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The suspect in the killing of two police officers Saturday afternoon allegedly told his father he wanted to kill cops moments before the gunfire began. Frances Serrano, who lives directly across the street from where the shooting took place, spoke to the father of the suspected shooter moments before the incident. The father told Serrano that his son, who has mental issues, had a gun and wanted to shoot police officers. “He came over and asked for help,” she said. Serrano called the police and the father walked back toward his house. Soon after, Serrano heard gunshots. 2 Officers Killed, 1 Wounded In Palm Springs Shooting; Suspect At Large Update from Associated Press: PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — The Latest on the shooting of three police officers in Palm Springs. (all times local): 6:45 p.m. Police Chief Bryan Reyes says SWAT officers have surrounded a house in Palm Springs, California where the man who fatally shot two officers may still be inside. Reyes says h...

A group of activists discovered a mass grave with more than 600 human remains in Mexico's Coahuila region, local media reported on Sunday. MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) — The activists who searched for their missing relatives handed over the bodies to local human remains to local authorities for identification. Coahuila region is destabilized by skirmishes between numerous criminal groups trying to gain control over regional drug traffic. With nearly 1,800 people gone missing in the region, over 455 bodies have been discovered buried in mass graves for the last five years .

The US military is reportedly in talks with Boeing Defense, Space & Security over the terms of a $3.3 billion contract to purchase 275 AH-64E Apache helicopters. This comes a month after US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter approved the Army’s proposed multiyear procurement plan. Col. Jeffrey Hager, the Apache program manager, told Inside Defense that a signed agreement can be expected by early 2017. The Senate and House versions of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act have both been approved, but concerns over the cost efficiency of production and procurement programs has kept any bill from being passed. Loading... The director of defense pricing for the Pentagon's acquisition directorate, Shay Assad, approved the Apache proposal. Assad told Politico in April that his years spent as an executive at Raytheon showed him how companies often overpay for multi-year defense contracts. As a result, Assad claims th...

NATO has rejected air-safety proposals made by Russia which would have ensured all military planes flying in the Baltic region would operate with their transponders switched on. This makes no sense. According to the Wall Street Journal, NATO officials said the proposals “would do little to improve” air safety — a strange response, given that NATO has repeatedly scolded Russia for allegedly flying its military jets over the Baltic with transponders switched off. Headlines about ‘dangerous’ and ‘unsafe’ Russian military flights have been ten-a-penny over the last couple of years. Such stories have become so ubiquitous — and the media so obsessed with blowing them out of proportion — that at one point a woman in Cornwall became convinced that she saw Russian bombers overhead one day when she was out for a driving lesson. One would imagine then, given NATO’s repeated criticisms and concerns over safety in the Baltic region, that they would have welcomed any kind of common-sense prop...

Our day job is to read about Russia-related stuff and then write about it. So imagine our surprise when we learned that "a NATO air chief says he's concerned by Russia's increasing deployment of surface-to-air missile systems in and around Europe." That's huge! Russia deployed the S-400 to Prague? When did this happen? And what is Russia hoping to gain by deploying surface-to-air systems into the heart of NATO-controlled Europe? We had so many questions in need of answers. Originally appeared at russia-insider. loading... In recent years, the Russian military has deployed S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems not only within Russia and Kaliningrad, the Russian city in a territory between Poland and Lithuania, but Crimea and areas encircling the Ukraine, and even Latakia, Syria. A lot of redundant information here. Let's help our friends at Military.com: After editing out the decorative bullshit, we get: In recent years, ...

What, precisely, is the US military for, and what, precisely, can it do? In practical terms, how powerful is it? On paper, it is formidable, huge, with carrier battle groups, advanced technology, remarkable submarines, satellites, and so on. What does this translate to? Military power does not exist independently, but only in relation to specific circumstances. Comparing technical specifications of the T-14 to those of the M1A2, or Su-34 to F-15, or numbers of this to numbers of that, is an interesting intellectual exercise. It means little without reference to specific circumstances. For example, America is vastly superior militarily to North Korea in every category of arms–but the North has nuclear bombs. It can’t deliver them to the US, but probably can to Seoul. Even without nuclear weapons, it has a large army and large numbers of artillery tubes within range of Seoul. It has an unpredictable government. As Gordon Liddy said, if your responses to provocation are wildly out ...

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has declared the activities of McCain's International Republican Institute and the Media Development Investment Fund, Inc. to be a security threat and 'undesirable' in the country. Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Thursday the activity of two more foreign NGOs, including the International Republican Institute chaired by US Senator John McCain, is undesirable in Russia. In total, seven NGOs have been named undesirable in Russia. "Today after studying the materials the Prosecutor General’s Office made decisions to consider that the activity of foreign NGOs - the International Republican Institute and the Media Development Investment Fund, Inc. - is undesirable on the territory of Russia," it said. The activity of these organizations poses a threat to the basis of Russia’s constitutional system and security of the state, the press service said. The information on the decision has been sent to Russia’s Justice Minist...

USTAM AZHIYEV, BETTER known as Abdul Hakim, rarely left his apartment building in the Basaksehir district of Istanbul. Originally from Chechnya, Hakim has spent almost his entire life at war, and he is now the head of Ajnad al Kavkaz, or Soldiers of the Caucasus, the largest of the Muslim factions from the former Soviet Union fighting in Syria. It was the fall of 2015, and I wasn’t given our meeting location until I got in the taxi in Istanbul. “Basaksehir, where the big bazaar is located,” my contact told me in Russian over the phone. “You will find it for sure.” I was supposed to call again when I got there and then wait, apparently long enough to make sure that I wasn’t being watched. Istanbul is like a giant waiting hall in a train station. It’s easy to remain anonymous in that constant churn of people entering and exiting the city, and that’s what jihadis intent on going to Syria have done here. Though the exact number is hard to know, there are believed to be thousands o...

he author – one of the most eminent Russian intellectuals, a scholar and historian, social scientist and publicist – talks with Tsargrad TV's correspondent about the dangers of the current ‘peace-war’, the need for turnover among elites and defense of traditional values Alexander Tsyganov : Lately, the world appears to be in a pre-war situation. Troops are being inspected and put on red alert, civil organizations are being inspected for war-time operational capacity. A call-up was actually held, again under the guise of training exercises under war conditions. Are we really in a prewar state? What’s going on? Andrei Fursov : There are two situations, the world and Russia. Worldwide, for almost two decades we’ve lived with the line between war and peace practically blurred, starting with NATO’s war against Yugoslavia. Then came Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. The situation we are in today can be called ‘peace-war’ or ‘war-peace’. But even in that context, what has been ...

Brazil's problems cannot be solved merely by a change at the top. Even with Dilma Rousseff out as President, the road ahead for Brazil won't be easy. She leaves behind an economy in its second straight year of recession, an unemployment rate of nearly 11% and a multimillion-dollar looming statewide corruption scandal that leaves almost no politician unscathed. Here's a deeper look at the major obstacles ahead for the world's ninth largest economy: New president inherits problems Rousseff faced...Financial crisis in Brazil 02:18 By conservative estimates, new President Michel Temer inherits about $72.5 billion, or 250 billion Brazilian real, debt, Sen. Waldemir Moka said. As Brazil continues to wade through the longest recession since the 1930s, its once burgeoning middle class is feeling the pinch. More than 11.6 million people in Brazil are unemployed, or about 11%, between April and June. There are signs the market is picking back up since Temer took office in May, ...