This week, twelve trade ministers meet in Hawaii to try to complete negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.

If they succeed, there will be substantial benefits for their nations and a big diplomatic win for the Obama administration. If they fail, the accord risks getting bogged down in U.S. presidential politics and puts into question the re-balance to Asia.

The Obama administration’s policy of “rebalance” toward Asia has been designed to achieve two objectives: to embed the United States more deeply in the world’s most dynamic economic region, and to prevent a regional vacuum to be filled predominantly by China as it continues its rise.

The rebalance has rested on three pillars: political, security, and economic.

The administration has tangible achievements to show in the political and security domains: strengthening of alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines; normalization of relations with Myanmar; joining of the East Asia Summit, which the U.S. president attends each year; annual presidential meetings with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the opening of an embassy accredited to ASEAN in Jakarta; relaxation of the arms embargo on Vietnam; expansion of counter-terrorist cooperation with Indonesia; a Strategic and Economic Dialogue and frequent presidential summits with China; and heightened attention to the South China Sea.

But the economic component that should be driving U.S. engagement has had few specific accomplishments. The Korea-U.S. free trade agreement stands out, but in isolation. The U.S.-China negotiation on a bilateral investment treaty is on a very slow track because of Chinese reluctance to further open up its economy.

The Export-Import Bank’s future is tied up in ideological wars in the Republican Congressional Caucus. Reform of the International Monetary Fund has been blocked by the U.S. House of Representatives. Chinese initiatives such as the establishment of an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and a “Silk Road” investment project to build infrastructure in Eurasia have been met by sullen resistance and a lack of positive alternatives by the United States.

In this context, passage of TPP is vital if the rebalance is to be seen by states in the region as being economically relevant. To impress a region that prizes economic growth and openness, the stakes in TPP therefore are high for the administration.

The benefits of TPP

Currently, there are 12 countries negotiating the TPP. The full details have not yet been agreed on or disclosed. But economists have made plausible estimates of what benefits an agreement would likely yield.

In this kind of trade agreement, the big absolute gains go to large economies, especially ones that still have significant protection. Thus, the United States stands to gain $77 billion annually, while Japan's benefit is an even larger $105 billion. The big winner relative to the size of its economy is Vietnam, which could gain more than 10 percent of gross domestic product; followed closely by Malaysia, gaining about 6 percent.

These are static estimates. If joining TPP ushers in additional reforms in Vietnam that attract more investment and productivity growth, the gains could be much larger. Still the overall gains to the TPP-12 are modest and should not be exaggerated.

The long-term effect of TPP will depend on how other countries in the Asia-Pacific region react to it. China is the biggest loser from the current version of TPP. Its estimated losses are similar to Vietnam’s gains, which makes sense because the losses come from trade diversion away from China to Vietnam and other developing countries.

China’s economy is many times larger than Vietnam’s, however, so the losses are a tiny 0.2 percent of China’s economy. If more developing countries—especially large ones such as India, Indonesia, and Thailand—are attracted to join, then China’s losses from being left out will mount.

Most of the current TPP countries hope that China is eventually attracted to join. The benefits of any deep liberalization agreement that includes China will be many times greater than agreements without China. China may not want to join a pre-existing agreement, but that is not a big issue if it is serious about liberalizing to the standard of TPP. This could be done, for example, through a free-trade area of the Asia-Pacific whose benefits would be 6 to 7 times greater than those of the initial TPP agreement.

While things look promising for reaching a TPP agreement this week, it is still challenging to get it finalized before the U.S. presidential election takes full flight.

Under U.S. trade law and the recently passed Trade Promotion Authority legislation, there is an array of 60- and 90-day clocks during which the president must declare his intention to sign and publish the agreement and the Congress must vote on TPP-enabling legislation.

If, as the Obama administration hopes, negotiation among the parties is completed at the round of trade ministerial talks in Hawaii this week, the most optimistic scenario would look like this:

• Notification to Congress in early August of President Obama’s intention to sign TPP, and publication of the TPP agreement in mid-September.
• If both of these events occur in those time frames, the president could sign the agreement at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders meeting in Manila on November 18 and 19.
• After President Obama signs, Congress must act through an up or down vote within 90 days, which would mean by mid-February.

Avoid the election 

The hope of President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership is to complete the process before the notional February deadline, indeed ideally in December or January.

The political imperative is to hold the vote before the February 1 Iowa caucus, so that TPP does not become an issue in the presidential campaign. Free trade agreements are unpopular with voters, especially in the Democratic Party. So passage could become complicated if there are delays.

