WikiLeaks has fired back at the Guardian, tweeting: "Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper's reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange."

This report builds on two previous articles: Did Guccifer 2 Plant his Russian Fingerprints? and Media Mishaps: Early Guccifer 2 Coverage. In those reports we analyze Guccifer 2’s first batch of documents that were published on his WordPress blog. We demonstrate that Guccifer 2 likely planted his “Russian fingerprints” into those documents. Those “Russian fingerprints” were widely covered by mainstream media and provided circumstantial support for the idea that Guccifer 2 was in fact a Russian operative (or a team of operatives), in spite of his rather clumsy attempts to cover his tracks.

Better to bring the troops home on our terms than wait for a debt crisis to do it for us...

The chickens are coming home to roost. It’s only a question of when.

Herbert Stein was chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and is the father of the more well known Ben Stein. In 1976, he propounded what he called “Stein’s Law”: if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Stein was referring to economic trends, but the same law applies just as much to foreign policy and the concept of empire.

Stein’s Law at first glance might seem like a banal platitude. But we should be fully cognizant of its implications: an unsustainable system must have an end. The American empire is internally flawed, a fact that anti-imperialists both left and right should appreciate.

The West is complaining about Russian 'aggression' but the incident looks more like a cheap ploy by a desperate Ukrainian president and US conservatives keen to undermine Trump's next pow-wow with Putin...

When the Ukrainian navy sent a tugboat and two small gunboats on Sunday to force their way through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov, it knew in advance the Russian response would be swift and merciless.

After all, Kiev was entering waters claimed by Russia with military vessels without clarifying their intent.

The intent, though, was clear; to raise the stakes in the militarization of the Sea of Azov.

The Kerch Strait connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. To reach Mariupol, a key city in the Sea of Azov very close to the dangerous dividing line between Ukraine’s army and the pro-Russian militias in Donbass, the Ukrainian navy needs to go through the Kerch.

FISA declassification will assure all the actors who tried to harm America are finally exposed,” George Papadopoulos wrote on Twitter last week. “Alexander Downer, the Australian government, UK, and GCHQ (British intelligence). If FISA is not declassified, these foreign governments will try to interfere again in 2020 to hurt Trump and the movement.”

Meanwhile, the British spies who tripped up Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and others are demanding that Trump stop the release of any Obamagate docs. “UK spy chiefs in fight to stop Trump exposing their sources,” ran the headline on a Sydney Morning Herald story last week.

“MI6 chiefs are secretly battling Donald Trump to stop him publishing classified information linked to the Russian election meddling investigation,” according to the story. “The UK is warning he will undermine intelligence gathering if he releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers.”

Predictably the crisis that began on Sunday between Russia and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait is quickly worsening as Russia has announced plans to deploy more of its advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile systems to Crimea.

Adding to tensions, Reuters has further reported that a Russian warship has been dispatched to the Sea of Azov — waters used by both countries and near where the Russian Navy seized Ukrainian vessels and crew for what Moscow condemned as "maneuvering dangerously" and illegal entry into Russian territory.

The warship was seen departing a Crimean port by a Reuters correspondent on Wednesday and was described as the Russian navy minesweeper ship, the Vice-Admiral Zakharin, going in the direction of the Sea of Azov.

This comes a day after Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko issued provocative statements during a televised interview on Tuesday that his country is "under threat of full-scale war with Russia" while seeking to justify martial law.

Fox News Channel said Tuesday that it is disciplining employees involved in an email exchange with an aide to President Trump’s former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt to craft a “Fox & Friends” interview with the environmental chief last year.

The emails showed one of Pruitt’s aides suggesting the interview, passing along “talking points” and given the chance by a Fox producer to approve a script written to introduce Pruitt.

With a number of volatile trends in multiple conflict theaters and geopolitical hot spots now coming to a head this week (Ukraine-Russia, China-US, Iran-US, Turkey-Syria-Russia, Saudi Arabia-Europe), and with Presidents Putin and Trump set to meet at the G20 summit in Argentina in just days, Putin has again signaled Russia will move away from the U.S. dollar.

