President Donald Trump announced this week that all American troops in Afghanistan will be “home by Christmas.” His announcement follows one from National Security Advisor Robert O’Brian, detailing a plan to reduce the number of troops based there to 2,500.
German leaders are preparing for the possibility of a new COVID-19 outbreak within the country’s borders following a significant overnight rise in cases. Predictions are projecting that new cases may reach 10,000 a day in the near future if the infection rate isn’t brought under control.
A U.S. judge ordered Iran to pay $1.45 billion to the family of an FBI agent who disappeared while on a trip to the country in 2007. Tehran has long denied that Robert Levinson died in its custody.
Plus, the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh continues to escalate.
From Vox:
Past skirmishes typically lasted no more than a few days, but this one has only continued and intensified. Stepanakert, a city of over 50,000 people, has experienced heavy artillery fire from Azerbaijan since October 2, while Azerbaijan says Armenia has shelled the country’s second-largest city, Ganja, and other missiles elsewhere — each assault putting civilians in grave danger.
These and other actions have made the past 10 days the most violent, bloody, and deadly since the 1994 ceasefire. “They’re already calling it the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War,” said Roya Talibova, an Azerbaijani who was internally displaced by the violence of the first war and is now a PhD student at the University of Michigan. “What I’m seeing now reminds me of what I saw in the 1990s.”
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