A delayed vote would present a particular dilemma for Hillary Clinton, who advocated and pushed for TPP as Secretary of State but who as a presidential candidate has voiced opposition to passage of Trade Promotion Authority and by implication TPP.

She would seem to have a high interest in seeing this issue resolved before the caucus and primary season.

SEE ALSO: Companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying for Obama's pacific trade deal

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The Canadian military signed a deal Wednesday to buy Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense technology, according to a statement from Canada’s Department of National Defense. The military will primarily use the system when deployed in conflict zones around the world and is expecting to take delivery in 2017.

“Much like Israel’s successful Iron Dome radar technology, the Medium Ranger Radar system will be able to instantly track enemy fire aimed at Canadian Armed Forces personnel and help keep them safe during operations,” said Canada’s Defense Minister Jason Kenney in the statement.

Israel’s Iron Dome, which was first used by the Israeli Defense Force in 2011, has been the subject of praise and criticism for its role in the 2014 conflict with Hamas in Palestinian territory. Physicist Theodore Postol, a professor of science technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an analysis that the Iron Dome has a success rate of less than 5 percent, and the primary reasons for fewer casualties was the abundance of shelters nearby and the early warning system. 

However, during that same conflict, the government claimed that the Iron Dome had a success rate of around 90 percent over 50 days.

Canadian defense manufacturer Rheinmetall Canada Inc., which won the contract worth $243.3 million for 10 medium-range missile systems, will work closely with the Israeli Aerospace Industries to apply the Israeli-made technology to the Canadian hardware.

The new system will be capable of eliminating “airborne threats,” following “hostile, indirect fire,” finding enemy positions as well as calculating the “point of impact of a projectile,” according to the Defense Department.

“The system is flexible enough to meet a wide range of missions. It is air transportable, is highly mobile and is rapidly deployable,” the statement read. “In addition, it can work day and night under all weather conditions to generate a real-time understanding of air traffic above a battlefield.”

SEE ALSO: Israel's Building An Electronic 'Iron Dome' For Stopping Cyber Attacks

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows how Christianity spread across the world

The 718th Amphibian Tractor Battalion shipped out just in time to participate in the invasion of Leyte Gulf, where they took part in raids behind Japanese lines.

Though seeing a fair amount of action, they only suffered one KIA.

After the Philippines, they participated in the invasion of Okinawa where their duties were more supply and logistical in nature, rather than engaging the enemy.

The son of Jerry Smith, of the Army’s 718th Amphibious Tractor Battalion, has shared the following photos.

SEE ALSO: The B-17 Flying Fortress debuted exactly 80 years ago — here's its legacy

Jerry Smith served in the Army’s 718th Amphibious Tractor Battalion. He was a driver and armorer on an LVT-4 amphibian tractor.

The Okinawa countryside.

Jerry Smith on duty in Okinawa.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Russian citizen accused by U.S. authorities of posing as a banker in New York in order to spy for his government lost a bid to have the case against him dismissed on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan rejected Evgeny Buryakov's request to have the charges thrown out, saying the government's allegations were adequate to support the indictment.

Buryakov and two other Russians were charged in February with conspiring to gather economic information on behalf of Russia’s foreign intelligence service known as the SVR.

Buryakov worked at the New York branch of state-owned Vnesheconombank or VEB but prosecutors claim he was secretly engaged in covert work for the SVR.

The indictment alleges he was trying to gather intelligence on potential U.S. sanctions against Russia and U.S. efforts in the field of alternative energy.

The other two defendants, Igor Sporyshec and Victor Podobnyy, are no longer in the United States but enjoyed diplomatic immunity when they were in the country by virtue of their positions as a trade representative and United Nations attaché, according to prosecutors.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called for Buryakov's release, citing a lack of evidence.

The charges against Buryakov rely on a federal statute that requires agents of foreign governments to register with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Scott Hershman, a lawyer for Buryakov, argued on Wednesday that his client did not need to register as a foreign agent under an exception to the law, which exempts anyone who is an “officially and publicly acknowledged and sponsored official or representative of a foreign government.”

“The only question is whether saying he was working for VEB was the same as saying he was working for the Russian government,” since VEB is state-controlled, Hershman said.

But Berman pointed out that Hershman himself had argued in the past that VEB was a “freestanding” corporate entity under Russian law.

"The court finds that the defendant, Mr. Buryakov, does not qualify for the exemption... and that VEB does not qualify as a 'foreign government,'" Berman said.

He also suggested that Hershman’s interpretation would essentially create a “loophole” that allows foreign governments to place spies freely in state-owned companies through the United States.