Speaking before the VTB Capital forum in Moscow on Wednesday, Putin wryly explained that by implementing sanctions on Russia and other countries Washington is effectively "shooting itself not in the foot but a bit higher”.

He said, according to Bloomberg, "We aren't aiming to ditch the dollar. The dollar is ditching us." Making the case that aggressive US punitive measures against its rivals is undermining confidence in the dollar, Putin explained:

Ukraine is a virtual US colony – the way it’s been since the Obama regime’s February 2014 coup, replacing democratic governance with fascist tyranny in Europe’s heartland.

Ukraine shares a near-1,500 mile land and sea border with the Russian Federation, the longest Western frontier with the country.

The regime running things is a hotbed of militarized extremism, waging war on its own people, committing appalling human rights abuses – with full support and encouragement from Washington and key NATO countries.

Stop NATO’s Rick Rozoff earlier explained that Ukraine is “the decisive linchpin in plans by the US and its NATO allies to effect a military cordon sanitaire, severing Russia from Europe” – part of a sinister plot, risking East/West confrontation.

Vladimir Putin earlier said

“(t)he appearance on our borders of a powerful military bloc…will be considered by Russia as a direct threat to our country’s security,” adding:

Since 1973, America’s policy has been to demand Israel relinquish Golan while quietly allowing US tax deductible funds to expand Jewish settlements on the plateau. Israel even reportedly offered to return Golan in exchange for a peace deal with Syria, but the secret terms of the deal were too onerous for Damascus.

The Trump administration abruptly changed US Mideast policy. First, it announced the US Embassy would move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, meaning that it rejected the idea of a Palestinian state with its capital in the old city of Jerusalem. Now, the White House has quietly accepted permanent Israeli control of Golan, though it violates international law and past US policy.

Since Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) (allegedly) ordered the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, White House strategy about the incident has been coverup, denial, and changing the subject.

Trump and regime hardliners want nothing interfering with longstanding US dirty business as usual with Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis will testify in closed door session before Senate Foreign Relations Committee members on Khashoggi’s murder and endless (US, UK, French, Israeli, Saudi, UAE) war in Yemen.

Today’s testimony comes ahead of an upcoming Senate vote up or down on whether to suspend US arms sales to the kingdom – clearly what won’t be congressionally approved longterm, if at all. Nor will Trump regime hardliners accept changes to US/Saudi relations.

CIA chief Gina Haspel heard damning audio evidence of Khashoggi’s murder, provided by Turkish intelligence.

Donald Trump is attempting to do something that no previous recent president of the United States has attempted. Trump is trying to abrogate longstanding legal international treaties signed by some of his predecessors with sovereign Native American tribes. The Trump administration is using a requirement that Medicaid recipients work in return for health benefits to deny Native American tribes the right to govern themselves as sovereign entities. The Trump administration is denying an exemption for the work requirement for tribal nations by reclassifying Native Americans as a racial group subject to federal law, not as separate sovereign nations bound by distinct tribal laws.

The only grand piano in the Gaza Strip was played in public for the first time in a decade, following a complicated international restoration effort to fix the instrument after it was nearly destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.

Some 300 fans attended the performance on Sunday, staring in awed silence as Japanese and local artists performed for them. For many, it was the first time they had ever heard a piano performed live.

“Playing this piano is feeling like playing history,” said Japanese pianist Kaoru Imahigashi. “It’s amazing. I felt the prayer of peace for many people.”

The piano’s story goes back many years, mirroring in many ways the story of Gaza.

The Japanese government donated the piano some 20 years ago, following interim peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians. An ensuing Israeli-Egyptian blockade, meant to weaken Hamas, and severe damage after a three-week war with Israel in January 2009 closed the resort altogether.

As 2018 draws to a close, it is unclear if U.S. troops and their Arab-Kurdish allies have made a dent in ISIS’ last stronghold in Syria.

A spokesman for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria estimated in December 2017 that fewer than 3,000 ISIS fighters remained in both countries. Since then, defense officials have said consistently that roughly 2,000 ISIS fighters are trapped in Syria’s Middle Euphrates River Valley.

