This is terrible news for Marriott shareholders (and great news for the VC backers of Airbnb).

Marriott shares have fallen more than 2% in premarket trading after the hotel chain announced news of a massive data breach of its guest registration system at Starwood hotels, the hotel chain that it purchased in September 2016.

Sheryl Sandberg asked Facebook staff to research George Soros because he gave a speech boldly critical of the social media giant as a “menace,” reports the New York Times tonight.

After Davos, "in an email in January to senior communications and policy executives," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg "asked Facebook's communications staff to research George Soros's financial interests in the wake of his high-profile attacks on tech companies."

If she was willing to do this over a mere billionaire, imagine what Facebook might have done in researching news organizations and reporters who are critical of Facebook?

During a year when drug overdose deaths jumped to a record high 72,000 - roughly one every seven minutes - it's probably not surprising that overall life expectancy for Americans declined for the third straight year in 2017. But according to data from the CDC, drugs weren't the only factor at play: Deaths from suicide, the flu, diabetes and many other causes also increased.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of a test launch of a ballistic missile on Saturday, claiming that the test was conducted in violation of the UN Security Council's resolution.

"The Iranian regime has just test-fired a medium range ballistic missile that is capable of carrying multiple warheads. The missile has a range that allows it to strike parts of Europe and anywhere in the Middle East. This test violates UN Security Council resolution 2231 that bans Iran from undertaking 'any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology,'" Pompeo claimed in a statement.

What do a Silicon Valley massage spa, a local community college, and a California plastics manufacturer have in common? They will soon be testing hundreds of cutting-edge wireless devices, according to an application for an experimental permit filed last week with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

If that sounds unlikely, it is. It seems much more likely that the new devices will actually be tested at three nearby Amazon facilities. These include two buildings belonging to the company’s secretive Lab126 research division, and one of the retailer’s largest fulfillment centers in the state.

On 19 November, a company called Chrome Enterprises sought permission to test up to 450 prototype devices using Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), a new technology that aims to deliver ultrafast wireless broadband over shared radio frequencies.

General Motors workers held the prayer vigil outside the Lordstown, Ohio plant on Thursday afternoon.

It's among the five GM plants across North America to close next year
Emotional co-workers hugged each other and wiped away tears as they prayed
A Lordstown employee, Norman Perry, said workers were just trying to stay positive in the wake of the news earlier this week.

GM announced on Monday that it would shutter the five plants, stop building six low-selling passenger cars in North America and cut up to 15,000 jobs.

A Lordstown employee, Norman Perry, told Fox 8 that workers were just trying to stay positive in the wake of the news earlier this week.

'Everyone just wants to keep working right now and get through this. Christmas is coming, they want to enjoy Christmas,' he said.

'This is a time where we should be lifted up.

'We're just trying to lift spirits and that what all this (the vigil) is all about.'

Marc Lamont Hill, a professor at Temple University and a fierce advocate for equality, was perhaps the strongest, most articulate and most passionate voice against racism and bigotry among CNN’s regular contributors. Today, CNN fired him because he believes Palestinians, too, fit into a vision where all people deserve equal rights. For CNN, that was just too much.

Donald Trump has never made any secret that he enjoys doing business with Russians.

When I interviewed him for GQ magazine in 2008, he told me how he’d recently made a $60 million profit on a house in Florida that way.

Donald Trump has never made any secret that he enjoys doing business with Russians.

The fact remains that Mueller, so far as we know, has yet to prove Trump either colluded with the Russians to fix the election or had business activities with Russia that clouded his approach to dealing with Russia.

Nor do we know if Cohen has any actual evidence to implicate the President in wrongdoing.

The Kerch Strait incident took place on Sunday when three Ukrainian naval vessels, heading from the Black Sea to the Azov Sea, tried to pass through the strait without obtaining permission from Russia and thus illegally crossing the country's sea border.

European Council President Donald Tusk said on Friday he was sure that the EU leaders would roll out new sanctions against Russia due to Moscow's response to Ukraine's naval activity in the Kerch Strait.

READ MORE: NATO to Keep Monitoring Black Sea Following Ukraine's Kerch Strait Provocation

"The de-escalation in the Sea of Azov is a cause of a grave concern to us, and of course Russia's use of force against Ukrainian ships is totally unacceptable… Europe is united in its support of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. And this is why I am sure that the EU will roll over the sanctions against Russia in December," Tusk said at a press conference during G20 summit.

The BBC has come under fire after a Brexit-backing pastor who staunchly defended Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal on Monday’s Newsnight program was revealed to also be a paid actor.

Lynn, also known as Marina, Hayter, dressed in full dog-collar garb, urged viewers to “have faith in the government” while being rather deferential to the assembled politicians. “They know far more about what’s going on than we do," Hayter said, as she gestured towards the participating MPs.

