Russian President Vladimir Putin urged world powers to unite into “one powerful fist” in the battle against terrorism, even as aircraft, ships and soldiers from several Western European countries continued to head for the Syria/Iraq theater. UK aircraft concentrated their strikes on oil infrastructure controlled by the Islamic State (IS) terror militia while Turkish and Russian officials traded accusations of profiting from the illicit trade in smuggled petroleum. “Allah must have punished Turkey’s ruling clique by depriving it of sense and reason,” Putin said during his state of the nation speech before the Duma on Thursday. In a related development, Turkey granted permission to France Thursday to begin using its airspace for strikes on IS. Read More