Army Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, repeated the 2,000 figure when briefing reporters on Tuesday. However, it is difficult to determine exactly how many ISIS fighters remain in their last enclave in Syria because they are dug in deeply and the terrain is difficult for combat operations, he said.

“The numbers game is difficult to count because ISIS is underground – they’re in tunnels; they’re hiding,” Ryan said. “So it’s not like we watch them walk into to a building and we’re counting as they go in. They’re spread apart.”

A spokesman for the House of Representatives of Libya, Abdullah Blihaq, announced that the parliament approved on Monday, an amendment to the constitutional declaration (interim constitution since 2011), which divides the country into three constituencies rather than one. Blihaq said in a statement published on the official website of the Parliament that “The parliament resumed its official session on Monday under the chairmanship of its president, Aguila Saleh, in the presence of First Deputy Fawzi Al-Nuwairi and the second deputy, Ahmed Huma.”

He added that “a constitutional amendment was approved, including the fortification of Article VI, of the referendum law on the permanent constitution of the country, under which Libya is divided into three constituencies.”

Over the past seven years, the extreme right-wing Israeli government has sought to exploit the Syrian crisis in order to legalise its annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights (occupied on 14 November 1981). Its diplomacy and lobbying efforts continued in Washington and international capitals to gain recognition by the international community of its expansion, but it did not succeed to do so, and the entire world has recognised Golan as being Syrian, through successive resolutions issued by the Security Council and the General Assembly, and other international forums.

n November 15, Ernst & Young and other private firms that were hired to audit the Pentagon announced that they could not complete the job. Congress had ordered an independent audit of the Department of Defense, the government’s largest single cost center—the Pentagon receives two of every three federal tax dollars collected—after the Pentagon failed for decades to audit itself. The firms concluded, however, that the DoD’s financial records were riddled with so many bookkeeping deficiencies, irregularities, and errors that a reliable audit was simply impossible.

The United States must operate in a world filled with ugly, brutal, and authoritarian regimes; but that doesn't mean it needs to cower to their whims.

resident Donald Trump doesn’t understand his chief responsibility as president. It is not to make deals and create jobs. It is to protect the security and liberty of Americans. By that standard, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not a “truly spectacular ally,” as he claimed.

Since the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, top Ukrainian politicians have talked up the threat of an imminent, full-scale war in Russia. Years later, this continues to get raised every time a tense moment with Russia erupts.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is now citing Sunday’s maritime incident in the Sea of Azov, and says “Ukraine is under threat of full-scale war with Russia,” claiming Russia had massively increased the number of troops and tanks on their border.

He claims to have intelligence reports on the military buildup, but offered no details. It would be strange for Russia to precipitously escalate their presence at the border, given Ukraine is much weaker militarily, and the eastern border includes an ethnic Russian separatist region of Ukraine.

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The Trump administration bows before the Saudis once more over the war on Yemen:

The US has “slammed the brakes on” a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a limited ceasefire and increased humanitarian aid in Yemen over concerns about angering Saudi Arabia, two sources tell CNN.

One source familiar with the negotiations over the resolution tells CNN the US “has slammed the brakes on,” saying that “we can’t support a resolution at the moment.”

President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping will meet over dinner Saturday evening in Buenos Aires marking a pivotal moment in the escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

Trump is hopeful for a breakthrough with Xi but is ready to impose more tariffs if the upcoming talks don’t yield progress, Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, told reporters Tuesday during a briefing ahead of the Group of 20 meeting in Argentina.

US President Donald Trump said in an interview that he may cancel his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the upcoming G20 over the Kerch Strait incident.

For framing innocent black men, a police chief in Florida will go to prison for three years. Impunity is the norm in America for cases like this, so the conviction is a big deal.

Raimundo Atesiano, the former police chief of Biscayne Park, Florida, stands convicted of directing his officers to frame innocent men in a series of unsolved burglaries. He now admits he was trying to please white community leaders, and manipulate property crimes statistics in the town of 3,000 residents.

From the Miami Herald:

“When I took the job, I was not prepared,” Atesiano told a federal judge on Tuesday. “I made some very, very bad decisions.”

His apologies did not sway U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore, who on Tuesday sentenced the 53-year-old former cop to three years in prison. He allowed Atesiano to remain free for two weeks before surrendering so he can care for his mother, who is dying of leukemia.