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via The Unz Review,

On departure for the G-20 gathering in Buenos Aires, President Donald Trump canceled his planned weekend meeting with Vladimir Putin, citing as his reason the Russian military’s seizure and holding of three Ukrainian ships and 24 sailors.

But was Putin really the provocateur in Sunday’s naval clash outside Kerch Strait, the Black Sea gateway to the Sea of Azov?

Or was the provocateur Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko?

First, a bit of history.

In 2014, after the pro-Russian regime in Kiev was ousted in a coup, and a pro-NATO regime installed with U.S. backing, Putin detached and annexed Crimea, for centuries the home port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

With the return of Crimea, Russia now occupied both sides of Kerch Strait. And this year, Russia completed a 12-mile bridge over the strait and Putin drove the first truck across.

As US stocks seesaw with every conflicting trade-war related headline, investors are fixating on tomorrow night's dinner meeting between President Trump and President Xi with laser-like focus. But the Trump-Xi summit isn't the only meeting that could have broad repercussions for global markets, and though it has received much less attention in the press, the planned meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (along with the Russian and Saudi energy ministers) could dictate the course of global oil prices for the foreseeable future.

Looming over the Saudi-Russia talks are suspicions that Saudi Arabia has been accelerating production of oil beyond the cuts adopted by OPEC+ in November 2016 to placate President Trump - a conspiracy "theory" first highlighted by Zero Hedge weeks ago, which has finally won acknowledgment in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream press.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog.

Real estate, oil and the employment numbers are all telling us the same thing, and that is really bad news for the U.S. economy. It really does appear that economic activity is starting to slow down significantly, but just like in 2008 those that are running things don’t want to admit the reality of what we are facing. Back then, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke insisted that the U.S. economy was not heading into a recession, and we later learned that a recession had already begun when he made that statement. And as you will see at the end of this article, current Fed Chair Jerome Powell says that he is “very happy” with how the U.S. economy is performing, but he shouldn’t be so thrilled.

f all of this sounds eerily similar to 2008, that is because it is eerily similar to what happened just before and during the last financial crisis.

A close senior political ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Reuters on Friday that the European Union and the United States should consider banning all Russian ships that originate from the Sea of Avoz from entering EU and US ports until last Sunday's Kerch Strait crisis is resolved.

German conservative Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is said to be most likely to succeed Merkel as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, told Reuters:

One answer might be, for example, to stop Russian ships coming from the region - from the Sea of ??Azov - from entering European or U.S. ports until this situation with Ukraine is resolved.

And turning her attention to US sanctions targeting Russia and Germany's less than eager willingness to go along, Reuters reports further:

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com

Tijuana health officials have said that of those migrants in the caravan at the United States’ border with Mexico, about one third is being treated for health concerns. Migrants who came with the caravan are suffering from respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chickenpox, and some other serious health issues, Tijuana’s Health Department warned on Thursday morning.
A spokesman for the Tijuana Health Department told Fox News that out of 6,000 migrants currently residing in the city, over a third of them (2,267) are being treated for health-related issues.

First: as from March 2020, the United States will begin to deploy in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Holland (where B-61 nuclear bombs are already based), and probably also in other European countries, the first nuclear bomb with precision guidance in their arsenal, the B61-12. Its function is primarily anti-Russian. This new bomb is designed with penetrating capacity, enabling it to explode underground in order to destroy the central command bunkers with its first strike. How would the United States react if Russia deployed nuclear bombs in Mexico, right next to their territory? Since Italy and the other countries, violating the non-proliferation Treaty, are allowing the USA to use its bases, as well as its pilots and planes, for the deployment of nuclear weapons, Europe will be exposed to a greater risk as the first line of the growing confrontation with Russia.

Alessandro Bianchi: Let’s start from today’s crisis in the Sea of Azov. The European Union and NATO have given full support to Ukraine after the violation of Russian sovereignty by two Ukrainian vessels. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gave his full support to Poroshenko, who declared martial law. What does a country like Italy risk in continuing its accession to NATO?

Europe lost an entire generation, killed, maimed or forever psychologically broken by the war. Many Europeans lost faith in the snake oil of nationalism and turned away from the standard frameworks of monarchy or liberal democracy. Some found solace in socialism, whereas others doubled down on ultranationalism in the form of fascist leaders.

Despite 9 million battle deaths – a number unfathomable when the war began – WWI solved little and sowed the seeds for the European cataclysm of 1939-45. It is an uncomfortable truth, especially for the United States, a nation that tends to see itself as being at the center of the world; the US played mostly a late, and bit, part in the drama across the Atlantic.

With three US troops killed in Afghanistan earlier this week, President Trump was pressed on the matter of why, 17+ years in, the US military remains in the country. He told interviewers that “every expert that I have and speak to says if we don’t go there, they’re going to be fighting over here. And I’ve heard it over and over again.”

