U.S. to ban travel to N. Korea: Embassy urges Americans to exit ‘immediately’

The North Korea Travel Control bill, introduced in Congress in May, seeks to cut off the foreign currency the Kim Jong-Un regime earns from American tourists.

 

 

The Trump administration is advising all U.S. nationals in North Korea to leave “immediately” as the State Department said it will soon issue a ban on American tourism to the communist nation.

Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours, who both operate in North Korea, said on July 21 that they had been told of the upcoming ban by the Swedish embassy, which acts for the U.S. as Washington has no diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.

Latvia Spots Three Russian Warships off Sea Border

Latvia spotted three Russian corvette ships 4 miles from its territorial waters on Sunday.

According to the military’s Twitter page it spotted the vessels Liven 551, Serpukhov 603 and Morshansk 824 near Latvian waters.

The sighting followed reports that Russia was readying vessels for the approach of a U.S. vessel. Local newspaper Fontanka said that Morshansk and a handful of other vessels were lined up around St. Petersburg’s Kronshtadt port—the location of Russia’s Leningrad naval base.

Report: British Military Intelligence Warns of Russia’s ‘Revolutionary’ Tank

Demonstration of a T-14 Armata tank / Russian defense ministry via AP

 

An official in the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense warned in an internal document that a high-technology tank under development by Russia represents the “most revolutionary step change in tank design in the last half century.”

The briefing document, viewed and reported by The Telegraph, indicates internal doubts about the U.K.’s defense strategy to counter Russia’s Armata tank, prototypes of which were unveiled during the Victory Day parade in Moscow last year.

First Russia-China naval war games underway in Mediterranean

Neither Russia nor China has one inch of coastline on the Mediterranean Sea, making it an unlikely and provocative venue for their first joint naval war games.

The 10 days of maneuvers that got underway Monday will include live-fire exercises in the strategic sea connecting Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The point is lost on no one: A powerful new alliance of eastern giants is flexing its muscles in the very backyard of Western Europe — much as China has done on its own in the Pacific.

The war games follow Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, where he headlined Victory Day celebrations and spent three days making billion-dollar deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia’s World War II allies mostly stayed away.

Russia has been driven into the arms of its communist neighbor by Western sanctions imposed for its role in the bloody Ukraine crisis. The United States and European Union have cut off Russia’s businesses and its government from international lending and provoked tit-for-tat trade embargoes that have hurt both sides.