WASHINGTON’S PULLING OUT OF THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL AND SUBSEQUENTLY RENEWED SANCTIONS COME AS US NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR APPOINTEE JOHN BOLTON’S EXISTENTIAL OBJECTIVE TO DESTROY IRAN BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY EVEN IF IT MEANS LEVERAGING THE SOFT POWER OF A CULTISH DEATH SQUAD.

US President Donald Trump ramped up the threat with a Game of Thrones meme warning Iran, with a November 5 deadline, that “Sanctions are Coming.” Qasem Soleimani, a Major General in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, responded with a meme of his own that Friday with the message “I will stand against you.”

More than just rhetoric, the exchange signified the high pomp the mention of sanctions posted to the Islamic Republic following an extensive international campaign by the US and Iranian expat and separatist allies to maximize their impacts.

According to an Israeli strategist, Linda Sarsour of Women’s March fame raised $160,000 for the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, but only $10,000 of that money was actually by the synagogue.

“Correction: ~$160K was raised as part of one general cemeteries campaign that pre-dates the TOL massacre and ~$240K was raised as part of the TOL campaign after the massacre. The $10K was from the first campaign. I was wrong about the 10%, still troubling,” said Hen Mezzig on Twitter.

“The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”— Justice William J. Brennan, City of Houston v. Hill

What the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.

What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

It’s not an easy undertaking.

Weaponized by police, prosecutors, courts and legislatures, “disorderly conduct” charges have become a convenient means by which to punish those individuals who refuse to be muzzled.

"Transforming Video into Actionable Intelligence" allows law enforcement and retailers to secretly identify people by their gender, body size, color, direction, speed and more.

BriefCam's Video Synopsis version V allows police and retail stores to use surveillance cameras to identify individuals and cars in real-time.

"BriefCam is the industry’s leading provider of Video Synopsis® solutions for rapid video review and search, real-time alerting and quantitative video insights. By transforming raw video into actionable intelligence."

What is really disturbing about the video, is no one knows where it is being used and by whom. Brief Cam's limited disclosures, claim it is being used by top law enforcement agencies and governments but that's it.

BriefCam admits that the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Disney, the Javits Convention Center and Smart City initiatives in Boston and Beverly Hills are using Video Synopsis.

The Justice Department is about to indict Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks. That’s according to various reports.

The Democrats are cheering because surely Assange will reveal some deep secrets about Russians and the last presidential election.

In the first place, the media of the world should be coming to Assange’s defense. He was, after all, breaking news just like the press does.

But there’s something else. Assange hinted prior to the election that the Russians weren’t the source of all the Democratic Party e-mails he published. What if the leak was from inside the Democratic Party itself?

What if Assange’s testimony, when it is forced, shows that the leaker was a disgruntled anti-Hillary Clinton Democrat who happened to be mysteriously murdered in a case that hasn’t yet been solved?

On Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, fill-in host Katy Tur led a discussion of President Donald Trump's handling of the illegal immigrant caravan as she and other panel members suggested the President deliberately wishes to stoke violence by stationing military troops on the border with Mexico.

Tur also went into a self-admitted "rant" in which she fretted that Trump is exaggerating border security problems for political gain.

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

A respected foreign journalist living in Ukraine is warning that a war that most Americans cannot even imagine “teeters on the razor thin edge of becoming real”. When Russia opened fire on Ukrainian Navy vessels and captured three of their ships, it made headlines all over the globe. An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was hastily arranged for Monday at 11 AM, and hopefully there will be a positive outcome from that meeting. Because right now Moscow and Kiev are on the brink of war, and once a Russian invasion happens there will be no turning back. At that point the U.S. would have a major decision to make, and if we chose to defend Ukraine that could mean that we would suddenly find ourselves fighting World War 3.