When Trump announced his escalation of the war last year, he said his first impulse was to pull out, but that the experts had assured him the war was still winnable. In recent months, officials have been very public about trying to convince Trump to stay in the war despite how poorly its going.

Trump’s claims that all the experts he’s hearing are telling him the same thing suggests his administration is limiting his access to dissenters. The war is plainly going disastrously, and it wouldn’t be hard to find people who would tell the president as much.

Let’s hear it for our propagandists,
The people who bring us the news.
Unencumbered by troublesome scruples,
They’re proud of their compromised views.
There once was a time we admired them.
We thought they were principled fighters,
But what we see now is more worthy
Of the Union of Soviet Writers.

The BBC has come under fire after it booked a Star Wars extra who calls herself a pastor through an agency for a Brexit discussion.

The broadcaster denied hiring a 'fake vicar' to appear on its flagship political programme after social media users hit out at the corporation.

Lynn Hayter appeared on Newsnight on Monday to defend Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement on the UK leaving the European Union.

Today she angrily denied she had been paid by the BBC as she spoke to MailOnline outside her home.

Ms Hayter, whose 'ordination' seems to have come in the form of a certificate from a US televangelist, said: 'I was not paid by the BBC . They did not pay me. I was contacted by an independent organisation and asked to appear.'

In the course of reiterating allegations that Iran is sending small arms and drones to its allies abroad, the US State Department also issued a threat to attack Iran. They warned the US “will not hesitate to use military force” and that the option remains open for Iran.

The US has been threatening to attack Iran for decades now. The threats had calmed down in recent years, with the P5+1 nuclear deal, but with the deal subsequently dishonored by the Trump Administration, it seems the old status quo of constant sanctions and threats is returning.

The allegations about drones and arms center around Pentagon-provided images of wreckage which they say contained the logos of Iranian arms makers. The arms shipments are said to center on Yemen, in keeping with Saudi allegations.

The British government’s UN resolution calling for a Yemen ceasefire has been blocked by heavy lobbying from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, chief participants in the war. The resolution would’ve called for a halt to fighting in the vital aid port of Hodeidah.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was very public in his opposition to the ceasefire, with British officials saying he “threw a fit” about their proposal. The prince complained that it weakened the Saudi position on the war.

Salman’s level of influence is perhaps not what it was after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, though apparently it was still enough to convince several nations, including the US, to block the ceasefire resolution and demanding it be held off for at least a month.

Yesterday, CNN fired grassroots activist, professor, and occasional commentator Marc Lamont Hill after his passionate remarks at the United Nations defending freedom in Palestine and supporting the use of grassroots resistance against Israeli policies. In particular, Hill’s critics slammed his call for freedom in the holy land “from the river to the sea,” alleging that this long-standing, unambiguous Palestinian slogan of liberation amounted to calling for the “destruction” of Israel or otherwise contains some sort of anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli sentiment. Hill denies any secret meanings, and it prompts the question of what it says about Israel as an ethnocracy that freedom for Palestinians is perceived as “destruction”.

Online entertainment giant Netflix has been filming a new TV series in Amman, portraying the Jordanian capital as Tel Aviv.

This has prompted widespread criticism and protest from activists in Jordan, who see it as normalizing relations with Israel.

Two Jordanian actors, Shady Salah and Reem Barqawi, have confirmed that they have pulled out of the show. Salah claims producers lied to him that no Israeli actors were involved in the production.

Videos circulated on social media earlier this month showing cars with Israeli license plates being used to film street scenes in Amman, as well as street signs in Hebrew:

Ukrainian military ships have violated Russian restrictions in the Sea of Azov and Articles 19 and 21 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Ukrainian Navy crossed the Russian sea border and entered a closed area of Russian territorial waters. Clearly, Washington was behind this as Ukraine would not undertake such a provocation on its own. Here is an accurate explanation of the event: https://www.rt.com/news/444857-russia-ukraine-kerch-strait-standoff/

The Russian Navy detained the Ukrainian ships. Of course, the Western presstitutes, most of whom are CIA assets, will blame “Russian aggression.” Washington and its presstitutes are doing everything they can to make impossible Trump’s expressed goal of normal relations with Russia. NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu quickly aligned NATO with Ukraine: “NATO fully supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its navigation rights in its territorial waters.”

Although the United States government routinely denies that it in any way cooperates with ISIS, reports continue to manifest themselves demonstrating exactly the opposite, particularly in Syria. Over the course of the war and ever since the emergence of the terrorist organization on the world scene, there have been a number of “mysterious helicopters” that extract ISIS fighters from battlefields in which they are facing imminent defeat either by the legitimate government of the countries in which they are fighting, pro-government militias, or even ahead of “anti-ISIS” strikes by the alleged “anti-ISIS coalition.”

