News & Articles

For the first time ever, a rail line will connect longtime frenemies Iraq and Iran. Conductors might yell “All aboard!” by the end of 2024. Builders will lay a little over eighteen miles of track between Iraq’s southern city of Basra and the Iranian border town of Shalamja, linking nations with ties that have deepened since the 2003 U.S. invasion …

Protesters recently took to the streets in Sweida, a southern province with a mostly Druze population that has remained securely in government hands throughout the civil war. Syria is in a deep economic crisis that saw its currency plunge to a record 15,500 Syrian pounds to the dollar last week in a rapidly accelerating free-fall. It traded at 47 pounds …

Predictably, festivities marking the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Naval base on Diego Garcia focused on the base’s strategic importance instead of its controversial past. “For 50 years, the Master-at-Arms rate has upheld a tradition of high standards of conduct, courtesy, and military excellence,” said Master-at-Arms 1st Class Andrew Bourdier, president of the MA ball committee, during the opening ceremony …

President Joe Biden marked the one-year anniversary of the PACT Act, a law that is personal to him, during a speech in Utah. Biden spoke to veterans at the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City to highlight the one-year anniversary of the PACT Act, which has already provided 4.1 million veterans with free …

Surplus equipment that the United States and other countries send to Ukraine might be battle-ready earlier if one retired Army officer gets his way. As a private citizen over the past year, Vindman watched the slow Russian buildup along Ukraine’s borders and, he said, became concerned about how Kyiv would support and sustain a long conflict. Vindman and his twin …