Most people don’t realize that this crisis has been simmering for over a week. The following is from a U.S. News & World Report article that was posted on November 19th…

Are we gearing towards a Kerch Strait Incident, namely a “Pretext” which could potentially lead to armed conflict?
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In response to these events, the Ukrainian armed forces have been put on full combat alert, in consultation with NATO. The adoption of martial law was put forth by President Poroshenko (to be debated in the Kiev parliament)
Meanwhile Moscow has called for the convening of an emergency UN Security council meeting. According to the Guardian

“Russia’s foreign ministry has accused Ukraine of coordinating with the US and the EU in a “planned provocation” aimed at securing further sanctions against Moscow, as tensions mount after a dangerous clash between the two countries. (Guardian, 26, November 2018)

We are at a dangerous crossroads. Will the Kerch Straits Incident lead to a process of military escalation?!?

A prominent Saudi royal said Saturday that whether or not heads of state gathered in Argentina next week for the Group of 20 summit warmly engage with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he is someone "that they have to deal with."

Prince Turki al-Faisal told The Associated Press the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul last month is "an unacceptable incident that tars and mars the long record of Saudi Arabia's own standing in the world."

"We will have to bear that. It's not something that should not be faced. And we do face it," he said.

Intelligence officials and analysts say the operation to kill Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the crown prince for The Washington Post, could not have happened without Prince Mohammed's knowledge. The kingdom, which has offered several conflicting accounts of the killing, denies the crown prince had any involvement.

The study polled people from 9 different countries over a six-year period and was performed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and YouGov, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. This study is the deepest ever conducted on the subject and marks the first time academics have explored questions of conspiracy beliefs, social trust, and news consumption habits across different countries.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini just declared himself the leader of the Europe’s future. He refuses to budge one inch in negotiations with the European Union over Italy’s budget now threatening to take down the government.

And in doing this he not only speaks for Italians, he is now speaking for that growing part of the European population who sees what the EU is morphing into and recoiling in horror.

Protests in France over Emmanuel Macron’s new tax on diesel have turned violent. The British leadership has completely betrayed the people over Brexit. They may win this battle but the animosity towards the Britain’s leadership will only grow more virulent over time.

The funny thing is that Trump himself seems to be working hardest to persuade those supporters that he has no intention of changing U.S. foreign policy. He would no more liquidate America’s global empire than liquidate his own global business empire. Alas, America is not going anywhere. Sure, he may hector imperial allies to spend more on their militaries (while insisting he respects their sovereignty), but that’s just a show. He’s an all-in imperialist, so we shouldn’t be fooled by the staged populism that sometimes is mistaken for come-home-Americanism. America First in practice embodies George H. W. Bush’s summation of America’s foreign policy: “What we say goes.”

As Glenn Greenwald writes about Trump’s disgusting relationship with Saudi Arabia, it’s “a perfect example — perhaps stated a little more bluntly and candidly than usual — of how the US has conducted itself in the world since at least the end of World War II.”

Following Defense Secretary James Mattis’ announcement that the US is building observation posts on the Syria-Turkey border, officials are also starting a training program for the Kurdish YPG’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The plan is to train 30,000 more SDF fighters, which are being presented as a plan to both combat what ISIS fighters remain and to “contain Iran.” If the training plan is successful, it would bring the SDF to 90,000 fighters.

There are reasons to be skeptical, however, as the US has had several training schemes for groups in Syria in the past, and has tended to produce but tiny fractions of their intended numbers. Even then, those newly-trained fighters have proved to be of limited effectiveness and questionable loyalty.

The Ukrainian government under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko is in election campaign mode. That is one reason why it is launching new provocations against Russia. Yesterday Ukrainian forces reportedly occupied a town within the neutral zone between the government controlled part and the rebel held Donetsk area. Today the Ukrainian navy sent a tug and two small gun boats, recently acquired from the U.S. Coast Guard, Ukrainian build Gurza-M class types, to pass through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov.

When the ships entered Russian waters without announcing their intent, a Russian coast guard ship rammed (vid) and damaged the tug. The two gun boats escaped but did not pass the strait. The pictures show the melee at sea.

The Ukrainian armed forces have been put on full combat alert by the decision of the chief of the country’s General Staff, the press service of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported on Monday.

"In accordance with the National Security and Defense Council’s decision on imposing martial law, the chief of the General Staff and commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces ordered to put the Ukrainian armed forces’ units on full combat alert," the press service said.