Berman set a trial date of Dec. 7.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Wednesday that would have set up an international tribunal to prosecute those suspected of downing a Malaysia Airlines passenger airliner last year in eastern Ukraine.

Eleven countries on the 15-member council voted in favor of the proposal by Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine, while three countries abstained: China, Angola and Venezuela. A resolution needs nine votes in favor to pass and no veto by Russia, the United States, China, Britain or France.

Flight MH17 was shot down in July 2014 with 298 passengers on board, two-thirds of them Dutch. It crashed in Ukrainian territory held by Russian-backed separatists.

"Those responsible may believe that they can now hide behind the Russian Federation's veto. They will not be allowed to evade justice," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told the council. There were 39 Australians on board flight MH17.

She said Australia, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine would now seek an alternative prosecution mechanism.

Ukraine and Western countries accuse the rebels in eastern Ukraine of shooting down the plane with a Russian-made missile. But Moscow has rejected accusations it supplied the rebels with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told the council that "no veto will stand in the way of this heinous crime being investigated and prosecuted."

"Efforts to deny justice only intensify the pain of the victims' families, who have already endured more than any of us can fathom," she said "It is the effect of Russia's veto today."

Russia had proposed its own rival draft resolution, which pushed for a greater U.N. role in an investigation into what caused the downing of the aircraft and demanded justice, but it would not have set up a tribunal.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said it was premature to set up an international tribunal. He said the draft resolution was submitted for a vote by Malaysia and its co-sponsors with the knowledge that it would be vetoed.

"This in our view indicates the fact that political purposes were more important for them than practical objectives. This of course is regrettable," Churkin said. "Russia stands ready to cooperate in the conduct of a full, independent and objective investigation of the reasons and circumstances of the crash."

Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said the case had been made for a prosecution mechanism that transcended politics.

"I find it incomprehensible that a member of the Security Council obstructs justice in a tragedy that has affected so many. Impunity will give a very dangerous signal," he said.

Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine are conducting a criminal inquiry in the downing of MH17. Separately, a final report on the cause of the crash is due in October from the Dutch Safety Board.

On July 21, 2014, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that demanded that those responsible "be held to account and that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability." 

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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Hong Kong's quiet did not last long.

The tents are gone from Admiralty, and the government's proposal for electoral reform was defeated, but now the focus is on universities and perceived government influence in their management. The issue first surfaced when the appointment of Professor Leonard Cheng Kwok-hon as Lingnan's president was criticised because he had been a member of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's election committee.

Students felt they had not been included in the appointment process, so the political issue was heightened. The same complaint was made by Baptist University students who felt they had not been adequately consulted when Roland Chin Tai-hong was appointed president. That issue was not political but related to democratic processes.

What these cases demonstrate is that Hong Kong's universities are cast in a democratic mould.

This is the context in which the University of Hong Kong council's failure to appoint Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun as pro-vice-chancellor must be understood. There are few precedents either in Hong Kong or elsewhere in which such an appointment - largely middle management - would even be put before the council.

Usually such appointments are made by the university president. Thus Chan's non-appointment looks like interference from the council, which is charged with overseeing the strategic direction of the university rather than becoming involved in its day-to-day management.

Chan's non-appointment looks like interference from the council, which is charged with overseeing the strategic direction of the university rather than becoming involved in its day-to-day management

Certainly this is how students and the alumni concern group see it, and explains why HKU students entered the council room to push their case.

The irony of all this is that Hong Kong's universities are much freer than most of their counterparts in the region. With few exceptions, regional universities come firmly under the control of the ministries of education, whether the jurisdictions are democratic (South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand) or authoritarian (mainland China and Myanmar).

Hong Kong's universities, by contrast, are managed by the government at arm's length through the University Grants Committee. Senior university appointments are made by governing councils, and university curriculums are developed internally apart from regular external quality assurance audits.

The sticking point, however, is that in all university ordinances, the chief executive is the chancellor. This is currently viewed as a major issue at HKU, where Leung Chun-ying's appointees are seen to be holding up Chan's appointment. Yet the issue goes beyond HKU, as there is strong opposition to the chief executive having a role in relation to universities. There is a movement seeking to change that aspect.

Yet it needs to be remembered that the role of the chief executive on this issue mirrors what used to be the role of British governors during the colonial administration. What's more, in other contexts, such as Australia, where university autonomy is greatly prized, state governments still appoint a certain number of university council members. Thus, balancing government input and academic freedom seems to be a remnant of British tradition.

Yet should governments in a country such as Australia seek to abuse their right of appointment by nominating only pro-government appointees or obviously biased appointees on one issue or another, there would certainly be protest by university staff and students. This is now the situation faced by Hong Kong. The somewhat benign process of oversight embodied in the position of chancellor is now seen to be a threat to university autonomy.

