16 Stunning Wall Painting Ideas That Will Turn Your Walls Into Art 2017

16 Stunning Wall Painting Ideas That Will Turn Your Walls Into Art

Walls can change how the room looks dramatically, and sticking with traditional white walls, can sometimes make the room boring. Take a ride through these awesome wall painting ideas, to inspire your next room transformation.

1. Mountain Mural

2. Trapeza Wall Mural

3. Painted Ombré Wall

4. Starbust, Ombré Wall

5. Faux Effects Plaster

6. Horizontal Stripes

7. Beautiful Shapes Pattern

8. A Soft Edge Of A Half Painted Wall

9. Constellation Wall

10. Herringbone Wall

11. Different Tones of Grey

12. Grunge Style

13. Color Blocking Wall Decals

14. Painted Table

15. Modern Art Wall Paint

 

16. Golden Moon Wall Art

Tags:Paint, Ideas, Art, Painting, Tips, Tricks, Entertainment, Humor, Articles, Best, Top, New, 2017,

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Melissa McCarthy Plays Sean Spicer Going Nuts on the Press in Hilarious SNL Sketch: ‘APOLOGIZE TO ME!’

Melissa McCarthy Plays Sean Spicer Going Nuts on the Press in Hilarious SNL Sketch: ‘APOLOGIZE TO ME!’

Melissa McCarthy to the rescue.
Just minutes after Alec Baldwin returned to play the Commander in Chief himself, McCarthy surprised the audience at Saturday Night Live tonight to play a SCREAMING Sean Spicer, losing his mind on the members of the press corps. McCarthy played a wildly contentious version of the real life press secretary, going ape sh*t against the media through a series of screams and gyrations.
“And also I don’t talk so good!” McCarthy yells as Spicer after a brief introduction.
Naturally, Spicer quickly grows adversarial in the bit, shouting, “Apologize to me!” Then, quickly, he spouts off, “That apology is NOT accepted!”
“I’m here to swallow gum and take names,” he says, downing a wad of Cinnamon Orbit.
The whole sketch is a hilarious hodgepodge of Spicer flipping out on the media, complete with jabs at CNN and Glenn Thrush of The New York Times. McCarthy sells the bit throughout the sketch with a hilariously put-on impression and high-commitment physicality.

“Now let me wave something shiny in front of your monkeys,” McCarthy as Spicer screams, shortly before Kate McKinnon appears as Betsy DeVos in a quick cameo.

While describing the night of President Donald Trump‘s announcement of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, the sketch’s version of Spicer intermittently picks up his podium, ramming it straight into the reporters in the front row. “NO ONE WAS SAD, AND THOSE ARE THE FACTS FOREVER!”
“I will put you in the corner with CNN!” he yells at one reporter; Jim Acosta can be seen locked up, pleading his innocence. McCarthy even mockingly jabs at Spicer’s penchant for visual aids.
Tonight’s episode of Saturday Night Live is hosted by Kristen Stewart (who already let one big f-bomb fly in tonight’s show, by the way) with musical performances by Alessia Cara
.

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Trump’s Plan to Fight ISIS With Putin Isn’t Just Futile. It’s Dangerous.

There's no way to go to war alongside the Russian army without dragging American troops down.

By Molly K. McKew

February 05, 2017

 

America and Russia fighting on the same side against ISIS: This is the radical realignment that President Trump has been dangling as the linchpin of his promised reboot of the global war on terror. In one of his first executive actions, Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Jan. 28 giving the Secretary of Defense until the end of February to present a “new plan to defeat ISIS,” calling for the “identification of new coalition partners in the fight against ISIS.” Trump has made it clear that he expects Russia to top that list. In an interview this weekend, the President made the case that if the US can work with Russia “in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world…that’s a good thing.”
Pressed on the wisdom of working with Russia, Trump defended the idea not by denying that Putin is “a killer” and a potentially problematic partner for this fight, but by saying that we should work with Russia because America is not “so innocent” and has “a lot of killers around,” too.

