WORLD BRIEFING: January 18, 2024
Pakistan’s air force launched retaliatory airstrikes early Thursday in Iran allegedly targeting militant hideouts, an attack that killed at least nine people and further raised tensions between the neighboring nations. The tit-for-tat attacks Tuesday and Thursday appeared to target two Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border. However, the two countries have accused each other of providing safe haven to the groups in their respective territories. The strikes imperil diplomatic relations between the two neighbors, as Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over militant attacks. Each nation also faces its own internal political pressures — and the strikes may in part be in response to that - AP
Ukraine is locked in an existential battle for its survival almost two years into its war with Russia and Western armies and political leaders must drastically change the way they help it fend off invading forces, a top NATO military officer said on Wednesday. At a meeting of the 31-nation alliance’s top brass, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, also said that behind President Vladimir Putin’s rationale for the war is a fear of democracy, in a year marked by elections around the world. Over two days of talks in Brussels, NATO’s top officers are expected to detail plans for what are set to be the biggest military exercises in Europe since the Cold War later this year. The wargames are meant as a fresh show of strength from NATO and its commitment to defend all allied nations from attack - AP
A blow to Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party - and the city state’s squeaky clean image - after the minister of transportation was forced to resign. It followed criminal charges being levied against him. A replacement has been appointed.
Turkish banks are severing relations with Russian banks against the background of US President Joe Biden's decree on secondary sanctions. According to Kommersant, it is about both the break of correspondent relations and the termination of payment processing without formal closing of contracts
The Russian proto-celebrities who bared nearly all in December’s “Almost Naked Party” in Moscow’s Mutabor nightclub who thought their problems had gone away were soon tangled up in lawsuits amounting to millions of dollars and property loss, along with possible banishment from future lucrative work. The backlash against Anastasia Ivleeva, the organizer of the party in which Moscow’s “in-crowd” paraded in lingerie and raunchy costumes, as well as other attendees and the sponsor, mobile communications supplier MTS, just won’t go away. Iveleeva must have thought she had dodged a bullet last Wednesday when Moscow’s khamovnicheskyr District Court rejected, for “technical reasons,” a class-action lawsuit against her and others that sought ₽1 billion ($11.3 million) in “moral damages.”
