The announcement that Russia is sending a new set of fighter jets and combat helicopters to an air base only 25 miles from the Turkish border is just the latest example of this alliance. The two countries’ economic and military ties run deep, bolstered by economic and security agreements and two military bases — including one just outside the Armenian capital. Most significant, Armenia is the only country in the region that shares a border with Turkey and has Russian troops permanently stationed.

Although Armenia has welcomed thousands of Russian troops and advanced weaponry, these developments seemed to have escaped the notice of US officials, who were settling in for the holidays while Russia and Armenia signed a sweeping air defense agreement two days before Christmas. It’s time for Washington to assess who our real allies in the region are.

Renewed inflation of the volcano was detected by HVO’s GPS network and also with Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) in 2014. Based on the elevated rates of earthquakes and persistent inflation, the Volcano Alert Level for Mauna Loa was elevated from Normal to Advisory on September 15, 2015.

According to the USGS Alert-Notification System for Volcanic Activity, an Advisory level indicates that the volcano is showing signs of unrest above known background levels, but does not mean that an eruption is certain. Another period of Mauna Loa unrest in 2004–2005 included inflation and anomalous seismicity, but did not result in an eruption. Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano in the world, has erupted 33 times since 1843.

On the website, policelink.monster.com, an article by John E Reid, who claims to be “the world leader in providing training programs on investigative interviewing and interrogation techniques, as well as seminars on specialized techniques for the investigation of street crimes,” begins: “During the course of an investigation an investigator often must rely on duplicity and pretence in an effort to develop evidence against the guilty suspect.”

Reid goes on to write:

“An interesting application… is the permissibility of lying to a suspect about the purpose for an interview. As an example, consider that Frank is suspected of engaging in illegal gambling activity and investigators wish to talk to him about that. For fear that Frank will destroy evidence if told the true purpose for the interview, investigators lie and tell him that they would like to question him about a recent hit and run accident.

Once Frank voluntarily presents himself to the interview room he is told the true purpose for the interview and subsequently confesses to illegal gambling activity. Lying to a non-custodial suspect about the purpose for an interview may be considered permissible if the investigator can establish a reasonable purpose for the deception and that the interview was voluntary.”

The unprecedented meeting of the head of the Church, Patriarch Kirill, with his Roman Catholic counterpart Pope Francis in Havana on February 12 is going to have “far-reaching consequences,” the head of the Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion, told TASS in an exclusive interview. “The word of the pope and the patriarch is addressed to men of all conditions, including political leaders the future of humankind depends upon,” the metropolitan said.

The first-ever face-to-face talk between two of the major leaders of the Christian world does not mean that the dialogue has just started, Metropolitan Hilarion stressed. “It means the dialogue has entered a new stage of augmented intensity.” Despite all the existing theological disagreements, there is a clear understanding on both sides that “the situation in the world urges immediate collaborative action,” as it was put in the final joint declaration of the heads of churches.

“The meeting was necessary to coordinate our actions in the first place.” It was important that the leaders of the world’s two largest Christian churches spoke with a single voice. “So they did,” Metropolitan Hilarion said. After the rupture between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches in 1054 that is known as the Great Schism, a great deal of differences accumulated, yet the “Christian conscience forces us to seek ways to overcome the discord,” he said, stressing that “This is going to be a long haul.”

UK, Chinese and American officials and the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, have been discussing key issues to the global economy during a G20 summit in Shanghai since Friday. The chancellor told the BBC: "The financial leaders of the world's biggest countries have given their unanimous verdict and they say that a British exit from the EU would be a shock to the world economy - and if it's a shock to the world economy imagine what it would do to Britain."

Meanwhile, London Mayor Boris Johnson has clarified his position on the idea that a vote to leave the EU could force Brussels to give Britain a better deal and trigger a second referendum. Mr Johnson had previously suggested that only by voting to leave would the UK "get the change we need". But in The Times, Mr Johnson stated categorically: "Out is out".

The prime minister emerged from the talks with an agreement that, among other things, allows the UK to cut benefits received by migrant EU workers. While British Eurosceptics, including six of Cameron’s senior ministers, saw the deal as more form than substance, their Continental neighbors understood the significance of granting these special privileges to a member country. Some fear it to be a “kiss of death” for the European experiment.

Now, Cameron has set a June date for a referendum on his country’s membership in the EU, given the concessions — or lack thereof, depending your point of view — he obtained. The prime minister will campaign for Britain to remain in the Union, while Boris Johnson, the popular mayor of London (and potential Cameron successor), will urge his compatriots to leave.

The fundamental issue at hand, which the UK’s status within Europe obscures, is that monetary union without political integration generates tension and instability. Just consider the havoc wreaked by Europe’s equivocal approach to unification. Countries like Greece are stuck with an overvalued currency that makes them uncompetitive, while richer nations like Germany are made ultracompetitive by a de facto undervalued currency. The situation creates tremendous pressure on the system, with no meaningful ways to resolve imbalances except through counterproductive austerity measures.