The President’s statement drew immediate bipartisan fire, with voices from both sides of the aisle calling Putin a thug and pointing out that journalists and political opponents alike often end up dead in Russia. But Trump’s broader plan is no less fraught than the casual moral equivalency he drew. The differences between our wars on terror run as deep as those between our nations.
On the surface, the idea of partnership with another powerful and capable military to share the burden of fighting the Islamic State may sound tempting. Russia has devoted considerable resources to broadcasting its "victorious war" in Syria, airing endless footage of spectacular airstrikes and trumpeting supposed territorial gains. The slick Kremlin media narrative and coordinated messaging campaigns have helped create powerful myths about its effectiveness in Syria and in the war against ISIS.
But that’s exactly what they are: myths. The truth is that it is both pointless and dangerous for America to fight ISIS alongside Russia. Pointless because the Russians are not there to fight ISIS — their real goals in the region have nothing to do with eliminating the terror group, but with empowering Assad and other anti-American allies. Dangerous because the United States and Russia share neither common goals nor common tactics. Our forces are not interoperable, and neither is the way we fight wars. Russians operate differently from Americans at every level of conflict — tactically, operationally, and strategically. There is no established trust between our nations or our forces, and the place to build that trust is not during a major operation where our goals are fundamentally misaligned.
There is simply no way to make Russia our partner in this fight without betraying the values we defend as a nation, betraying the principles we endeavor to uphold in this war, and betraying the force we have built to fight it. If Trump pushes ahead anyway, what are we in for?
Counterterrorism, Russian style
The United States views the war on terror — rightly — as a messy, confusing world of gray authorities, targets, and battlefronts in which legal frameworks matter as much as military or law enforcement operations. We try to be careful in sorting moderate from extremist, civilian from militant, bystander from believer. We get it wrong at times, and we subject ourselves to scathing review, and our lawmakers investigate those missteps to avoid repeating them in the future. We are constantly reevaluating civil rights and protections in an unclear war.
Russia has no such uncertainties or concerns. There is only one rule in Vladimir Putin's counterterrorism tactics: anything done in the service of defeating "extremism" is justified. Russian tactics are brutal and indiscriminating: targeting a terrorist or his family or his community are all the same. The Russians have no concept of "collateral damage" in their attacks; it’s all tallied in the same column. If it ends up dead, it was a terrorist.
Russian tactics leave a high civilian body count. Its decade-long internal war against militants and terrorists fighting for an independent Chechnya left at least tens of thousands dead on both sides, and likely far more--a body count that includes countless civilians. It was a scorched-earth war, and Russia has spent countless billions to rebuild the smoking ruin of Grozny. Despite the cost in blood and treasure, it's not a clear-cut victory: the new Chechen leadership cultivated by Putin has done little to stop the spread of violent extremism in the North Caucasus. But Putin and his security state have found it useful to keep the constant specter of internal terror alive.
Russia has also shown no inclination to learn from its errors. In 2002, when Chechen terrorists took an estimated 850 people hostage in a theater in Moscow, the Kremlin ordered FSB special forces to pump an undisclosed toxic gas into the theater to break the siege. The militants were killed, but so were 130 hostages. In 2004, when Chechen terrorists took around 1100 people, mostly children, hostage in a school in Beslan, the same Russian security forces ended the standoff by storming the school with tanks and incendiary munitions. The terrorists were killed, but again, so were at least 330 hostages, including 186 children. Rather than investigating or reviewing the raid, the horrific outcome was used as political leverage to drum up ethnic hatred and greatly expand the powers of security forces.
We’ve fought wars with plenty of undesirable allies, and it might be tempting to imagine we could hold our noses and ally with Russia against what we believe are the more horrific forces of the Islamic State. But, even putting aside moral differences, there is no feasible way to form a coalition with the Russians and have a joint force that is interoperable. We can’t, as they say, "plug and play." It has taken decades of training and joint exercises to integrate NATO forces — especially the armies of former Soviet nations — so we can work together at a command-and-control, doctrinal, procedural, technological, and human level. It has cost billions of dollars to achieve and maintain this interoperability. It is fantasy to believe even a bandaid version of this can happen easily or quickly with a large, lethal force five years deep in a spreading, bloody, total war.
