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UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN Security Council will convene Monday afternoon for an emergency closed door meeting regarding Syria in the aftermath of president Bashar Assad fleeing the country, multiple diplomatic sources told AFP on Sunday.
The meeting, set for 3:00 p.m. (2000 GMT), was requested by Russia earlier on Sunday.
Two people were killed in an explosion on Moscow’s Ryazansky Prospekt, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported on Tuesday, citing emergency services.
Baza, a Telegram channel close to Russia’s security services, said that two military personnel were killed.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.
SYDNEY: The AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine partnership with Australia will benefit the United States and is the kind of “burden sharing” deal that President-elect Donald Trump has talked about, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
In an interview with Australia’s Lowy Institute think tank published on Tuesday, Sullivan said he had confidence AUKUS would endure under the Trump presidency, as it enhances US deterrent capability in the Indo-Pacific and has Australia contributing to the US industrial base.
The trilateral AUKUS deal struck in 2021 is Australia’s biggest defense project, with a cost of A$368 billion ($245 billion) by 2055, as Australia buys several Virginia-class submarines from the United States while also building a new class of nuclear-powered submarine in Britain and Australia.
“The United States is benefiting from burden sharing — exactly the kind of thing that Mr.Trump has talked a lot about,” Sullivan said of the AUKUS agreement.
Australia has agreed to invest $3 billion in US shipyards that build the Virginia-class nuclear submarines it will be sold early next decade amid concerns that a backlog of orders could jeopardize the deal.
Australia having conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines enhances America’s deterrent capability in the Indo-Pacific, Sullivan said.
“Australia is directly contributing to the US submarine industrial base so that we can build out this submarine capability, supply Australia in the nearer term with Virginia class submarines and then in the longer term with the AUKUS class submarine,” he added.
Australia’s defense and foreign ministers, meanwhile, met their counterparts in London on Monday to discuss progress on AUKUS for the first time since a change of government in Britain, and ahead of Trump’s inauguration as US president in January.
Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey said they discussed “the challenge of maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific, the challenge of China — increasingly active, increasingly assertive in the region — and the vital importance of maintaining both deterrence and freedom of navigation.”
Australia’s Defense Minister Richard Marles said they discussed accelerating the process of bringing Australian companies into the supply chain in Britain for building submarines.
NEW YORK: A judge on Monday ruled that Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal should stand, rejecting the US president-elect’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling nullified the verdict, a court filing showed.
Trump’s lawyers argued that having the case hang over him during his presidency would impede his ability to govern. He was initially scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26, but Justice Juan Merchan pushed that back indefinitely after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.
In a 41-page decision, Justice Juan Merchan said Trump’s “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.”
Trump’s lawyer did not immedaitely respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, said there were measures short of the “extreme remedy” of overturning the jury’s verdict that could assuage Trump’s concerns about being distracted by a criminal case while serving as president.
The case stemmed from a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. The payment was for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it.
A Manhattan jury in May found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment. It was the first time a US president — former or sitting — had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offense.
Trump pleaded not guilty and called the case an attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to harm his 2024 campaign.
MOSCOW: Russia is boosting its ballistic arsenal with new strategic missile systems, plans maximum-range launches and may increase testing in response to growing external threats, a senior Russian military commander said on Monday.
In a clear warning that Russia will respond if it deems its security is threatened, Sergei Karakayev, the commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, said the country plans maximum-range test launches as part of testing new systems.
“In terms of range, there is no place where our missiles cannot reach,” Russia’s RIA state news agency cited Karakayev as telling the Krasnaya Zvezda, the Russian defense ministry’s official newspaper, in an interview.
• Russia develops new intercontinental ballistic missile system
• Russia plans maximum-range test launches of ballistic missiles
• Russia may increase intensity of missile testing
• Moscow, Washington warn each other ahead of ICBM tests
He added that Russia may increase the intensity of tests of its advanced missile weapons if external threats grow.
Confirming for the first time publicly that Russia is developing a new intercontinental ballistic missile system, the Osina, Karakayev said the introduction into combat of Osina and a number of new missile systems is a priority.
He said, without revealing details, that Russia is also completing the development of missile systems akin to its new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as Oreshnik, which President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Russia will mass-produce soon.
Russia struck Ukraine in November with Oreshnik in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British missiles against Russia.
Karakayev said Russia’s new state armament development program will consider various options for the development of strategic offensive weapons by Russia and will take into account similar moves by the US after the expiration of the New START nuclear arms treaty between the countries in 2026.
Russian media reported in October that Moscow will not sign a replacement for the START treaty, the last remnant of efforts to slow the nuclear arms race between the former Cold War superpowers and to increase transparency by imposing verifiable limits on the number of weapons.
Karakayev said that Russia had not ruled out increasing the number of warheads on deployed missiles after the New START treaty expires, in response to similar actions by the United States.
He also said that Moscow and Washington continue to give each other a 24-hour warning of any planned test launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Russia’s armament program ensures that Russia’s strategic missile forces are equipped with mobile missile systems, Karakayev said.
“Missile divisions equipped with mobile-based missile systems will be a decisive means of inflicting devastating damage on the enemy in a retaliatory strike due to high manoeuvrability and survivability, especially in the context of the deployment of the US missile defense system,” he said.
