CNN Anchor Kate Bolduan lost her mind in typical liberal left outrage screaming at US Navy Seal, Carl Higbie, to “be quiet” while clapping her hands in anger over his skepticism of anonymous sources.

Fake news CNN is upset that someone dare question the integrity of journalism in the United States and the plethora of “anonymous” sources that are often used to provide reliable information Trump, Russia, and election hacking and even the inner working of Putin’s brain.

Why would this Navy Seal raise questions regarding a “memo” from the very trustworthy former FBI Director James Comey…all of which is revolving around the fact that President Trump mention to Russia’s Lavrov that ISIS is looking to bring down passenger airlines.

Is CNN upset that Trump is sharing information to thwart ISIS attacks on civilian airlines.

In a move that was secured because of the government’s desperation to avoid a shutdown, a bill that was passed by the Senate 79 to 18 earlier this month included an allocation of $3 million for the FDA to lead a campaign aimed at “consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology.” Though many Democrats attempted to have the measure struck from the bill, senators were unable to remove it and were forced to vote in favor of the entire bill.

Though many Democrats attempted to have the measure struck from the bill, senators were unable to remove it and were forced to vote in favor of the entire bill.

Though $3 million is small in comparison to the Food and Drug Administration’s $2.8 billion budget, people are pointing to the political and moral implications of allowing a government organization to tout the benefits of GMO foods despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise.

In a move that was secured because of the government’s desperation to avoid a shutdown, a bill that was passed by the Senate 79 to 18 earlier this month included an allocation of $3 million for the FDA to lead a campaign aimed at “consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology.” Though many Democrats attempted to have the measure struck from the bill, senators were unable to remove it and were forced to vote in favor of the entire bill.

Though many Democrats attempted to have the measure struck from the bill, senators were unable to remove it and were forced to vote in favor of the entire bill.

Though $3 million is small in comparison to the Food and Drug Administration’s $2.8 billion budget, people are pointing to the political and moral implications of allowing a government organization to tout the benefits of GMO foods despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise.

The US Republican President will have the use of billions of dollars in casino funds plus the power of the AIPAC and CFI lobbies in Washington and in Westminster, respectively – ­both being key players in an international movement to legalise the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Upon completion of the land grab, the Netanyahu government apparently intends to carry out a unilateral annexation of the Occupied Territories whilst contemporaneously expelling the 5 million indigenous Palestinians in a forced transfer from their ancestral lands to new refugee camps in adjoining states of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry says it has destroyed an Armenian air defense missile system in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians but that Azerbaijan claims include regular Armenian military. Efforts to negotiate a settlement have failed, and frequent clashes have continued.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said its forces on Monday destroyed an Osa air defense system along with its crew, adding that its deployment near the line of control was a "provocation" and a threat to Azerbaijani aircraft.

David Arik Bibi Rubi fatally shot Antar Shibli al-Aqraa as he was fleeing Border Police volunteers searching a cemetery for Palestinians who were in Israel illegally.

A court sentenced a Border Police volunteer to seven months in prison for killing a Palestinian in a cemetery in central Israel in 2013.

The Kfar Sava Magistrate's Court also ordered David Arik Bibi Rubi to pay the family 100,000 shekels ($28,000) in compensation as part of the court-approved plea bargain, under which Rubi was convicted of negligent homicide in the killing of Antar Shibli al-Aqraa at Petah Tikva's Yarkon Cemetery.

In November 2013, Rubi and two other Border Police volunteers were searching the cemetery for Palestinians who were in Israel illegally. During their search, they located 41 such Palestinians. The other two volunteers guarded them while Rubi continued searching.

More than 1,000 insurgents and their families left an opposition-held district of Damascus on Monday, completing an agreement between the Syrian government and rebels, Syrian state media outlets and a war monitoring group said.

Well over 3,000 people have left Qaboun in two days of evacuations, paving the way for the government to regain control of the area, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

They headed for areas still under opposition control east of the Syrian capital, or for the northwestern province of Idlib, also held by insurgents, it said.

Syria's military released a statement saying it had "returned peace and security to the Qaboun area" after killing many insurgents and blowing up tunnels they had used for supplies.