Russian anti-terror ops are not about providing security, but exacting vendettas and controlling an environment through fear and devastation. In the Kremlin’s calculus, high civilian casualties contribute to those objectives, so they are considered tactically acceptable. This approach is not only antithetical to our own: It has no Western counterpart.
It may not be fair that Russia is routinely bombing hospitals and civilian infrastructure with relatively little backlash, while one stray US airstrike on a Doctors without Borders facility unleashes unending international outcry. But it’s a hypocrisy we live with as the world’s most powerful military, and it is the reason why American forces operate with the most restrictive rules of engagement on the planet — even though we know that in minimizing collateral damage, there is sometimes a cost in American lives. Because ultimately this is the best and only way to protect our fighting men and women, and our interests, when things go awry.
We still believe in international conventions governing war crimes — conventions the Russians explicitly reject — and we will expose our fighting men and women to criminal charges by fighting the way that Russians do. If we allow ourselves to integrate the Russian way of war, we implicitly endorse the Kremlin's actions, and the impact on our already damaged reputation will be incalculable. This endangers our troops, by shaping our next generation of warriors and commanders with this mindset of war, and this endangers our nation, by becoming everything we have spent generations training ourselves not to be.
Russia’s kabuki war on ISIS
The US and Russia also have different operational objectives in Syria. On TV and in official statements, Russia says all the right things about its glorious war against ISIS. It’s persuasive storytelling — until you look closer at the details.
First, Russia didn’t enter the war in Syria to fight ISIS; it entered the war to defend their ally, Bashar al Assad, from a popular uprising that threatened his autocratic regime, and to expand the Russian footprint in the Middle East while they were at it.
Second, Russia provides material support to ISIS to manipulate the war. Credible reporting from Russia suggests that Russian security forces helped recruit for ISIS, which now has thousands of Russian-speaking jihadis in its ranks. The arrival of the first group of several hundred Russian-speaking fighters was a key turning point in the Syrian war — turning the war away from Assad and toward Iraq. The largest current source of ISIS revenue, according to US and European officials, is from selling oil to Assad — and Assad cannot act without Russian approval. ISIS requires Russian ammunition to fight, readily acquires it from stocks sent to Assad, and seems to find fortuitous resupply when necessary.
Third, Russia has not been directly fighting ISIS. Russia has dropped three times more bombs than the US coalition, but only a fraction have hit ISIS targets. Instead, Russia has been using ISIS as a convenient excuse to remove threats to Assad, destabilize Iraq (and prove the weakness of American power by doing so), unleash Iran, consolidate its hold on the region, and deploy military hardware and architecture around the edges of NATO.
Why does Russia need massive anti-access area denial (A2AD) air defense capabilities in Syria when ISIS doesn’t have an air force? Partially, this is because Russia has established Syria as its central naval, air, and land force base in the Middle East, from which it can lilypad to wherever necessary, including Libya. If there are any questions about the power dynamics between Russia and Syria, Russia drafted a new Syrian constitution in January.
But mostly, the air defense assets are about us. Russia has prevented US aircraft from fighting ISIS in Syria, threatened to shoot down planes targeting Assad’s forces, and used its planes to force ours away from targets. Russia has targeted airstrikes against bases used by US special forces, and, just to make sure we got the message, bombed the same base again 90 minutes after we asked them to stop.
Russia’s war against anti-Assad rebels, however, closely resembles its traditional counterterrorism operations. The world watched in real time as Russia pummeled Aleppo into dust. The message has been clear: Any who stand against their pawn are fair game. Russia has said civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, is a legitimate target. This has driven a refugee crisis that has destabilized Europe, challenging its political and physical security, and aided the rise of far-right parties supportive of Moscow. Some believe that Russia is waging a war to intentionally "weaponize" migration. The intense civilian collateral damage, widely visible via social media, has arguably inflamed radicalization and aided ISIS recruitment — in the Middle East and in the West.