This threat, real or perceived, reflects the tensions in Hong Kong for what seems to be only the past year, but have, in reality, been going on since the 1980s. There are some groups that embrace "strong" government with authoritarian tinges and others that embrace democracy, freedom and autonomy. The clash of these groups is evident in the current HKU saga, and with no one championing any "third way", there appears little room for reconciliation.

Professor Kerry Kennedy is director of the Centre for Governance and Citizenship at the Hong Kong Institute of Education

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) isn't backing off the tough rhetoric he's used to describe the Iran nuclear deal, despite criticism leveled by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday.

Cruz has steadfastly maintained that President Barack Obama's administration would become a leading state-sponsor of terror if the agreement it struck with Iran makes it past Congress. He and others have argued that Iran would use a windfall from sanctions relief to finance terror abroad.

Both Obama and Romney have called Cruz's remarks inappropriate.

Romney wrote on Twitter early Thursday that he also opposes the Iran deal, but said Cruz's comments were "way over the line on the Obama terrorism charge. Hurts the cause."

Cruz, 2016 presidential candidate, fired back at Romney in a Thursday radio interview with KFYO's Chad Hasty. 

"So Mitt Romney's tweet today said, 'Gosh, this rhetoric is not helpful,'" Cruz said. "John Adams famously said, 'Facts are stubborn things.' Describing the actual facts is not using rhetoric; it is called speaking the truth."

The senator recalled what he described as a critical moment during the 2012 presidential race: A back-and-forth over that year's attack on a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya.

"Part of the reason that Mitt Romney got clobbered by Barack Obama is because we all remember that third debate where Barack Obama turned to Mitt and said, 'I said the Benghazi attack was terrorism and no one is more upset by Benghazi than I am.' And Mitt, I guess listening to his own advice, said, 'Well gosh, I don't want to use any rhetoric. So OK, never mind. I'll just kind of rearrange the pencil on the podium here,'" Cruz said.

He added that the 2016 presidential candidates need to speak up or they will fail like Romney. 

"We need to stand up and speak the truth with a smile," he said. "The truth has power and every time we have Republicans who shy away — who don't want to engage, who don't want to speak the truth — we lose."

The nuclear deal — struck earlier this month among the US, Iran, and other world powers — grants billions of dollars of sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear ambitions. Republican critics like Cruz, who hope to defeat the agreement in Congress, argue that Iran will use the cash windfall to sponsor terror in places like Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

During his Thursday radio interview, Cruz also connected his controversial terrorism argument to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served in the Obama administration and is the Democratic presidential front-runner in 2016.

"Those billions of dollars in American control will be used by jihadists to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans. Those are the facts," he said. "The unavoidable consequence of those facts is that if this deal goes through, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, will be leading global financiers of radical Islamic terrorism on the face of the earth."

Cruz added: "When you send billions of dollars to jihadists trying to kill Americans, you bear responsibility for the murder that they carry out with the money you have given them." 

SEE ALSO: Mitt Romney rips Ted Cruz on Twitter for Obama terror comments

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NOW WATCH: Watch Obama talk about a hypothetical third term: ‘I could win'

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has been the world's unquestioned dominant military power.

Though defense spending has been shrinking since its high in 2010, the US' budget in 2014 still surpassed the combined expenditures of China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, India, and South Korea.

The military budget of China, the world's second-largest military spender, was still only 22% of the US' in 2014.

This enormous budget allows the US to field the most cutting-edge hardware while investing in future technologies. The following graphic from the University of Texas at El Paso Connect highlights some of the US' defense capabilities — and the massive price tag that comes along with them.

SEE ALSO: The 5 most bizarre weapons of World War II

SEE ALSO: This chart shows just how massive the US Navy is

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NOW WATCH: How the US military spends its billions

SEE ALSO: The suspected Chinese hack on United Airlines makes the CIA's job 'much more difficult'

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Orthodox Jewish assailant stabbed and injured six participants of an annual Gay Pride march in Jerusalem on Thursday, police and witnesses said.

It was the worst attack in years on the event in Jerusalem, a city where the religious population is more prominent than in other parts of Israel.

"I saw an ultra-Orthodox youth stabbing everyone in his way," said Shai Aviyor, a witness interviewed on Israel's Channel 2 television.

"We heard people screaming, everyone ran for cover, and there were bloodied people on the ground," Aviyor said.

