A man has been shot dead by police in south London after he attacked people on a busy high street.
The man was under active police surveillance at the time of the attack, which police believe to be an Islamist-related terrorist incident.
He had a hoax device strapped to his body, police said. Three people were injured, with one person in a life-threatening condition.
Gunshots were heard on Streatham High Road just after 14:00 GMT on Sunday.
Reports suggest a man entered a shop and started stabbing people. It appears he then left the shop and stabbed a woman.
Witnesses reported hearing three gun shots and seeing a man lying on the ground, as armed police approached.
The BBC’s Daniel Sandford said the events appeared to unfold after witnesses saw an unmarked police car pull in front of another car near Streatham Common, forcing it to stop.
He said this could be linked to the subsequent stabbings and police shooting and it was possible somebody was stopped, before being followed by undercover officers.
[….]
Eyewitness Emma, from Streatham, told the BBC she saw an injured woman lying in the street.
She said she was told by another woman that an attacker had pulled out a knife in a shop before leaving and stabbing the woman.
Another eyewitness saw the shooting of the man take place in front of Boots pharmacy.
“I was crossing the road when I saw a man with a machete and silver canisters on his chest being chased by what I assume was an undercover police officer,” he told the PA news agency.
“The man was then shot. I heard three gunshots.”
Karker Tahir said he then saw police approach the man, before telling people nearby to move back in case a bomb went off.
More video:
If anyone, including President Trump, thinks that the War on Terror is over, you’re fooling yourselves. It’s still here and it will never end.
Donald Trump named former CIA director and extremist neoconservative James Woolsey his senior adviser on national security issues on Monday. Woolsey, who left the CIA in 1995, went on to become one of Washington’s most outspoken promoters of U.S. war in Iraq and the Middle East.
As such, Woolsey’s selection either clashes with Trump’s noninterventionist rhetoric — or represents a pivot towards a more muscular, neoconservative approach to resolving international conflicts.
Woolsey, by contrast, was a key member of the Project for the New American Century — a neoconservative think tank largely founded to encourage a second war with Iraq. Woolsey signed a letter in 1998 calling on Clinton to depose Saddam Hussein and only hours after the 9/11 attacks appeared on CNN and blamed the attacks on Iraq. Woolsey has continued to insist on such a connection despite the complete lack of evidence to support his argument. He also blames Iran.
Weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Woolsey called for broader war in the Middle East, saying “World War IV” was already underway.
Woolsey has also put himself in a position to profit from the wars he has promoted. He has served as vice president of Pentagon contracting giant Booz Allen, and as chairman of Paladin Capital Group, a private equity fund that invests in national security and cybersecurity.
He chairs the leadership council at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a hawkish national security nonprofit, and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management, which invests in emerging technologies like drones, satellite imaging, and artificial intelligence.
Woolsey went on CNN on Monday and said that he was principally motivated to support Trump because of his plans to expand U.S. military spending.
Trump gave a speech last week in which he proposed dramatic expansions of the Army and Marines, and hundred-billion-dollar weapons systems for the Navy and Air Force. He offered no justification — aside from citing a few officials who claimed they wanted more firepower.
Woolsey stood by Trump’s proposal on Monday.
“I think the problem is her budget,” Woolsey said of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. “She is spending so much money on domestic programs — including ones that we don’t even have now, and the ones we have now are underfunded — I think there can be very little room for the improvements in defense and intelligence that have to be made.”
Woolsey has previously called for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted.”
In the past, Woolsey has publicly disagreed with Trump on a number of national security issues — including Trump’s plan to ban Muslim immigration. On Monday, Woolsey told CNN that such a plan would raise First Amendment issues, but that he supported a temporary immigration block from certain Muslim countries.
Thus far, at least, most prominent war hawks have found they had more in common with Clinton than Trump. “I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump,” leading neoconservative Robert Kagan told a group in July.
This does not look good folks. If Trump pulls, what I think he is about to pull; it will be seen as the biggest batrayal of those who supported him, like me. The bastards got to him, I bet and now, he is caving. I knew it would happen. I just did not know when.
The neocon right is having a hissy fit about this story here, which is behind a paywall, of course. So, I really cannot quote it.
However, I just laugh when I see stories like this; because it proves what I happen to know about the neocon right; is that they are just straight up hypocrites, when it comes to Israel.
I mean, are these not the same people who think that we should be spying on every last mosque in America? Are these not the same people who happen to think that if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about, when it comes to America spying on its own people?
The truth is Obama was spying on Israel and zionist members of Congress to see if there were any actual attempts to undermine the Iranian deal. Now, for the record, I have commented on that said deal and my feeling is that it stinks. However, what I think stinks worse, are that the neocons, in their blind hatred of this President, are not above trying to sabotage a deal with Iran, by leaking info to Israel for purposes of propaganda.
WASHINGTON — A ship carrying more than 25,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium materials left Iran for Russia on Monday in a step toward honoring Iran’s July 14 nuclear deal with major powers, the United States said.
Under the landmark nuclear accord, certain U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions are to be removed in exchange for Iran accepting long-term curbs on a nuclear program that the West has long suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.
A key provision of the agreement — negotiated by Iran with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany — is Tehran’s commitment to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to below 660 pounds (300 kg).
If much further refined, low-enriched uranium can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons.
“The shipment included the removal of all of Iran’s nuclear material enriched to 20 percent that was not already in the form of fabricated fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a written statement.
“This removal of all this enriched material out of Iran is a significant step toward Iran meeting its commitment to have no more than 300 kg of low-enriched uranium by Implementation Day,” Kerry added.
Implementation Day refers to the date when the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, confirms Iran has taken a series of steps to curb its nuclear program, paving the way to U.S., EU and U.N. sanctions relief.