Adding further questions about Russian intentions in "fighting terrorism" is its own war coalition, which — in addition to Russian, Syrian, and Iranian forces, in coordination with Iraqi and Turkish forces — includes terror group Hezbollah as a core component. It also relies on sectarian militias led by Iran's Quds Force, which is well-documented as Iran’s favorite tool for exporting terror. Russia has also been sharing intelligence and working with the Taliban.
How does it make any sense that Russia fights terrorism in one place, while working with it in another — sometimes exporting the enemies from one war to another? How can the Kremlin claim to be fighting a war to defend Syria from ISIS when Assad has also funded terror groups, including aiding ISIS?
Because for Russia, this is all a simple matter of definition: as we have readily seen in Ukraine, the Kremlin has long referred to anyone who stands against its power as a terrorist or Nazi. “Extremism” is, in turn, a catch-all Kremlin term for radical forces that must be fought. It should not be lost on us that the Kremlin also defines “ akin to other forms of extremism, and that Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov has called the Western promotion of democratic values a cause of terrorism.
Our operational objectives differ wildly. Ours are to eliminate a terrorist force; to limit its replication and recruitment; to keep it from attacking American soil; and then to get our forces out. The Kremlin's are to entrench a fractious ally (and other regional dictators and strongmen loyal to Putin), to project Russian force into the region, and to continue the realignment of global power away from the West.
Operationally, if we choose to fight as a partner with Russia, we endorse the objectives of their war. We accept that Assad — and Russia — stays in Syria. We accept that the Kremlin will maneuver and manipulate terrorism to suit its strategic and financial needs. We accept the embrace, training, and arming of unholy allies who will likely spawn the next generation of extremists we will fight against. We accept that they have objectives we won’t fully understand — some of which are meant to weaken our allies and undermine our own security architecture. We also become complicit in the grand fiction that Putin has used to inflate his standing at home and in the world.
The threat to alliances
Russia’s strategy for the past decade has been to dismantle NATO, erode the values of the transatlantic partnership, and challenge American power. When the Kremlin views a humanitarian crisis and forced migration into Europe as a strategic success, then it’s pretty clear we share little in common strategically with Russia. The 100 years of American blood spilled for Europe was an investment — an investment in a Europe whole, free, and at peace, upon which we have earned ample returns. Compromising that for a one-off action with Russia makes little strategic sense.
Fighting ISIS with Russia would come at the expense of our strategic alliances and partnerships. Our national security is dependent, more than most Americans know, on the partnership structure we refer to as "Five Eyes" — the highly integrated, collaborative intelligence sharing that occurs between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. All of these intelligence forces understand the threat that Russia presents to our countries, and they have gone to great effort to prevent Russian infiltration and recruitment. The minute the US agrees, for political reasons, to openly share intelligence with the Russians, the Five Eyes family ends, leaving us immeasurably more exposed to attack. There is nothing we can gain from the Russians that would replace this source of information in our domestic security. It is likely for this reason that the Obama administration’s attempt to launch a joint operations center with Russia to fight ISIS never got off the ground.
NATO aside, we have spent the past 15 years, during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, building a Western-aligned group of states that share a common commitment and understanding of the threat. A kind of armed brotherhood, these are the nations — Poland, the Baltic states, Georgia, others — that answer the American call to arms most readily because they understand why our strategic objectives matter and they want to be defined as our partners in this fight. They are the frontiers of NATO, and the next generation of warfighters. All of those countries are uncomfortable sharing intelligence with Russia or fighting with Russia, and for good reason: It wasn’t so long ago they rid themselves of Russian occupiers, and they still receive regular Russian threats against their sovereignty. It may be an informal alliance. But we value it, and it evaporates the second we pose for the Russian photo op — or worse, allow Putin to drag us into a replication of his ISIS war in Libya.
What if he really tries it?
If the President and his new National Security Council nonetheless decide to pursue the course of fighting ISIS with the Russians, then we can draw essential lessons from the last time we fought, somewhat nervously, alongside them — World War II. In that war, as in this one, we fought on the same side, though not without trepidation — but we didn’t fight together. This is the model we must replicate for a Middle Eastern war. We should operate on separate fronts, with clear divisions of operational space and limited intelligence sharing, but never allow the two forces to cross. Our military cannot, and should not, be asked to cooperate and integrate with a Russian force and command structure that sees the laws of war, and threshold of acceptable carnage, in ways that we have long rejected.
Putin likes to remind Russians that 24 million Soviet citizens died during World War II. He leaves out that the vast majority of these were killed by Stalin’s deportations, executions, intentional famines, and other internal tactics of submission and control. Russians have been indoctrinated with the idea that this was a justifiable cost of war. The Russia we talk about partnering with now may have modern weapons and equipment, but its perspective on the human cost in war, especially in counterterrorism operations, is still grounded in the fields of Stalingrad.
In the best-case scenario of forced US-Russian cooperation, our military can deconflict the battle space, but should steer clear of open intelligence sharing or participation in command structures in which Russia’s conscripted terrorists and sectarian allies have any access to our personnel or information. Similarly, we cannot allow the Russians to dictate which combatants are legitimate and which are not.
We should also ask for control of areas like Aleppo, where the potential for civilian casualties is high under the wrong rules of engagement, and where the humanitarian responsibilities are greater. Our forces are simply better-trained to fight a humane, legitimate war. The Russians can sweep the desert and focus on keeping their sectarian allies and puppet-regime forces in line, and they can keep their propaganda war on Russian TV screens while we bear the human cost of separating fighter from civilian and rebuilding an utterly devastated nation.
This would certainly raise the question of what the benefit of such a partnership is, or what it does to help our cause or achieve the objective of eradicating ISIS. It would be expensive and challenging. Worse, the Russian way of war would be a seeping poison for our troops. The cost to our current and future generations of warriors of fighting with a brutal, inhumane Russian force would be devastating and immeasurable — and when they returned home, we would be wholly unprepared for the importation of this kind of mentally institutionalized violence into our society, or to help our troops transition from that state back into successful civilian life.
Terrorism is, by its nature, a spectral opponent, but the Russian war on terror is never what it seems. Before the Sochi Olympics, for example, Putin warned of the potential terror threat from North Caucasian militants and staged massive security operations. That operation was cover to move Russian forces into place to seize Crimea. “Fighting terrorism” has been a convenient justification used by President Putin for many terrible things since 9/11 — the justification for every sin, the perpetrator of every crime, the reason so many rights have been rescinded and power re-centralized.
If President Trump signs up for such endeavors, he should do so clear-eyed. He should understand that joining Russia in Syria captures America into a Putinist narrative of domination and victory. He should understand that his decision to do so, if guided by other desired benefits of an imagined policy realignment, will likely come at the cost of American national security in cascading ways that we cannot yet fully define.
To buffer against this, if he insists on this course, then President Trump must ensure that Secretary Mattis and our military commanders have the final say on how we divide the battlefield and how we fight the war. But there should be no illusions about the nature of what we are partnering with, and the cost to our nation — the vast majority of which will be carried by our military personnel for decades to come.
There is no moral equivalency between us and Putin’s Russia. The strong bipartisan backlash to President Trump’s comments is evidence enough that his attempts to forge ahead in a new partnership with Russia will meet tough resistance when they are out of bounds. A place to focus this outrage — for the sake of protecting our military and preventing ourselves from becoming no better than Putin’s “killers” — would be to avoid the trap of fighting ISIS with Russia, or of coordinating our global counterterrorism strategy with the Kremlin.
Far more logical than accepting a bad choice would be to return to the original assignment — the identification of coalition partners to fight ISIS. We are already a member of “the most successful military alliance in modern world history, maybe ever’. The US will have partners to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Our partners — our NATO allies, and the NATO aspirants, with whom we share tactical, operational, and strategic objectives; with whom we share a deep foundation of trust; and with whom we have bled a lot more recently than 1945. Why would we turn our backs on that?
 

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Pelosi calls for probe of possible Russian blackmail of Trump

 "I think we have to have an investigation by the FBI into his financial, personal and political connections to Russia," Nancy Pelosi said of Donald Trump. | AP Photo

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi urged the FBI to probe President Trump's finances and personal ties to find out if the Russian government is blackmailing him.
"I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump," the California Democrat told Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think we have to have an investigation by the FBI into his financial, personal and political connections to Russia, and we want to see his tax returns, so we can have truth in the relationship between Putin, whom he admires, and Donald Trump."

Intelligence officials briefed Trump and outgoing President Barack Obama on claims that Russia has attempted to compromise him, and the FBI is investigating those allegations, CNN reported in January. The investigation of included intercepted communications, according to the New York Times.
House and Senate panels are also investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, including possible contacts between the Kremlin and Trump's campaign.
Trump on Saturday diminished Russian President Vladimir Putin's human rights violations in an interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, saying, "You think our country’s so innocent?”

Congress

Democrats aim to make Steve Bannon a scarier Karl Rove

By Kyle Cheney

Earlier Sunday on "Meet the Press," Todd asked Vice President Mike Pence, "Why can't [Trump] say a negative thing about Vladimir Putin?"
"The president has said many times if we got along with Russia better, that would be a good thing for the world," Pence answered. "Maybe it's not going to work out. But I think he's absolutely determined. He had a productive conversation with President Putin."

  Tags: News, Latest, Pelosi, Russian, Trump, Blackmail, America

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Celta vs Real Madrid postponed according to LFP announcement | Real Madrid CF

Celta vs Real Madrid postponed according to LFP announcement | Real Madrid CF

The Whites will not play their scheduled game this Sunday and the new date for the tie is still unknown.

La Liga de Fútbol Profesional has announced the game due to be played this Sunday between Celta and Real Madrid, corresponding to LaLiga match day 21 has been suspended. The LFP released a statement saying: “According to a report by the Vigo City Council, it is considered that the stadium at Balaídos is unsafe for spectators and players to attend tomorrow's game on Sunday 5th of February 2017, on match day 21 of LaLiga Santander, between Real Club Celta and Real Madrid CF. Having received this information, LaLiga and Real Club Celta have submitted said report to the RFEF.

LaLiga will propose possible dates on which said match could be played, taking into account the opinions of both clubs and the television companies, in order for the RFEF president to decide, habitually by delegation to the Competition Committee, as stipulated by the regulatory procedures of the federation, in accordance with articles 239, 240 and 241, a new date for the postponed match”.

Alavés have also released an official statement requesting that the LFP and RFEF postpone this Wednesday's Copa del Rey match against Celta de Vigo, considering that they are now at a disadvantage.

Tags: Sports, Celta, VS, Real Madrid, LFP, CF

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LeBron James Becomes Youngest NBA Player to Reach 28,000 Career Points

Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images

Alec NathanFeatured ColumnistFebruary 5, 2017

LeBron James became the youngest player in NBA history to reach the 28,000-point plateau during the Cleveland Cavaliers' game against the New York Knicks on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.

The 32-year-old reached the milestone in the second quarter, when he drilled a deep fadeaway jump shot over Courtney Lee, as the NBA documented on Twitter:

James has ascended the league's scoring charts at an unprecedented pace, having already passed the likes of Hakeem Olajuwon, Oscar Robertson, Moses Malone and Tim Duncan on the all-time list.

Next up is Shaquille O'Neal, who occupies the seventh spot with 28,596 points. At this point, it's simply a matter of when James will pass the Big Aristotle.

NBA's All-Time Scoring List
Rank	Player	Points
1	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	38,387
2	Karl Malone	36,928
3	Kobe Bryant	33,643
4	Michael Jordan	32,292
5	Wilt Chamberlain	31,419
6	Dirk Nowitzki	29,797
7	Shaquille O'Neal	28,596
8	LeBron James	28,000 (and counting)
Source: Basketball-Reference.com

The three-time NBA champion entered Saturday night averaging 25.7 points per game on 52.7 percent shooting, making him one of two players—along with Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant—averaging at least 25 points per contest while knocking down better than 50 percent of his total looks from the field.

As those numbers indicate, James is showing no signs of slowing down even as he approaches his mid-30s and prepares to set more records.

Tags: NBA, Sports, News, Lebron James, Youngest, Player, Career, Points

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Iran says missiles will "come down" on enemies if they do wrong

 

missiles will come down on the country’s enemies if they do wrong, a senior commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard was quoted as saying in a Saturday report from the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the Guard’s airspace division, said: “If the enemy does not walk the line, our missiles come down on them.”

Play Video

Trump announces sanctions against Iran for ballistic missile test

Hajizadeh’s comments came during a Revolutionary Guard military exercise aimed at testing its missile and radar systems. The exercise was taking place in a 13,515-square-mile area in Semnan province in northern Iran.
The exercise comes a day after President Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Iran in response to a recent missile test. The sanctions target more than two dozen people and companies from the Persian Gulf to China.
CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett reports the sanctions were structured by the Obama administration.
Tasnim said all the equipment used in the war game, including all defensive systems, radars, command centers and ground-to-air missile equipment, are designed and manufactured by Iranian scientists.

Play Video

Trump says "Iran is playing with fire"

Iranian English language Press TV reported that Iran Senior Vice President Ishaq Jahangiri dismissed what he called recent anti-Iran posturing by the U.S. He said “threadbare” accusations are aimed by Washington at scaring away investors.
“The Iranian nation and authorities do not attach the least value to these remarks,” he said.
Iran insists its missile test was only for defensive purposes and not a violation of the U.N. Security Council 2231 resolution or the nuclear deal with Western powers.
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted Friday that his country was “unmoved by threats as we derive security for our people. We’ll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense.”

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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One year later, Nigerian "witch boy" healthy, heading to school

Danish humanitarian aid Anja Ringgren Lovén shares a before and after photo of a Nigerian child accused of being a witch.

Facebook/Anja Ringgren Lovén

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A year ago, Danish aid worker Anja Ringgren Lovén was on a mission with her husband in Nigeria to rescue some of the thousands of children abandoned each year after being accused of being a witch.
“We’ve seen both frightened, tortured and even dead children,” Lovén, co-founder of the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF), described in a 2016 blog post.
That’s when she first met a little boy who she now calls Hope. The toddler, who was skin and bones at the time, was left for dead by his parents in a small village.
“I chose to call him Hope, because right now, we’re all hoping that he survives,” Lovén wrote two days after she rescued the boy. “[He was] in a village, naked, alone and almost dead.”

A photo of Hope on April 31, 2016, exactly three months after he was rescued by Danish humanitarian aid Anja Lovén in a small Nigerian village.

Anja Lovén

Lovén shared a photo of herself giving water to little Hope to raise awareness about the serious problem plaguing the country, and to raise money for the boy’s ongoing medical needs. The photo went viral, and Hope’s story quickly spread throughout the world.
Now, more than a year after the famous photo was taken, the 3-year-old boy is unrecognizable.
“Today it’s exactly 1 year ago the world came to know a young little boy called Hope,” Lovén wrote in a Facebook post on Jan. 30. “This week Hope will start school.”
In the updated photo, a heftier Hope was wearing a red jumper, white velcro sneakers and a black backpack, taking a sip of water from a bottle — just like he did in the original. The boy’s healthy appearance was a welcome surprise to those who heard his story a year ago.
“Glad to see Hope (and all the children) growing up loved, well fed, happy, having fun, and going to school!” one Facebook user wrote.
“The change is amazing and he is a wonderful little boy with so much character in him,” another commented.

Anja Ringgren Lovén poses with Hope at the Land of Hope children’s center in Nigeria.

Facebook/Anja Ringgren Lovén

Hope lives with 35 other children in an orphanage run by Lovén and her husband, David Emmanuel Umem, in Eket, Nigeria — and his story is continuing to help dozens of other children just like him.
In 2009, campaigners against the practice reported around 15,000 children were accused of witchcraft in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over a decade and around 1,000 had been murdered. It’s a growing problem in the country.
But thanks to the thousands of people from around the world who donated money to the ACAEDF on Hope’s behalf, Lovén said she was able to help open a doctor’s clinic to help more accused children. The organization also bought a piece of land, called Land of Hope, which will be home to a new orphanage that protects other abandoned boys and girls.
Hope is proof that these kids’ lives can be turned around, Lovén said.
“As you can see Hope is growing with speed and he is such a handsome, healthy and very happy young boy because of the tremendous love and care he receives everyday from our staff and all our children,” Lovén said. “Where there is love there is hope.”
Tags: Nigerian, Witch Boy, School, Heading, News, Latest,Humor

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CNN Just Did To Kellyanne Conway What No Other Network Has Dared To Do

 

President Donald Trump and his administration have a, at best, contentious relationship with the media and particularly with CNN. That relationship just took another hit after CNN refused to accept one of Trump’s top advisers as a guest – and for good reason.
The trouble began when Sean Spicer, Trump’s chief minister of propaganda / press secretary, stated the administration would boycott the network. Spicer elaborated, “We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda.”
Vice President Mike Pence agreed to appear Sunday on CBS, ABC, FOX, and NBC. He, however, would not appear on CNN in an apparant slap in the face to the network. After Pence declined, the White House offered to send Trump’s senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, to appear instead. CNN said thanks, but no thanks.
This is the latest escalation between the Trump administration and CNN. Trump shouted down a CNN reporter at a press conference and called the network “fake news.” The mantra of “fake news” has become a staple talking point amongst the right wing by individuals who characterize anything with which disagrees with their sensibilities to be fraudulent.
Pence’s refusal to appear on CNN and then offering Conway as a sacrificial lamb is a curious move by the White House. Typically Trump and his administration do not bend, but perhaps they were attempting to allow Conway to clean up the various messes which she has created in the last couple of weeks.
Conway has found herself the subject of severe, and justified, ridicule after she stated the media was biased toward Trump and that is why his surrogates offer “alternative facts” during interviews. That comment ignited a firestorm which Conway was unable to extinguish before she lit an even more ferocious blaze by citing the fictitious “Bowling Green Massacre” in an effort to justify Trump’s highly illegal and unconstitutional ban on Muslims entering the United States. Conway offered a mea culpa, but the public has not let her off of the hook.
Whatever the motivations of the White House truly are they have made themselves appear weak by insulting CNN only to then throw them a bone – which blew up in their faces. CNN now has the upper hand and all of the momentum in their ongoing feud and it is unclear how the Trump administration will be able to turn the tide in their favor. This, once again, proves the neophyte nature of Trump and his team who are being outplayed across every spectrum of the political game.
Tags: News, CNN, Kellyanne, Network, Dare, FOX, ABC, CBS

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Trump fabricated a terrorist attack on the Louvre. This French woman’s response is perfect.

 

A Facebook user who was actually in Paris today has publicly corrected President Trump’s tweet about the recent act of violence which occurred in the underground mall plaza underneath the Louvre.
Trump’s tweet on the possible terrorist activity has been scorned for seeming opportunistic and cold.

Dear Mr Trump,
thank you for your concern.
A man has indeed attacked a soldier with two machetes this morning in Paris.
It wasn’t in the Louvre Museum, it was in the Carrousel du Louvre, which is a mall. (Less symbolic than what you’re implying.)
He didn’t attack any tourist (or french people -apart from the soldier- either, by the way, thank you again for your concern) and he was instantly attacked back by another soldier, and wounded.
The crowd has been kept inside after that by order of the army for security reasons, but not for any kind of hostage situation. (Your tweet is -voluntarily?- ambiguous)
France is not on edge again, at all. I learnt about the attack 10 hours after it happened (even though it was in the media earlier), and I spent 1h30 in another mall in Paris at lunch today without any kind of military reinforcement (I mean, just the usual since Charlie Hebdo or nov 2015 attacks).
Oh and by the way, the man is from Egypt, you know, the country you didn’t ban from entering the US (because of your personnal affairs?)
Again, thank you for your concern, but don’t use France as an excuse for your arseholery. You’re the one encouraging fear with your distortion of truth.
Regards,
Egie Wild
PS : GET SMART U.S. : Don’t believe anything that he says without checking facts first.

That Egyptian man who attacked the soldier was successfully thwarted before harming anybody. Paris prosecutors are treating it as a terror investigation, though police did confirm that he was not carrying explosives. He is currently in custody, being treated for his injuries.
Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW
Tags: Trump, News, Terrorist, Attack, French, Perfect, Donald Trump

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