Due to the situation in the Kerch Strait, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Alexander Turchinov earlier voiced the initiative on imposing martial law in the country for 60 days backed by the Ukrainian president. Now this bill is to be considered by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament). According to its speaker Andrei Parubiy, its meeting will be convened on Monday at 16:00 local time (17:00 Moscow time).

The Commission on National Defense Strategy for the US has just released to Congress its report "Providing for the Common Defense”, and it opens:

“In the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, Congress charged this Commission with providing an independent, nonpartisan review of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and issues of US defense strategy and policy more broadly.”

The report’s co-chairs, Eric S. Edelman and Gary Roughead, say in their accompanying letter to Congress, that “the United States will soon face a national security emergency.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, a diplomatic crisis has erupted between Ukraine and Russia after Russia detained three Ukrainian ships which it said had been "maneuvering dangerously" near the Kerch Strait - a crucial choke point controlled by Russia which separates the Sea of Azov From the Black Sea. In response to what he decried as unprovoked Russian aggression, increasingly unpopular Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a declaration on Monday to declare martial law for 60 days through Jan. 26. He also started mobilizing the Ukrainian army despite the martial law order still needing approval by the country's Parliament, according to RT.

Now enjoying retirement following an 11-year NFL career, Reggie Bush took to Twitter on Sunday with a question he wanted his 2.88 million followers to answer: Do they believe this extremely anti-vaccine video he just found?

Claiming that he had been reading and watching videos on vaccinations and their “dangers,” the 33-year-old linked to a video of a retired nurse castigating a CDC panel over their vaccine regulations and pushing the widely debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. The video has since been deleted for violating YouTube’s Terms of Service.

A network exposed by leaked documents as a Europe-wide PR operation aimed at curbing “Russian propaganda” has confirmed receiving money from the British government, while Anonymous has denied on Twitter that it’s behind the leak.
The Integrity Initiative (II) is a network claiming to fight disinformation that threatens democracy. A trove of alleged II documents, which purports to show costs and internal guidelines as well as names of individuals cooperating with it, has been published by people claiming to be part of the Anonymous collective. A major Anonymous-linked Twitter account has denied it was linked to the leak.

Responding to the leak on Monday, the organization said it did indeed receive funding from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the past two years, but insisted that private donors were its primary source of money.

A German consultancy firm with access to senior officials in the country has been employed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to improve the kingdom’s image. For years, the Saudi leadership has spent large sums on lobbyists in the West and this weekend a German newspaper revealed that that the Crown Prince, known as MBS, is working with a Berlin based consulting firm to shape Germany’s impression of the 33-year-old.

Details of the agreement between MBS and the PR firm were discovered by German sources and reported in the Arab media. German Sunday newspaper, Welt am Sonntag reported that Saudi Crown Prince “has been working with WMP since 2015 to prevent the spread of negative views in Germany about the royal family.”

A toxic chemical leak in southern China which put 52 people in hospital and has cost affected fishing villages millions of dollars in lost revenue was 10 times worse than previously reported.

Quanzhou city authorities on Sunday confirmed that 69 tonnes of the petrochemical C9 – a by-product of the oil refining process – had spilled into the local seawater, far in excess of the originally claimed seven tonnes.

Two officials have been sacked for negligence, in addition to the arrests of seven people for their roles in the incident.

Fishermen in Xiaocuo, the coastal village where the leak occurred, have consistently questioned the official version of events which began on November 4 when a tube carrying the toxic liquid from a local petrochemical plant to a tanker came loose.

Mexico has pledged to enhance its security near the US border after 39 migrants were arrested out of hundreds of Central Americans who "violently" tried to enter the US following a peaceful protest to appeal for faster processing of asylum requests. US agents fired tier gas into the Tijuana river aqueduct to try and stop some of the migrants making the push.

Hundreds try to storm the border. Expect significant US response #tijuana pic.twitter.com/0T50XUnXtY

— emma murphy (@emmamurphyitv) November 25, 2018

Approximately 500 migrants will immediately be deported after the attempted border crossing, according to Mexico's interior ministry, while the more than three-dozen arrested migrants were detained for disturbing the peace and other charges.