Kerry said the low-enriched uranium shipment would more than triple Iran’s “breakout time” of an estimated two-to-three months. “Breakout time” refers to the amount of time needed to obtain enough nuclear material to make a single atomic bomb.
With full implementation, the nuclear deal is supposed to push Iran’s breakout time to at least one year.
Now, while I think it is great that the deal is working, maybe. I do not believe that we should just blindly trust Iran, here is an example as to why. Via Fox News:
The Video:
The Story:
Despite the Obama administration touting its Iran nuclear deal as a triumph of diplomacy that finally thaws a four-decade freeze, Tehran appears to be doing all it can to keep the flames of confrontation burning.
The latest challenge was a missile launch over the weekend less than a mile from a U.S. aircraft carrier — which came on the heels of two other similar incidents, two ballistic missile tests, and the harsh treatment of American prisoners including a Washington Post journalist.
These provocations, with the country potentially weeks away from receiving billions in sanctions relief under the nuclear deal, are fueling renewed concerns in Washington about whether Iran will be held to account for violations.
“Missile-tests, cyber-attacks, Americans taken hostage, and now this,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement Wednesday. “Until the Obama administration starts holding the Iranian regime accountable, we’ll see more of these hostile acts that put American lives in danger.”
The most recent confrontation occurred Saturday, when five Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels approached the USS Harry S. Truman, and one of them fired multiple unguided missiles within 1,500 yards of the U.S. aircraft carrier transiting the Strait of Hormuz. It was the third such provocation in the past 14 months, a spokesman for the Navy’s 5th Fleet, responsible for operations in the Persian Gulf, told Fox News.
“It’s getting closer,” Cmdr. Kevin Stephens said in discussing this trend of Iranian provocation near U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups.
In April, as the USS Theodore Roosevelt exited the Strait of Hormuz to pursue an Iranian flotilla carrying weapons in the direction of Yemen, a group of Iranian Revolutionary Guard small boats launched 11 unguided rockets five nautical miles from the aircraft carrier, Stephens said. One nautical mile equals 1.151 miles.
In October 2014, a Navy helicopter from the USS George H.W. Bush also observed Iranian small boats launching several unguided rockets about eight nautical miles away, he said.
The group of missile boats that approached the USS Harry S. Truman, as well as her escort ships, the day after Christmas launched missiles within 1,500 yards of the aircraft carrier following an impromptu announcement over bridge-to-bridge maritime radio just 23 minutes earlier. The first missiles were launched from inside internationally recognized maritime traffic lanes and Omani territorial waters, according to Stephens.
The Iranian missiles were fired just after Truman and her escort ships exited the Strait of Hormuz, according to a defense official. The American aircraft carrier had helicopters in the air after the launch “closely observing” the boats, which passed away from the U.S. and French Navy ships. F-18 Super Hornets also were ready to launch from Truman had the situation escalated further, the defense official said. The Strait of Hormuz connects the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf.
“The [Iranian Navy’s] actions were highly provocative. Firing weapons so close to passing coalition ships and commercial traffic within an internationally recognized maritime traffic lane is unsafe,” Stephens said.
The incident, first reported by NBC News, marks another flare-up as the Iranian nuclear pact is poised to take full effect.
Ahead of the planned sanctions relief, Iran earlier this week Iran shipped 25,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia as part of the agreement.
Secretary of State John Kerry called the transfer a “significant milestone.”
Yet on the sidelines, congressional lawmakers have been fuming over a series of missile firings.
Fox News was first to report the Nov. 21 launch of a Ghadr-110, a medium-range ballistic missile with a range of 1,200 miles, capable of striking U.S. military assets in the region as well as Israel.
Following the Fox News report of the second ballistic missile launch, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., wrote a letter to President Obama, signed by 35 of her GOP Senate colleagues, calling on the administration not to lift sanctions on Iran.
The launch in November followed a much more publicized ballistic missile launch inside Iran in October, which drew condemnation from U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power. The Iranian military released a video of the October launch as well as a video showing an underground network of tunnels where missiles are allegedly being stored.
Earlier this month, the United Nations said Iran had violated U.N. Security Council resolutions following the October launch. It is unclear how far the United Nations or United States will go to respond to the violations – though on Wednesday, the Treasury Department notified Capitol Hill of new pending sanctions against 11 individuals and entities accused of supporting Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Twenty-one Democratic senators also wrote to Obama last week voicing concerns about those missile launches.
“If there are no consequences for this violation, Iran’s leaders will certainly also question the willingness of the international community to respond to violations of the [nuclear agreement],” they wrote.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pointed to the latest rocket launch in the Strait of Hormuz in warning Wednesday against rushing into sanctions relief.
“[T]he Administration continues to turn a blind eye to Iranian saber rattling,” he said in a statement. “A rush to sanctions relief threatens to embolden an increasingly aggressive Iranian regime that has no intention of normalizing relations with the West or of retreating from a malign policy intended to destabilize the Middle East.”
Some lawmakers are pushing for Congress to renew an expiring Iran sanctions law, as leverage in case the U.S. needs to snap back sanctions should Iran violate the deal.
Yet Iran also is fuming over a Congress-passed law restricting people who have recently visited Iran or people holding dual Iranian citizenship from visiting the U.S. without a visa, a move the Iranian government called a violation of the nuclear agreement.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said at a news conference that “any steps taken outside the agreement are unacceptable to Iran, and Iran will take its own steps in response where necessary.”
The point I am making is this: Foreign Policy is like a game of chess; and not like a game of cowboys and indians as the neocons like to think that is. Iran is simply testing our President, to see what his actions will be. The hawks want us to attack Iran, which would be a disaster, just like Iraq was in 2003. Obama would be wise to continue what he is doing and not allow the neocon hawks to influence his decision making.
