Pakistan is expanding its uranium-enrichment and plutonium production facilities, triggering fears that it may become the 5th largest nulcear-weapon state and have 220 to 250 warheads within the next seven years, a report has said.

The report published on August 31 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists authored by members of the Federation of American Scientists says that Pakistan was also developing several delivery systems.

“Pakistan continues to expand its nuclear arsenal with more warheads, more delivery systems, and a growing fissile materials production industry… We estimate that the country’s stockpile could… grow to 220 to 250 warheads by 2025, if the current trend continues,” said the 12-page report.

The report first appearted in Jane’s Defence Weekly, a London-based magazine that reports on military and corporate affairs said on Wednesday.

(IANS)

An unnamed senior US administration official has assailed President Donald Trump’s “amorality” and reckless decision-making in an op-ed and said he or she is part of a “resistance” working to thwart Trump’s worst impulses.

“The dilemma — which (Trump) does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” the New York Times piece read. “I would know. I am one of them.”

Trump labelled the anonymous writer “gutless” and the newspaper as “phony”. His press secretary said the mystery writer was a “coward” who should quit, the BBC reported.

The NYT said disclosing the name of the official, who is known to the publication, would jeopardize the official’s job, and that publishing the piece anonymously was the only way to deliver an important perspective to readers.

Major newspapers almost never publish unnamed op-ed pieces. At The New York Times, it is very rare, but not entirely unprecedented, the CNN said.

The op-ed came on the heels of reports based on a damning book about Trump’s presidency by veteran journalist Bob Woodward and amplified the sense that top advisers to the President have serious concerns about his conduct in office and leadership abilities.

It is likely to compound Trump’s sense of paranoia that he is surrounded by advisers who may be duplicitous and untrustworthy, the CNN report added.

Trump quickly lashed out on Wednesday, dismissing the op-ed as “really a disgrace”. He demanded for the name to be revealed.

“We have somebody in what I call the failing New York Times that’s talking about he’s part of the resistance inside the Trump administration,” Trump said. “This is what we have to deal with. And you know the dishonest media … But it’s really a disgrace.”

He then pivoted to his accomplishments, claiming that “nobody has done what this administration has done in terms of getting things passed and getting things through.”

Trump later tweeted a pointed and unsubstantiated attack on the NYT, questioning if the author of the op-ed exists. If the author does exist, the organization should publicly identify the individual, Trump said.

“Does the so-called ‘Senior Administration Official’ really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source?” Trump tweeted.

“If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”

(IANS)

US President Donald Trump wanted to have Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed after the Syrian government reportedly carried out a chemical attack in April 2017, a new book by renowned journalist Bob Woodward alleges.

The attack, which was widely blamed on forces loyal to the Syrian government, was carried out on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing more than 80 people.

According to the book ‘Fear: Trump in the White House’, by Woodward, Trump wanted the US military to go into Syria and assassinate al-Assad.

“Let’s f*****g kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f*****g lot of them,” Trump said according to Woodward’s book.

A year after Khan Sheikhoun, Syria chemical weapons ‘still used’
Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the Pentagon would “get right on it” after Trump made his request, according to Woodward, but after getting off the phone with Trump, Mattis made it clear to his staff that they were not going to follow through with Trump’s plan.

“We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured,” Mattis said according to Woodward’s book.

Instead of targeting al-Assad personally, the Pentagon drew up plans for air strikes to take out Syrian military infrastructure.

Following those air strikes on 7 April 2017, Trump praised the US military, saying the military personnel “represented the United States and the world so well”.

In an official response to the allegations, Mattis called the quotes used in Woodward’s book “fiction” and “a product of someone’s rich imagination,” adding that the publication was “a uniquely Washington brand of literature”.

“In serving in this administration, the idea that I would show contempt for the elected Commander-in-Chief, President Trump, or tolerate disrespect to the office of the President from within our Department of Defense, is a product of someone’s rich imagination,” Mattis’ statement said.

Trump also responded to the book, calling the quotes in the book “made up by frauds, a con on the public”.