A paramedic with the Magen David Adom rescue service said at least six people had been injured, and at least two appeared to be in serious condition.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said a suspected ultra-Orthodox Jewish man had stabbed at least four of the marchers.

The march, which attracts thousands of participants, has long been a focus of tension between Israel's predominantly secular majority and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority, who object to public displays of homosexuality.

Oded Fried, the head of a leading gay rights group, said the march would go on despite the attack. "Our struggle for equality only intensifies in the face of such events," he said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is struggling to attract computer scientists to its cybersecurity program mainly due to low pay, a report by the U.S. Department of Justice showed, highlighting weaknesses in a flagship initiative to tackle growing cyber threats.

As of January 2015, The Federal Bureau of Investigation had only hired 52 of the 134 computer scientists it was authorized to employ under the Justice Department's Next Generation Cyber Initiative launched in 2012, the report showed.

Although cyber task forces have been set up at all 56 FBI field offices, five of them did not have a computer scientist assigned to them, the report by the Office of the Inspector General found.

Cyber security threats are among the Justice Department's top priorities and there has been a slew of damaging cyberattacks against private companies and U.S. government agencies in the last couple of years.

The FBI budgeted $314 million on the program for the 2014 fiscal year, including 1,333 full-time employees, the report by the internal watchdog said.

Lower salaries compared to the private sector made it difficult for the FBI to hire and retain cyber experts, the Office of the Inspector General said in the report.

It also said extensive background check procedures and drug tests excluded many otherwise qualified candidates.

For example, the FBI is unable to hire anyone who is found to have used marijuana in the previous three years or any other illegal drug in the past ten years, it said.

The report follows the disclosure by the U.S. government's personnel management agency that up to 22.1 million people were affected by a breach of its computer networks that was discovered in April, or almost 7 percent of the U.S. population.

The United States has privately accused China for the cyber attack, but Beijing has denied responsibility.

A previous hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November 2014 was pinned on North Korea by FBI investigators.

The FBI said in a letter to the Office of the Inspector General responding to the report that "the cyber workforce challenge runs throughout the federal government" and that it would continue to develop "aggressive and innovative recruitment and retention strategies".

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Classified emails that were stored on the private email server of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contained information from five US intelligence agencies, McClatchy reports.

A congressional official with knowledge of the matter told McClatchy that intelligence officials who saw the five classified emails determined that they included information from five US spy agencies.

One classified email — now public and pertaining to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi — reportedly contained information from the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

McClatchy added, citing the official, that the "other four classified emails contained information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [DNI] and the CIA."

Last week, government inspectors told the Justice Department in a letter that "secret government information may have been compromised in the unsecured system she used at her New York home during her tenure as secretary of state,"according to The Associated Press.

The inspectors requested the department to look into the possible mishandling of classified information on the server from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

Clinton, Democratic presidential front-runner in the 2016 election, has repeatedly said she broke no laws or rules by forgoing a standard government email account in favor of the private account. She has also said, as recently as last weekend, that she is "confident" she did not send or receive classified information by email.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement last week that Clinton "followed appropriate practices in dealing with classified materials."

But the inspector general of the intelligence community, in a letter to Congress, said a limited sampling of Clinton's emails in question found at least four that contained classified information and should have been considered secret.

If Clinton had a technical security team to monitor her server for suspicious activity, Clinton could have had a system at least as secure at the State Department. If not, the information would have been vulnerable.

“The layers of security that would have to be employed to make a privately run exchange server as secure as something that is secured by the federal government would be pretty significant,” Timothy Ryan, a former FBI supervisory special agent who now manages cyber investigations for Kroll, told The Washington Post in March. “It’s not that it can’t be done. I just find it improbable."

Clinton has said that the email system was established during Bill Clinton's presidential administration (1993-2001), and her team has stated that "her family’s electronic communications was taken seriously from the onset."

No matter the level of security the Clintons employed — which is still largely unknown— the fact that this information was found on her personal server highlights why officials in her position are supposed to use government emails.

“Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn’t run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails ... is not supposed to be allowed,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security matters, told McClatchy. “Both she and her team made a serious management mistake that no one should ever repeat.”

Broader questions about Clinton's private email server have at times drawn attention away from the Democratic front-runner's presidential campaign. The latest disclosure comes the same day as the release of a poll showing that a majority of voters nationwide do not consider her "honest and trustworthy."

A separate poll released last week showed that she also trailed three strong Republican contenders — former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and US Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — in theoretical general-election matchups in the key swing states of Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia.

SEE ALSO: Hillary Clinton hasn't explained her 'active defense' — and that's a problem

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is modernizing its S-300 missile system to supply to Iran, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, RIA news agency reported.

