hunter Biden in the past. ... 180 million barrels of oil are to be released, which makes it the biggest drawdown on the strategic oil reserves in history. The U.S sold oil to a subsidiary of Sinopec. ... Unipec America was also awarded 0.95 million barrels of...

The Biden administration has sold nearly 6 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to an entity tied to the Chinese Communist Party, records show. From September 2021 to July, the Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded three crude oil contracts with a combined value of roughly $464 million to Unipec America, the U.S. trading arm of Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec, according to a review by The Epoch Times of the DOE documents. A Chinese firm with ties to Hunter Biden had invested in the national oil giant. The sale would tap 5.9 million barrels in...

The wintry weather lingering in parts of Canada has yielded an expected gift: More maple syrup. Output in Quebec, the world’s largest producer of the sticky breakfast staple, is now poised to rise in 2022 as cool spring temperatures allow farmers to tap trees for a longer period, said Pierre Rhéaume, spokesman for Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, which is a government-sanctioned agency that sets prices and production for most of the world’s syrup. Farmers are still harvesting in some northern parts of the province, with some gathering record amounts, he said. The so-called sugaring season typically occurs between late February...

(There's a video at the site)Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said Russia has already experienced a “strategic defeat” in its invasion of Ukraine. “If you step back and look at this, this has already been a dramatic strategic setback for Russia, and I would say a strategic defeat,” Blinken told co-anchor Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked about additional sanctions the U.S. may impose on Russia. Blinken said Russia has already failed in the three main goals it had at the start of its invasion of Ukraine. “They had three aims going into this....

Ukrainian forces continue to fend off Russian troops as fighting persists Sunday, prompting apparent frustration from Russian President Vladimir Putin and questions regarding strategic miscalculations. Russia’s military is roughly 4.5 times larger than Ukraine’s active-duty force, but Ukrainians continue to hold the capital city of Kyiv as Russian troops encircle it. "The longer this goes on the worse it is for Vladimir Putin," former CIA Moscow station chief Dan Hoffman told Fox News Digital. "There's got to be some questions about miscalculations."

MP Materials, which operates the largest rare earth element mines in the Western Hemisphere, had a big week. It was one of three companies on Nov. 17 to receive Defense Department grants intended to return rare earth production to the United States. The following day it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The Pentagon awarded a Defense Production Act Title III grant worth $9.6 million to MP Materials so it can begin to refine the strategic minerals at its Mountain Pass, California, mine. “This grant from the DoD is outstanding. It's humbling. And we're very proud of the...

To adapt former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's famous 2002 press statement, the world's next big shooting war will be a consequential event masked by known unknowns. The human historical record tells us a major armed (kinetic) conflict involving powerful nations will eventually erupt. Given contemporary economic interdependence and the lethality of modern weaponry, the conflict will have disruptive global consequences, many of them grim. However, what geopolitical issues shape and misshape The Next Big War; who wages the hostility and for what reasons; how the combatants prepare to wage it; where and how the combatants engage; and how the...

I am already sick of Turkey.I suspect that many Americans feel this way, about the bird and the country. Yet a small group of Washington foreign policy hands — at State Department, at Pentagon and in congressional offices — continue to make the case for Turkey as a “strategically important” partner to the US. On paper, the country looks good: It sits at the center of many of Americas most pressing foreign policy concerns, it is a member of NATO, it's stable, and it can offer foreign partners access to its airbases and intelligence cooperation. I used to think of...

PetroChina is unloading the first Chinese purchase of crude oil from US strategic petroleum reserves at a port in eastern China. Supertanker Cosrising Lake, is unloading the US oil at Qingdao port in Shandong province this week, The crude according to the US Department of Energy, is similar in quality to Middle East Oman crude. More Asian refiners are turning to the Americas for oil after OPEC cuts tightened heavy crude supplies and as governments respond to a call from United States President Donald Trump to buy US oil and gas. State-owned PetroChina is one of the key players moving...

WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missiles program required a "determined response," and that the era of "strategic patience" with North Korea's government had ended. "The era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed. ... Frankly, that patience is over," Trump said in the White House Rose Garden in a joint appearance with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.