The Woodward book has already been refuted and discredited by General (Secretary of Defense) James Mattis and General (Chief of Staff) John Kelly. Their quotes were made up frauds, a con on the public. Likewise other stories and quotes. Woodward is a Dem operative? Notice timing?

When asked about the allegations, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley denied ever hearing threats made by Trump against al-Assad.

“I have not once ever heard the president talk about assassinating Assad,” Haley told Al Jazeera correspondent James Bays.

The Syrian government has always denied it was involved in the chemical attack, but an independent United Nations panel concluded the attack was carried out by al-Assad’s forces.

‘We’re in Crazytown’
Woodward’s book also details several other encounters in the Trump White House between senior staff and the president.

According to the book, sources told Woodward that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly regularly lost his temper with Trump, calling him “unhinged” and “an idiot”, the Washington Post reported.

“It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had,” the book quotes Kelly as saying according to unnamed sources.

Trump himself also railed against the people he appointed, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the book states.

Rob Porter, former staff secretary, was told by Trump to ignore whatever Priebus said, saying that Priebus was “a little rat”, Woodward wrote.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has recently been targeted by Trump on Twitter for his recusal in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election, was also alleged to have been criticised regularly by Trump.

Trump in war of words with Attorney General Jeff Sessions
“This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner,” Trump said about Sessions, according to the book.

Another allegation made in the book is that former top economic adviser to Trump Gary Cohn stole a letter off Trump’s desk to prevent the US from withdrawing from a trade agreement with South Korea.

“I’ll just take the paper off his desk,” Cohn, who has since quit the White House, said to his staffers.

Woodward is considered one of the most renowned investigative political journalists in recent decades.

He became famous after he and his colleague Carl Bernstein revealed the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration in the 1970s.

Their reporting eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Since then, Woodward has written several books about the inner workings of presidential administrations.

Aljazeera

Kabul Taliban key commander Mullah Ghousuding was among 7 persons killed on Wednesday in a blast outside Qala-e-Naw, the capital of Afghanistan’s western Badghis province, police said.

“The notorious Mullah Ghousuding, alias Sia Khan, along with his men were busy in subversive activities to terrorize people outside Qala-e-Naw city but an explosive device suddenly went off, killing him and six others on the spot,” a police spokesman told Xinhua news agency.

Describing the commander as a “dreadful terrorist,” the spokesman said Sia Khan’s killing could prove a major blow to the Taliban in Badghis province and adjoining areas.

(IANS)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that India’s planned purchase of a Russian missile system or its relations with Iran will not be “the primary focus” of the “incredibly important” 2+2 Strategic Dialogue meeting he and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis will be having with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Seetharaman this week.

Calling India a “true strategic partner,” he said on Tuesday the meeting in New Delhi is “really about things that are big and strategic and will go on for 20, 40, 50 years” and “those are the kinds of topics that Secretary Mattis and I are hoping to address”.

“We have a true strategic partner who, frankly, is our only major defence partner… with whom we have a great relationship and who is very important to our success in our Indo-Pacific strategy — enormous country with incredibly opportunity and capacity for wealth creation,” he told reporters travelling with him to India according to a transcript provided by the State Department.

“We hope we can find opportunities to continue to expand the relationship not only diplomatic and military-to-military but a good set of business relationships as well,” he added.

“There’s half a dozen things on the agenda that we’re really intent on making progress on,” he said.

The 2+2 Strategic Dialogue was postponed twice at the request of the US — first in April when the leadership of the State Department was transitioning from Rex Tillerson to Pompeo.

“I regret it was my fault the second time” in July, he said. “I had to travel to Pyongyang.” Trump had suddenly set up a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump had decided on the Strategic Dialogue when they met in Washington in 2017.

Trump administration’s strategic vision embodies India and the US as “the two bookends of stability” in the Asia Pacific region — and a counterbalance to China’s rising power.

Symbolically, the US now calls the region Indo-Pacific and even renamed its Pacific military command.