"It has partially been updated, separate elements are still being updated," said Vladimir Kozhin, a presidential adviser on military matters, referring to the S-300 system. "It will be that very S-300 complex that Iran wanted to receive."

Russia says it canceled a contract to deliver the advanced missile system to Iran in 2010 under pressure from the West. But Putin lifted that self-imposed ban in April following an interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

Moscow is hoping to reap economic and trade benefits now that a more comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and world powers has been reached, allowing for an easing of sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed Israel's "dismay" at Russia's decision to supply the S-300s to Iran.

(Editing by Larry King)

SEE ALSO: Here's why Russia selling S-300 advanced missile systems to Iran is such a big deal

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On July 24, Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon jets intercepted and identified 10 Russian military aircraft in international airspace over the Baltic Sea.

The RAF Typhoons from were launched as a large formation of Russian planes flew close to the Estonian airspace (most probably going to or returning from Kaliningrad Oblast). 

According to the UK MoD, once airborne, the RAF jets identified the planes as being four Sukhoi Su-34 Fullback attack planes, four Mikoyan MiG-31 Foxhound fighters and two Antonov An-26 Curl transport aircraft.

The planes appeared to be carrying out a variety of routine training.

Russian activity in the Baltic region has increased in the last few days. On July 29, NATO interceptors identified 12 Russian military aircraft flying near the Latvian border: three An-76 and one Il-76 cargo planes, four MiG-31s and four Su-24s, were detected flying near the Latvian outer sea border above the Baltic Sea in international airspace.

SEE ALSO: 12 Russian military aircraft spotted near Latvia’s sovereign airspace

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States imposed further Russia and Ukraine-related sanctions on Thursday, adding associates of a billionaire Russian gas trader, Crimean port operators and former Ukrainian officials to its list of those it is penalizing in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed measures against eight entities and people it said were providing support to Gennady Timchenko, a prominent gas trader previously sanctioned.

It also targeted two entities it said were providing support to Boris Rotenberg, a Russian businessman and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The measures are meant to compel Russia to comply with peacekeeping commitments signed this year in Minsk that would end fighting in eastern Ukraine, in which pro-Russian separatists are battling Ukrainian forces.

"Today's action underscores our resolve to maintain pressure on Russia for violating international law and fueling the conflict in eastern Ukraine," Acting OFAC Director John Smith said in a statement.

The United States on Thursday also sanctioned four former Ukrainian officials and their close associates linked to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia last year after being toppled by months of street protests.

Five Crimean port operators and one ferry operator were sanctioned for operating in the Crimea region of Ukraine, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

The United States also identified several entities it said were subsidiaries of VEB and Rosneft, the Russian state development bank and flagship oil giant, which were sanctioned last year.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Lisa Lambert and Grant McCool)

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NOW WATCH: Check out the hoverbikes that one company is building for the Defense Department

The Vought F4U Corsair is probably one of the most famous American fighter planes ever.

More than 12,500 examples of this aircraft were manufactured by Vought beginning in 1940, with final delivery of 1953, in what is known as the longest production run of any piston-engined fighter in U.S. history.

The Corsair, designed to operate from the flight deck of US aircraft carriers, saw service during the WWII, during which it initially mainly operated from land bases in the hands of US Marine pilots because of issues with carrier landings: once these were solved, the F4U became the most capable carrier-based fighter-bomber of the conflict.

The Corsair flew also during the Korean War.

As mentioned before, it is one of the most famous warbirds ever: even my son knows this plane very well as its fame was boosted amoung younger generations by its participation in the Disney movie “Planes” that features a Corsair named “Skipper” among the leading characters.

The following video shows a civilian registered F4U-1 (NX83782), the oldest airworthy Corsair in the world, during the 2012 Planes of Fame Air Show fly by.

SEE ALSO: Stunning images show US Air Force A-10s operating on a dry lake bed in California

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NOW WATCH: 11 game-changing military planes from the last 15 years

On the night of July 11, the leader of one of the world's largest drug empires casually stood up from his bed, walked to the far corner of his prison cell, and escaped through a sophisticated and custom-engineered tunnel system.

What's astounding is that a little over a year earlier, one of his lieutenants escaped from prison using almost identical means: by building a tunnel from a ground-floor cell to the outside world.

A little more than 14 months before Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán escaped from the Altiplano maximum-security prison, fellow cartel operative Adelmo Niebla González broke out of a different facility — also by tunneling from his ground-floor cell.

Given the Sinaloa's proficiency in tunneling — the group has dug scores of passageways under the US-Mexican border — and this earlier escape, placing Guzman in a ground-floor cell was flagrantly ill-advised.