Europe is broken and needs to be fixed. Sometimes, a doctor has to break a damaged bone to let it heal correctly. The same logic may apply here. It’s time to fix Europe — even if it means breaking it.

Bohuslav Sobotka said that a “Czexit” may take place. The Czech Republic only joined the EU in 2004 and has been the beneficiary of billions in development funds, but has some of the most hostile public opinion.

A Brussels decision to force the country to take in a quota of migrants caused fury. Three-fifths of Czechs said they were unhappy with EU membership and 62 percent said they would vote against it in a referendum, according to an October 2015 poll by the STEM agency.

"If Britain leaves the EU, we can expect debates about leaving the EU in a few years too," said Mr Sobotka, who led eastern European states in opposition to David Cameron’s plans to curb benefits. "The impact may be really huge," he said, adding that a "Czexit" could trigger an economic and security downturn and a return to the Russian sphere of influence.

There are skeptics, certainly, on both sides of the ecumenical divide. Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the leader of the Byzantine-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church, has been forthright about his concerns. Now Patriarch Kirill has acknowledged that “powerful forces” opposed the meeting - and almost on cue, the Georgian Orthodox Church reminded the world that there are still pockets of intransigent opposition to ecumenism in the Orthodox world.

Perhaps the ecumenical importance of the meeting in the Havana airport had always been exaggerated. In the days leading up to the meeting, the Moscow patriarchate inflated the drama, saying that it could mark the beginning of the end of 1,000 years of Catholic-Orthodox estrangement. That claim was invalid for two reasons.

First, the Great Schism of 1054 broke off relations between Rome and Constantinople; the Patriarchate of Moscow did not even exist at the time, and would not be formed until the 16th century.

Second, the healing of that painful East-West breach began in 1965, when Pope Paul VI met with Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople. For 50 years since then, relations between the Vatican and the Ecumenical Patriarchate have been growing steadily more regular, friendly, and productive. The Moscow patriarchate is arriving late to the ecumenical party.

Anyone who hoped for a dramatic ecumenical breakthrough at the Havana airport meeting should have revised his expectations after seeing the schedule established in advance for this summit meeting. The encounter was to take place not in a church but in an airport meeting room. (Is there any more thoroughly secular venue than an airport?)

There was no opportunity for the Pope and the Patriarch to pray together — or to be more precise, if they did pray together, they would do so behind closed doors, with no witnesses. That schedule seemed to testify to the existence of those “powerful forces” the Patriarch later mentioned; the Moscow patriarchate was afraid that a joint prayer session with the Pope could touch off angry protests among recalcitrant Russian prelates.

The rejection of the preparatory document by one of the world's fourteen autocephalous Orthodox churches poses the first serious challenge for the council's planners. A key organizing principle for the council has been that any statement or document produced by the participants must have unanimous support. The opposition of the Georgian hiearchy also illustrates the deep suspicions about ecumenical work within some Orthodox circles.

Patriarch Ilia II of Tbilisi, the leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church, announced that the Georgian Synod had rejected the document on ecumenism. "Our Church is that which saves our country and our people," he said. "In the future our Church will stand as a guard for Orthodoxy."

Cambodia is considered a “high deforestation” country by the United Nations, but the prime minister’s comments reported by AP mark a serious escalation in the fight to prevent illegal logging. The prime minister was speaking at the opening of Cambodia’s new Ministry of Environment building on Thursday when he revealed the dramatic anti-illegal logging tactic. Hun Sen told reporters that no rockets have been fired under the new orders as of yet.

It has been estimated that, over the past two decades, industrial development and illegal logging has cost the country approximately 2.85 million hectares of forest – the size of a small country.

This is a crushing defeat for the Obama White House, as the President is hopeful to leave a legacy on the Supreme Court that could spend the next 20-40 years enacting his radical left-wing agenda: “We believe the American people need to decide who is going to make this appointment rather than a lame duck president,” said Majority Whip John Cornyn.

When asked if they would start the process after the new president took office or if they would consider doing it in the lame duck session, Cornyn replied “No, after the next president is selected. That way the American people have a voice in the process.”

The Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were unanimous in agreeing not to move forward with any Obama nominee for the Supreme Court, said Cornyn, who was in the meeting. Senator Bob Corker (Republican for Tennessee), who was not in the meeting, later said that GOP senators were told at their weekly lunch that the Judiciary Committee Republicans were in unanimous agreement on the strategy.

Senator Lindsey Graham said that “there’s no use starting a process that’s not going to go anywhere and we are going to let the next president decide,” when asked why there would be no hearings.