At this week’s meeting, Iran and the Russian missile defence system purchase “will certainly come up, but I don’t think they will be the primary focus of what it is we are trying to accomplish here,” Pompeo said.

“Those decisions are important to the relationship for sure, but I don’t see us resolving those during this set of meetings of the Strategic Dialogue,” he added.

India is planning to buy five advanced S-400 Triumf air defence missile systems from Russia in a deal estimated to cost about Rs 40,000 crore.

India reportedly also plans to continue buying oil from Iran despite threat of sanctions by Trump, who reneged on the agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany to stop Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has arrived in Damascus for talks with Syrian government officials, the privately owned Tasnim news agency reported.

The top Iranian diplomat is scheduled to hold talks with President Bashar al-Assad and Prime Minister Imad Khamis on bilateral relations and the latest developments in Syria, the agency said.

Syria’s war: Damascus airbase blasts ’caused by electrical fault’
Zarif’s visit on Monday comes after Amar Hatami, Iran’s defence minister, travelled to Damascus and signed an agreement for defence cooperation with his Syrian counterpart Ali Abdullah Ayoub. Hatami also met Assad duding his trip.

Iranian forces have backed Assad in the country’s seven-year-old civil war.

Tehran has provided steady political, financial, and military support to the government during this period.

‘Iranian advisers to stay’
Separately, Iran’s military attache to Damascus told Iranian media on Tuesday that the country’s military advisers would remain in Syria under a defence agreement signed this week.

“The continued presence of Iran’s advisers in Syria is one of the areas covered in the defensive-technical agreement between Tehran and Damascus,” said Brigadier-General Abolghasem Alinejad last Tuesday, according to the Fars and Tabnak news agencies.

Russia and Iran, which support Assad, and Turkey have been in close cooperation over Syria in order to find a solution to the conflict.

Iranian, Russian and Turkish presidents are scheduled to meet in Tehran to discuss the latest developments in Syria in early September.

Since Russia military intervened on Assad’s behalf in 2015, the regime has regained much of the territory lost to fighters in the early years of the war.

Syria’s war has left more than 350,000 people dead and displaced millions since it broke out with the brutal repression of an initially peaceful uprising in 2011.

(ALJAZEERA)

Two Reuters reporters were jailed on Monday for seven years for violating a state secrets act during their reporting of the Rohingya crisis, a court said, in the case that has drawn outrage for its attack on media freedom.

The two journalists were being tried since 2017 for breaching Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act while investigating violence against the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state by the army, the BBC reported.

Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on the night of December 12, after meeting with two police officers who, according to the defendants, handed them confidential documents, the Efe news reported.

Since then, both have been held without bail and have appeared 30 times before the court, which started a preliminary investigation on January 9 and formally filed charges on July 9.

The case has been widely seen as a test of press freedom in Myanmar.

The journalists have maintained their innocence, saying they were set up by the police.

“I have no fear,” Lone, 32, said after the verdict. “I have not done anything wrong. I believe in justice, democracy and freedom.”

The two men, who both have families with young children, have been in prison since their arrest in December 2017.

“Today is a sad day for Myanmar, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and press freedom anywhere,” said Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler.

Judge Ye Lwin told the court in Yangon the pair had “intended to harm the interests of the state”. “And so they have been found guilty under the state secrets act,” he said.

Lone and Soe Oo, 28, had been collecting evidence about the execution of 10 men by the army in the village of Inn Din in northern Rakhine.

During their investigation, they were offered the documents by two police officers, but were arrested immediately afterwards for the possession of those documents.

Authorities later launched their own probe into the killings, confirming the massacre took place and promising to take action against those who had taken part.

The BBC said that many would see this verdict as a crushing blow to freedom of the press in Myanmar and another setback for the democracy, three years after Aung San Suu Kyi’s party triumphed in free elections.

He said Lone and Soe Oo bowed their heads as the verdict was delivered. Wa Lone – who has missed the birth of his first child while being detained — protested his innocence once again as he was led away.

“We are extremely disappointed by this verdict,” Britain and the US have said, saying the court’s decision was “deeply troubling for everybody who has struggled so hard here for media freedom”.

