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Police Abuse
- A Houston police officer is being investigated after lies he told led to police killing two people. [Link]
- A Baltimore judge vacates a jury’s decision to award victims of a police shooting $38 million. One of the victims is a young woman killed by police, and the other is her child who was shot by police and survived. The judge claims the police officer has qualified immunity. [Link]
- A Montana police officer has been charged with 80 counts of sexual abuse of children. [Link]
- A Florida police officer is on leave after a video surfaced of him hitting a handcuffed man. [Link]
- An 11 year old boy was arrested at school for threatening a teacher. The teacher told the boy to leave the country because he found the pledge of allegiance to be racist. [Link]
Trump’s Wall
- Trump declares a national emergency allowing him to reallocate funding for building a wall on the southern border. [Link]
Social Media
- Facebook suspends the accounts of three pages because the pages did not disclose links to the Russian government. It is not standard Facebook policy to require pages to disclose parent companies or foreign funding. [Link]
- Twitter deletes a Tweet From Iran’s Supreme Leader that reasserts the execution order against Salman Rushdie. [Link]
Venezuela
- A leaked State Department email shows the US is moving 250 million tons of humanitarian aid to Venezuela’s border. [Link]
- The US sanctions five top Venezuelan military and intelligence officials. [Link]
- Maduro claims member of his government have had talks with the US government. The US did not confirm or deny having talks with the Maduro. [Link]
Turkey
- Turkey plans to move forward with the purchase of S-400 air defense from Russia. The US has threatened to end the sale of Patriot air defense and F-35s to Turkey if Turkey buys the S-400. [Link
- Turkey is demanding that only Turkish forces are deployed to the safe zones in northern Syria. [Link]
2020
- Bernie Sanders announces he is running for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
- Rep Tulsi Gabbard introduces a bill that would prevent the US from spending money on weapons that violate the INF Treaty. [Link]
US News
- Colorado marijuana sales top $6 billion over the past five years. [Link]
- Uber is suing New York City over a new law that limits the number of drivers. [Link]
- Ady Barkan explains that Rep Ilhan Omar is right about AIPAC’s influence. [Link]
- Andrew Bacevich explains how the legacy media sensationalizes fake news and ignores wars. [Link]
Afghanistan
- The Taliban say they will be unable to attend peace talks with the US in Pakistan because members of the Taliban delegation are on US and UN blacklists. [Link]
- The Taliban attack an Afghan Army base killing all 32 soldiers. [Link]
Middle East
- Israel’s Prime Minister gives up his roles as Foreign Minister. Israel Katz will take over as Foreign Minister. [Link]
- The IRGC accuses Pakistani security forces of supporting the terror group that carried out a suicide bombing that killed dozens of IRGC soldiers. [Link]
- Steven Cook argues the current Iran policy resembles the runup to the Iraq War. [Link]
- The Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan is planning to reduce troop levels by 1,000 as part of his strategy. The troop reduction is seperate from Trump’s planned drawdown and talks with the Taliban. [Link]
- The Houthi and Yemeni government have reached an UN-brokered agreement to withdraw forces from Hodeida. The Houthi will withdraw from the ports and the Yemeni government will withdraw from the outskirts of the city. Both sides will allow access to tons of food aid from World Food Program. Eventually, the roads to Sanaa and Taiz will be opened. [Link]
Africa
- The US carried out an airstrike against al-Qaeda in Libya. [Link]
- Nigeria postpones elections planned for Feb 16th by a week. [Link]
Check out more of Kyle’s work at:
https://libertarianinstitute.org/kyle/
Also check out his podcast Foreign Policy Focus at: