The death toll from four separate attacks in Iraq’s Saladin and Diyala provinces has risen to 15, local security sources said on Dec. 13. The sources, who asked not to be named due to security concerns, said a total of 11 members of the Hashd al-Shaabi militia were killed in two truck bomb explosions near its military checkpoint in Samarra city in Saladin. Source Hurriyet Daily
South Korea will send a naval destroyer with a crew of 300 to the Strait of Hormuz in an independent mission, the defense ministry said Tuesday, a decision that followed months of U.S. pressure as Washington seeks help amid tensions with Iran. Source: Stars and Stripes
Nord Stream 2 expects regulators to decide by May whether its contested natural gas pipeline linking Germany to Russia will be able to operate as planned. Already suffering U.S. sanctions, the project led by Gazprom PJSC is pinning its hopes on German regulator Bundesnetzagentur to help it clear hurdles erected by European Union competition authorities. So-called unbundling rules rolled out by the trade bloc last year require the owners of gas and those who deliver it by pipeline or ship to be separate legal entities, even the fuel comes from outside the EU. Source: Bloomberg
The first case of bird flu in Germany this winter has been discovered near the Polish border, with an outbreak already causing havoc throughout Eastern Europe. Half a million birds had to be culled in Germany in 2017. Source: Deutsche Welle