The UN’s resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Myanmar Knut Ostby said the UN had “consistently called for the release” of the journalists and that “a free press is essential for peace, justice and human rights for all. We are disappointed by today’s court decision”.

“The outrageous convictions show Myanmar courts’ willingness to muzzle those reporting on military atrocities,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.

“These sentences mark a new low for press freedom and further backsliding on rights under Suu Kyi’s government.”

The verdict comes a year after the crisis in Rakhine state came to a head when a Rohingya militant group attacked several police posts. The military responded with a brutal crackdown against the Rohingya minority.

The UN has said leading army figures in Myanmar should be investigated and prosecuted for genocide.

Media access to Rakhine is strictly controlled by the government so it is difficult to get reliable news from the region.

San Francisco Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers at Facebook have set a new record in improving translation from Urdu to English.

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is the field concerned with using AI to do translations in any language.

The team from Facebook AI Research (FAIR) has seen a dramatic improvement in its results, the Forbes reported on Saturday.

“To give some idea of the level of advancement, an improvement of 1 BLEU point (a common metric for judging the accuracy of MT) is considered a remarkable achievement in this field; our methods showed an improvement of more than 10 BLEU points,” the team said in a paper that described translation from Urdu to English.

Facebook AI researchers seek to understand and develop systems with human-level intelligence by advancing the longer-term academic problems surrounding AI.

The research covers the full spectrum of topics related to AI, and to deriving knowledge from data: theory, algorithms, applications, software infrastructure and hardware infrastructure.

“Long-term objectives of understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines are bold and ambitious, and we know that making significant progress towards AI can’t be done in isolation,” said researchers from FAIR.

FAIR researchers have tested a new approach that teaches bots how to chit-chat like humans.

Facebook is making deep investments in AI technology and in May announced the next version of its open-source AI framework for developers.

Microsoft is currently leading when it comes to AI and Deep Neural Networks to improve real-time language translation.

Earlier this year, Microsoft brought machine learning to improve language translation for Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.

With Deep Neural Networks-powered language translation, the results are more accurate and the sound more natural.

[IANS]

Canberra Australia’s largest honey producer Capilano has been accused by testers of using fake honey in one of its products, media reports said on Monday.

Capilano’s Allowrie-branded Mixed Blossom Honey, which sources its products from Australia and overseas, claims to be 100 per cent honey.

However, lab tests have found a majority of its samples to be “adulterated”, meaning they contain something other than bee nectar, Xinhua news agency reported.

Trevor Weatherhead, executive director of the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council said he was not sure why anybody would want to pass fake honey off as the real thing. But cost cutting might be a reason.

So far Capilano has denied the accusations and questioned the testing method. “There is no consensus in the industry about the reliability of the Nuclear Magnetic Resolution (NMR) test that has led to the reports,” Managing Director Ben McKee said in a statement.

[IANS]

Los Angeles Reality TV star Jamie Otis says she had experienced a chemical pregnancy just days after she shared a picture of a test that she hoped was positive.

“Sorry I’ve been missing in action. This very bizarre positive pregnancy test then negative test then faint positive lines gave me hope that Gracie was going to become a big sister in 9 months, but the night before last I began having terrible contraction-like pains and spotting,” Otis began, reports people.com.

She added: “Then over the night full blown everything – if you know what I mean. I’m a nurse so I had my suspicions; but my midwife confirmed I had a chemical pregnancy. I don’t know why some people have it seemingly SO easy to get preggers and carry their babies to term and others struggle?”

A chemical pregnancy is “an early pregnancy loss that occurs shortly after implantation”, according to Healthline.

“What I do know is that I am so, so thankful for this little girl (and her daddy) right here. It’s like she knew mommy was in so much pain…. she just wanted to be held and snuggled all night long,” Otis said.

Otis and husband Doug Hehner have had a difficult road to parenthood. In July 2016, Otis and Hehner announced they had lost a baby boy they named Johnathan Edward.

Then in August 2017, Otis gave birth to daughter Henley Grace.

[IANS]