While not attempting to go in to a detailed explanation or analysis of each incident, below are a number of reports of such “airlifts of evil” that have surfaced over the last two years. The Pentagon, as mentioned above, has repeatedly denied these reports.

German pharmaceuticals and chemicals giant, Bayer, announced plans to cut 12,000 out of 118,200 jobs worldwide, or roughly 1 in 10 jobs, in hopes of cutting costs and regaining investor favor after a series of legal setbacks over its purchase of Monsanto earlier this year.

As the FT reports, the proposed reorganization include a plan to exit the market for animal health products, as well the company's Coppertone sun care and Dr. Scholl’s foot care product lines; Bayer also plans to sell the group’s 60% stake in service provider Currenta.

"Including the synergies expected from the acquisition of Monsanto, Bayer anticipates annual contributions of €2.6bn from 2022 on as a result of its planned efficiency and structural measures," the group said in a statement.

Werner Baumann, the Bayer chief executive, said: “With these measures, we are positioning Bayer optimally for the future as a life sciences company.”

Prior to the Oct. 2 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of a Saudi assassination squad — which the CIA believes was on direct orders of crown prince MbS himself — a tiny segment of the American public had likely ever heard of deep Pentagon role in executing the Saudi war on Yemen, which has raged since 2015.

But after Khashoggi's brutal slaying, the mainstream media suddenly "discovered" what the U.N. has called the "world's worst humanitarian crisis". The handful of Senators who've long fought to end the U.S. role in the war, however, might now be thinking better late than never as on Wednesday in a hugely important 63-37 victory, the Senate agreed to finally move forward with a full floor debate over the legality of America's involvement in the conflict.

Amazing news: The Senate just voted 63-37 in support of a bill to end the US-Saudi war on Yemen.

Over the past few months, there has been a steady uptick in the number of countries dumping significant portions of their dollar holdings. This is causing many people to worry whether or not the US economy is in for a massive shock sooner, later, or somewhere in between.

While American corporate media outlets either ignore the developments entirely or claim that there is nothing to worry about, the reality is that the dumping of the dollar is a process that is clearly underway. More than that, it appears it is a process that is at least partially coordinated by a number of countries that have been targets of American sanctions and financial bullying in the “post 9/11 world.”

Thus, while corporate media outlets ignore the vanishing dollar dominance and reassure their hapless audience that everything is fine, alt media outlets are predicting a second Weimar Republic, this time in North America.

When Shan Junhua bought his white Tesla Model X, he knew it was a fast, beautiful car. What he didn’t know is that Tesla constantly sends information about the precise location of his car to the Chinese government.

Tesla is not alone. China has called upon all electric vehicle manufacturers in China to make the same kind of reports — potentially adding to the rich kit of surveillance tools available to the Chinese government as President Xi Jinping steps up the use of technology to track Chinese citizens.

“I didn’t know this,” said Shan. “Tesla could have it, but why do they transmit it to the government? Because this is about privacy.”

More than 200 manufacturers, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and U.S.-listed electric vehicle startup NIO, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to government-backed monitoring centers, The Associated Press has found. Generally, it happens without car owners’ knowledge.

Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.

It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

Manafort, 69, denies involvement in the hack and says the claim is “100% false”. His lawyers declined to answer the Guardian’s questions about the visits.

The piece did not include the public denial Wikileaks issued to its 5.4 million followers one and a half hour before it was published.

The secrecy surrounding the work was unheard of at Google. It was not unusual for planned new products to be closely guarded ahead of launch. But this time was different. The objective, code-named Dragonfly, was to build a search engine for China that would censor broad categories of information about human rights, democracy, and peaceful protest.
In February 2017, during one of the first group meetings about Dragonfly at Google’s Mountain View headquarters in California, some of those present were left stunned by what they heard. Senior executives disclosed that the search system’s infrastructure would be reliant upon a Chinese partner company with data centers likely in Beijing or Shanghai.

Locating core parts of the search system on the Chinese mainland meant that people’s search records would be easily accessible to China’s authoritarian government, which has broad surveillance powers that it routinely deploys to target activists, journalists, and political opponents.

The White House is reportedly preventing CIA Director Gina Haspel from briefing the Senate on the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that senators had been told Haspel would not take part in Wednesday's all-Senate classified briefing where Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis will also be present.

This contradicts indications that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are interested in hearing directly from her on the CIA's assessment of Khashoggi's killing in October.

"We were told that she would not be attending the briefing for members of Congress," Durbin said.

According to the State Department, Tehran is producing several types of missiles that threaten US partner countries in the Middle East and jeopardise American forces in the region.

'Today, the United States is unveiling new evidence of Iran’s ongoing missile proliferation', US Special Envoy for Iran Brian Hook claimed. 'The Iranian threat is growing and we are accumulating risk of escalation in the region if we fail to act', he added.

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."