"If you know that the modus operandi of the Sinaloa cartel involves tunneling, you just don't lock this guy up on the prison's ground floor," Mexican Senator Alejandro Encinas reportedly said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In 2012, Niebla was imprisoned at the Culiacán penitentiary for smuggling marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin, and firearms across the Mexican-US border.

Niebla, nicknamed "El Señor" or "The Lord," snuck out of prison with two other inmates in May 2014 via a quarter-mile-long tunnel that plunged 46 feet into the earth.

The ventilated and illuminated escape route passed under a canal and was constructed in less than three months, Borderland Beat reports.

Sinaloa's tunneling prowess

In 1989, the Sinaloa cartel utilized its first cross-border "narcotúnel" to smuggle illicit materials.

"Since then, Sinaloa has refined the art of underground construction and has used tunnels more effectively than any criminal group in history," The New Yorker reports.

According to The New Yorker, investigators estimate that a single Sinaloa "narcotúnel" requires more than a million dollars and several months to construct.

"I think it's a very small group of elite members of the cartel that are doing this. This is highly sophisticated work,"Sherri Hobson, a federal prosecutor in California, told The New Yorker.

"A lot of people think that you have a shovel and you dig. That's not the way it works," Hobson added.

Arched ceilings, makeshift ventilation ducts, electric lights, and even railways are some hallmarks of the Sinaloa cartel's extraordinary tunnels, The New Yorker reports.

The tunnels that supplied Niebla and Guzmán their escape from different Mexican prisons also have several striking similarities.

Both secret passageways featured ventilation system with makeshift PVC piping. Both were illuminated. And both emerged in unfinished and abandoned construction sites.

While Niebla's route is reported to have taken about two months to build, aerial imagery shows that the endpoint of Guzmán's escape path was actually built six months before he fled.

For extra security, the nondescript site is at least a half-mile away from any other building.

Adding to Mexico's embarrassment, Guzmán's first jailbreak in 2001 was from a facility that looks almost identical to Aliplano:

Dámaso López, a former employee of the Puente Grande prison, is a prime suspect in the investigation into Guzmán's latest escape, The New York Times reports.

Authorities believe López may have stolen a copy of the prison's blueprints before leaving his post at Puente Grande.

"López is believed to have close knowledge of the layout of the prisons and security procedures," The Times reported. The tunnel makers may have also had the GPS coordinates for Mr. Guzmán's shower stall."

Considering both prisons are shockingly similar in layout, the stolen blueprints from 2001 would have tremendously aided Guzmán's accomplices in helping him escape.

Since Guzmán fled Alitplano, several other prison employees have been arrested for colluding with the drug trafficker.

Not the first time

In 2014, Mexican marines found a complex tunnel network inside one of Guzmán's hideouts in Culiacan, Mexico. Lifting up a bathtub, investigators climbed into a passage that lead to the city's drainage system.

Guzman escaped through the tunnel, running barefoot underground for as much as a mile, according to The New Yorker. Mexican marines caught up with him a few days later in the coastal city of Mazatlan, pulling off one of the biggest drug arrests in Mexican history.

Now, the brazen escape of the world's most notorious drug lord has triggered yet another manhunt.

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Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Southampton in England successfully collaborated with the British Royal Navy to launch a 3D-printed drone from the deck of a warship.

The nylon drone flew about 500 meters after being catapulted off the ship before landing safely on a nearby beach.

“The key to increased use of UAVs is the simple production of low cost and rugged airframes,” said Southampton professor Andy Keane in a press release.

“We believe our pioneering use of 3D printed nylon has advanced design thinking in the UAV community worldwide.”

The aircraft has a wingspan of almost five feet, and can reach a top speed of 58mph while flying almost silently.

“Radical advances in capability often start with small steps,” said First Sea Lord Admiral Sir George Zambellas.

“And, because it's new technology, with young people behind it, we're having fun doing it.”

SEE ALSO: 3D-Printed Drones May Be Coming To The Battlefields Of The Future

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USS Saratoga (CV-3), commissioned in 1927, was an Lexington-class American Aircraft carrier measuring 268 meters (880 ft.) in length and weighting 39,000 tons. Originally she was designed as a battlecruiser, but was later converted into one of the Navy’s first aircraft carriers during construction to comply with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

During her World War II service she was involved in numerous battles including responding to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Battle of Iwo Jima and countless assaults along the Japanese coast. The ship survived torpedoes, a bombed out flight deck, hanger deck fires, 2 starboard side bomb detonations, and various other heavy attacks.

