Senior Iraqi al-Qaeda leaders ‘killed’

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and US officials say two leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq have been killed in a joint Iraqi-US operation.

Mr Maliki said on national TV that the Iraqi al-Qaeda leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who led an affiliate group, were dead.

US Vice-President Joe Biden said their deaths were “potentially devastating blows” to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Mr Maliki said both had been killed in Salaheddin province, west of Baghdad. Iraqi TV showed pictures of both men before and after their deaths.

North Korea denies sinking South Korean warship

North Korea on Saturday denied involvement in the sinking of a South Korean warship near their disputed border, a day after the South said an external blast was the most likely cause of the tragedy.

The statement was the first official reaction from Pyongyang after the 1,200-tonne corvette was broken in half in a mysterious blast on March 26, resulting in the loss of 46 lives, near the maritime border in the Yellow Sea.

Nato to invite Russia to join in building defence ‘roof’ for Europe

The radical move would see Nato and the Russian sharing in the development and building of a defence against ballistic missiles launched from rogue nuclear states such as Iran.

It would mark the first time that the two sides had joined together in a defence project as Nato seeks to build bridges with its former foe.

During a briefing in London last week, Nato spokesman James Appathurai said the Americans have been in direct talks with the Russians over the idea.

Officials consider European home ports

Navy planners are investigating the possibility that ballistic-missile defense ships could be forward-deployed to ports in Europe to make it easier for them to defend the continent, a top U.S. commander said.

Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, commander of Naval Forces Europe, said that the top authorities involved have made no decision about whether BMD-capable cruisers and destroyers could be based somewhere in Europe, in the same way warships stay in Japan, but the move is being considered.

“That’s one of the things we’re going have to look at, to see if we should do that,” Fitzgerald told reporters April 15, along with looking into many other details for how the surface force will next year become Europe’s shield against the threat of ballistic missiles fired from Iran.

MDAA ALERT: The Clash of the Titans

Dr. Bradley H. Roberts and Rep. Michael Turner

Dear Members and Friends,

At the backdrop of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington D.C., the United States House of Representatives held their first missile defense hearing for the year on the 2011 President’s Budget Request for Missile Defense focusing on the polices to authorize 1.4 percent of the total defense budget for missile defense. This hearing was centered on an emotional debate about credibility of the rational reasoning to cancel the European missile defense sites of the previous administration and replace them with the Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) in Europe consisting of four phases to be finished by 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2020.