ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Washington DC’s Tenleytown and Friendship Heights Metro stations were evacuated after reports that an explosion in a mechanical room had caused a fire and heavy smoke. Witnesses describe a chaos and poor communications by metro staff. People reported hearing blasts and seeing flames and smoke underground. Social media messages described the panic on a smoke-filled Red Line train. DC Fire and EMS have tweeted out that there had been no casualties, but there is still smoke between the Friendship Heights & Tenleytown/AU stations. The incident was caused by “trouble inside a mechanical room,” DC Fire and EMS reported on its Twitter account. According to the emergency response team, the heavy smoke is concentrated around an insulator that caught on fire at the platform. RT America producer Shefali Kapadia got stuck at the Bethesda metro station because of the fire. She reported that crowds of people were rushing from the metro and across the street, trying to get to other means of tra

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) is selling antiquities looted from Syria to buyers in the US and Europe as a means of funding its terrorist activities. The jihadists are transporting the artifacts out of the country via Turkey according to documents from IS’s Ministry of Natural Resources, obtained exclusively by an RT documentary crew. Yaya J. Fanusie , director of analysis at the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance told RT that this is a “very strategically important source of revenue for Islamic State”. “There’s definitely a pipeline that goes through the states that border the region, so Turkey is one location where there’s a lot of smuggling,” he said. Middlemen have told the center that buyers are coming from the US and Europe – but they haven’t documented the final buyers. Fanusie was among a number of experts who testified at a special hearing held by the US House Financial Services Committee’s Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing this week. The he

Pyongyang said it will stop conducting nuclear tests if the US puts an end to its annual military drills in the South, North Korea’s foreign minister told AP on Saturday. “Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests,” Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong said in his first-ever interview with Western media. “If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world as well.” At the same time, Ri stressed that his country has the right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and will not be bullied by international sanctions. Korea’s foreign minister asserted that it was the US that had pushed the North to develop nuclear weapons as a self-defense strategy, adding that the only thing that could dissuade the country from carrying out its tests, would be for the US to halt its military exercises with Seoul. “It is really crucial for the United States gove

EU-Turkey relations are like cattle trading with the EU trying to turn Turkey into a prison camp for refugees and Erdogan using it to boost his popularity, says Firat Demir, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Oklahoma. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is heading to Turkey on Saturday to discuss implementing the migrant deal that was sealed with Ankara in March. Under it the EU will deport illegal migrants to Turkey while providing Ankara with financial aid and promises of a visa-free regime for Turks. RT: Merkel's coalition partner the Social Democrats have urged the chancellor to send a message on freedom of speech during her visit. How do you think that will go? Firat Demir: First of all, regarding the visa-free travel for Turkish citizens, that has been a disgrace for the EU since 1963. The EU agreed to visa-free travel for citizens of Turkey in 1963, and confirmed it in 1970 and even as recent as 2009 the European Council of Human Rights struck

Many people have been killed and wounded in a blast that rocked central Kabul during the morning rush hour on Tuesday, President Ashraf Ghani said. Afghanistan's Tolo News channel said at least 28 people were killed and more than 200 others injured in the coordinated attack. The attack, claimed by the Taliban, apparently targeted the offices of Afghanistan's main security agency. In a statement, the Presidential Palace condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms," saying a number of people had been killed or wounded. A spokesman for an emergency hospital in the city told Reuters that the facility had received eight lightly wounded Afghan soldiers. A thick plume of black smoke was seen rising from the vicinity of the sprawling US embassy in the Afghan capital after the powerful blast. Warning sirens were sounded at the embassy compound, which is also close to NATO headquarters in Afghanistan. An Afghan official said a possible bomber carried out the attack

China says it has sent a military aircraft to one of its controversial islands in the South China Sea in order to evacuate workers wounded during construction work there. The Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement posted on its website that the plane was on patrol on Sunday when it was ordered to head to the Fiery Cross Reef island to evacuate three workers and fly them to the country’s southernmost island province of Hainan for treatment. China has reportedly transformed Fiery Cross Reef into a man-made island. It sent three commercial jets to the island in January after the runway on the island was completed. In recent years, China has built major structures, including radar systems and air strips, over reefs and outcrops. The move, however, has drawn criticism from regional countries as well as the United States, which accuse Beijing of undergoing a massive “land reclamation” program in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea. Washington claims that Beijing’s alleged

Why are we asking this now? A British Airways pilot has revealed his flight was struck by a suspected drone as it came in to land at Heathrow Airport. Flight BA727 landed safety with 132 passengers and five crew on board. After being examined by engineers, it was cleared for its next flight. However, the collision has raised concern about the use of drones, especially around sensitive areas such as airports. Why are people worried? The number of near misses involving drones and aeroplanes has quadrupled in the last year, a report released by the UK Airprox Board in March found. Of 23 near misses recorded between April and October last year, 12 were given an A rating of "a serious risk of collision". The aviation industry is fastidious about eliminating so-called FODs (Foreign Object Debris) from the “airside” area at airports. The dangers from debris were highlighted most tragically in the Air France Concorde crash in 2000, when a thin titanium strip left behind on the ru

The international community is ready to help Libya’s unity government with security training, British foreign minister Philip Hammond said on a visit to Tripoli on Monday. Meanwhile, the EU’s foreign and defence ministers gathering in Luxembourg for what is called a “jumbo” meeting on the new major subject of worry: Libya. Two of them, the German and French foreign ministers, have visited the country on Saturday, assuring Libya’s new U.N.-brokered unity government has the international community and Europe’s full support. The visit by Steinmeier and his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault followed a Thursday visit by the ambassadors of France, Britain and Spain who pledged to reopen embassies closed two years ago because of instability in the country. Britain is one of several countries to try to train Libyan security forces abroad after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, but the efforts stalled until now amid militia infighting and political squabbles. An earlier training scheme in