The nature of kingship in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth follows the events that occur during Macbeth’s unlawful rise to the throne......The themes of greed, arrogance and excessive political ambition are still, very relevant to the world today. Shakespeare got it right - his story of Macbeth still applies to today's world....
The US dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb on ISIS positions in a remote part of Afghanistan......Afghan officials said 36 militants were killed in the strike in Nangarhar province, near the Pakistan border, where the US military previously estimated ISIS had 600 to 800 active fighters. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb (MOAB) was dropped Thursday night on a network of fortified underground tunnels that ISIS had been using to stage attacks on government forces.
Nangarhar is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. It is divided into twenty-two districts and has a population of about 1,436,000. The city of Jalalabad is the capital of Nangarhar province
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, denounced the use of the weapon......."This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as a testing ground for new and dangerous weapons," he said on Twitter.
The GPS-guided munition is known as the "mother of all bombs" and is capable of destroying an area equivalent to nine city blocks......The blast destroyed three underground tunnels as well as weapons and ammunition, but no civilians were hurt, Afghan and US officials have said.....Residents in nearby villages said the blast shattered their windows and that it created a boom so loud that they feared their own homes had been bombed
A local resident living around two kilometers (1.5 miles) from the blast told CNN he heard an "extremely loud boom that smashed the windows of our house.....We were all scared and my children and my wife were crying. We thought it had happened right in front of our house,.....I have witnessed a countless number of explosions and bombings in the last 30 years of war in Afghanistan, but this one was more powerful than any other bomb as far as I remember....We were unable to see each other at home because of the excessive dust inside the room."
While the war in Afghanistan has largely slipped from public consciousness in the US, replaced by the conflict in Syria and ongoing tensions over North Korea, there are still around 8,400 US troops in the country engaged in counter terrorism operations....."the war in Afghanistan is at its lowest point for the Afghans and their American allies since the Taliban were overthrown in the months after 9/11."
The Taliban "control or contest" about a third of the population of the country, Bergen said, citing senior US military officials. That's around 10 million people -- more than the population ISIS controlled in Syria and Iraq at the height of its power during the summer of 2014
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB.....commonly known as the Mother of All Bombs) is a large-yield conventional (non-nuclear) bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the time of development, it was touted as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever designed.The bomb was designed to be delivered by a C-130 Hercules, primarily the MC-130E Combat Talon I or MC-130H Combat Talon II variants......The MOAB has been used once in combat, in a 13 April 2017 strike against ISIS forces in Afghanistan.[3] Several news organizations called it the largest conventional bomb ever used in anger, but the 22,000-pound Grand Slam earthquake bombs dropped during World War II may have been even heavier......In 2007, Russia tested a thermobaric weapon nicknamed the "Father of All Bombs"; the weapon is claimed to be four times as powerful as the MOAB.