400 US troops to train Syrian rebels to tackle the 31500 strong ISIS militants

#SyrianRebels #IraqiForces #KurdishForces It is understood that the US Department of Defense has agreed to send 400 troops and hundreds of support staff to train moderate rebels against the 31500 strong Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have offered to host the troops but, it is not disclosed as to where they would be drawn from or where they will be based.
The announcement has come soon after senior US officials had met Syrian opposition leaders in Istanbul, Turkey. And, it is believed that imparting such training to the rebels would make them more effective to tackle the ISIS.
The objective of the US is to train more than 5,000 rebels annually for three years and the decision is an expansion in the US training of Syrian rebels which began in March 2013 in Jordan and led by the CIA.
Later, in October 2014 it had been announced that the project would be escalated and a parallel Pentagon program would be established.
US has already sent more than 3,000 troops to into Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces. But, critics of the training mission are of the opinion that the numbers are too small and too slow to be effective against IS which, the CIA feels, may have as many as 31,500 fighters.

North Korea threatens to blow up White House because of Sony ‘Interview’ hacking

#sonyinterview North Korea has threatened to carry out strikes against the White House, Pentagon and "the whole US mainland" unless it withdraws its allegations that Pyongyang was responsible for the hacking of Sony Pictures that had planned to release the film The Interview on Christmas Day in America.
This film was a comedy that depicted the assassination of the North Korean leader and features James Franco and Seth Rogen as two journalists who are granted an audience with Kim Jong-Un and, the CIA then enlists the two of them to assassinate him.
US continues to insist that the hacking had been masterminded by North Koreans which Pyongyang does not accept.
In a fiery statement, North Korea has denied the US claims that it is behind cyber-attacks linked to a film that features the fictional killing of its leader Kim Jong-un. Of course, North Korea has a long history of issuing threats against the US and these latest threats comes days after the US formally accused the North of orchestrating a massive cyber-attack on Sony Pictures.
Due to the cyber-attack, the unreleased films The Interview and the script for the next James Bond film were leaked online apart from details of corporate finances and private emails between producers and Hollywood figures.
Incidentally, Pyongyang had offered to hold a joint inquiry with the US into the hacking but US president Barack Obama said that the US was considering putting North Korea back on its list of terrorism sponsors – this has angered Pyongyang still further.