She was rewarded with 7 Battle Stars for her service before de-commissioning in 1945 at the end of the World War 2. Mid-1946, the ship was used as a target for nuclear weapon tests (“Operation Crossroads”). She survived the first test with little damage, but was sunk by the second one.

The wreck of the USS Saratoga (“Sara”) rests in Bikini’s lagoon at a depth of 52 meters (190 ft.). Her bridge is easily accessible at 18 meters (40 ft.), her deck at 28 meters (90 ft.).

These images were taken by Jan Kocian during a recent dive.

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Turkey just went from being effectively neutral in the conflict brewing on its southern border to opening a war on two fronts against ISIS in northern Syria and the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq.

And what happens next will determine just how messy Ankara's Syria policy has become.

This week's dramatic reversal came after an ISIS-affiliated suicide bomber killed 32 activists in the southeastern town of Suruc, just across the border from the embattled city of Kobani, Syria.

The Turkish side of the border had remained relatively peaceful up until then, despite the vast number of foreign fighters coming and going from Turkey and Syria.

And that's no mistake.

"The border has been exceptionally quiet, which is a major indicator, for me, that the AKP had intelligence ties to ISIS,"Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider, noting how kind Turkey's border policies have been to the jihadis.

Since 2011, Turkey's southern border has served as a transit point for cheap oil, weapons, foreign fighters, and pillaged antiquities. As the conflict progressed, the fighters taking advantage of this loose border enforcement were more and more radical.

Earlier this year, ISIS (aka Islamic State, ISIL, Daesh) controlled about 40% of the 565-mile border with Syria and militants were often seen near the border.

"Given the overall posture of [ISIS], why else would it refrain from attacking a pro-Western NATO member?" Schanzer added.

The evidence of some sort of arrangement is piling up: Martin Chulov of the Guardian recently reported that a US-led raid on the compound housing the Islamic State's "chief financial officer" detailed how Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members.

The ties the ruling AKP established with ISIS extremists helped maintain some form of plausible neutrality in the conflict — but any crackdown could lead to severe blowback.

"It's a dangerous game they've always been playing," Schanzer told BI.

And the game just became even more dangerous: Turkey launched airstrikes against ISIS and the Kurdish PKK on the same day, ending a two-year peace treaty with the Kurds that could further complicate Ankara's relationship with both ISIS and Washington. 

While the White House has said that Ankara is within its rights to "take action related to terrorist targets," the PKK was working with US-backed Kurdish fighters to repel ISIS from northern Iraq.

Furthermore, the Kurdish YPG militia — the armed wing of the Kurdish PYD, which has direct links with the PKK — has proven to be the most effective force fighting ISIS on the ground in northern Syria while being backed by US airstrikes.

Nevertheless, AKP-led Turkey continues to bomb the PKK.

"The AKP needed the Kurdish angle to sell the war to ultra-nationalists inside Turkey," whose main priority is to curb Kurdish territorial gains along its southern border, Schanzer explained.

The Kurdish groups, for their part, see Turkey's new policy as aimed directly at them and not ISIS.

"The PYD/YPG feels this is a Turkish move to prevent the expansion of their territory in Syria. They think Turkey is not serious aboutfighting the Islamic State,"Wladimir van Wilgenburg, a Kurdish analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, told Business Insider in an email.

Following the fall of Syrian border city Tal Abyad to the Kurds in May, Erdogan vowed that Turkey "will never allow the establishment of a new state on our southern frontier in the north of Syria," and a pro-government newspaper declared the Kurdish PYD to be "more dangerous than ISIS."

So as the Kurds make gains in Syria and Iraq, Ankara gets more involved.

"It looks to me like a lot of the progress [Turkey made with the Kurds] is going to be unraveled," Schanzer said.

And then then there's the domestic angle for Erdogan.

Capitalizing on the nationalist sentiment that has been steadily growing inside Turkey — especially since the Suruc bombing and the murder of two Turkish police officers by Kurds in the southeast — could also help Erdogan regain his party's absolute majority if coalition talks fail and new elections are called.

“Turkey’s domestic policy and foreign policy have become messily mixed together," Soli Ozel, a Turkish political commentator and professor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, told The Wall Street Journal.

"It’s now very difficult to separate the domestic political considerations from the security and strategic considerations of those who have started the air strikes."

In any case, Ankara's priorities seem clear.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkish security forces have rounded up 1,050 suspected members of ISIS, Kurdish militants, and ultra-leftists recently.

But local media reported the vast majority of the detainees were Kurdish and leftists — not members of ISIS.

Michael B. Kelley contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: Senior Western official: Links between Turkey and ISIS are now 'undeniable'

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