Iran is frequently at odds with Israel, despite having the second biggest Jewish community in the Middle East. DW's Theresa Tropper spoke with the director of Tehran's Jewish Committee, about why that is the case.

DW: How is life as a Jew in the Islamic Republic?

Siamak Morsadegh: It's a lot better than many people think. Jews are a recognized minority here, so we can practice our religion freely. We have more than 20 working synagogues in Tehran and at least five kosher butcheries. In some European countries that is not allowed because of animal rights. In Iran, it is.

Researchers investigating last week’s cyber attacks involving the WannaCry ransomware say that early versions of the software had some code in common with past attacks by the “Lazarus Group,” which some officials have accused of being North Korean hackers.

The Lazarus Group was behind a handful of past attacks, most notably the Sony hacking incident of 2014, which officials attributed to North Korea primarily because it came around the release of the movie The Interview, which involved a plot to kill North Korea’s leader.

The researchers who noted the similar code conceded that copying snippets of code between hacker groups is not uncommon, and that this was “well short of proof” of an actual relationship between the two. Indeed, most of the WannaCry code was a copy of exploits developed by the NSA.

While flying back home Muhammad Rabbani, CAGE's International Director, was stopped by border police under Schedule 7 powers. They asked for his password and he declined. Now he's being threatened with prison.

Mr Rabbani refused in order to protect crucial evidence in a torture case and to take a stand against schedule 7.

Officially, Turkey considers itself at war with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a war which has lasted decades. Increasingly, however, PKK is being very vaguely defined, and includes Kurdish groups in several countries which Turkey argues are all basically PKK.

Doing this has allowed Turkey to go after limited PKK forces who have crossed the border into Iraq or Syria, but as lines blur, it’s tough to argue that Turkey isn’t just at war with Kurds in general at this point, particularly in Syria, where the PKK is virtually non-existent, and Turkey is after the YPG claiming they are the same group.

It is this interest in warring with the YPG, and with Kurds as such, that will be a big focus of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his upcoming visit to the US, where he will express outrage at US military support provided to the YPG to fight against ISIS, arguing that amounts to backing a terrorist group.

Max Abrams, a professor who works about terrorism, came up with this new definition of "terrorism":

Nonstate actors who use violence against civilians for a political goal and haven't been supported by the US.

The highlighted part is "new" to those who have not learned from history and the many occasions of U.S. support for (typically extremely right-wing) terrorist organizations like the "contras" in Nicaragua, OUN fascists in Ukraine or Jihadi Mujaheddin in Afghanistan. It can indeed be argued that the U.S. created al-Qaeda as well as the Islamic State (ISIS).

But lets just be happy that people get again reminded of the issue.

Sherman County may be issuing a Court Order on May 22, 2017, to quarantine Azure Farms and possibly to spray the whole farm with poisonous herbicides, contaminating them with Milestone, Escort and Roundup herbicides.

This will destroy all the efforts Azure Farms has made for years to produce the very cleanest and healthiest food humanly possible. About 2,000 organic acres would be impacted; that is about 2.8 times the size of the City of London, England, and 1.5 times the size of the city center of Philadelphia that could be sprayed with noxious, toxic, polluting herbicides.

The county would then put a lien on the farm to pay for the expense of the labor and chemicals used.

Days after reports that Damascus was on high alert due to increased U.S. troop levels on the Jordanian border and an apparent preparation for an invasion from the south and southeast, the United States and Britain have indeed pushed into Syria from the very location earlier reports suggested would be used.

The reports were released first from the SMART News Agency, which writes that approximately 150 U.S. and British military personnel have entered Syria from Jordan.

SMART News Agency has provided video evidence of their claims. This video reportedly shows several military personnel in armed Humvees engaging in a firefight alongside terrorist forces, who were operating the cameras. Indeed, the familiar “Allahu Akbar” chant can be heard throughout the video.

Hamimah is around 90 km east of Palmyra, near the Deir ez-Zour countryside. Albukamal is also located nearby, a town of strategic importance to the U.S.

A group of about 50 combat engineers based at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown were deployed to Latvia on April 29 as part of Operation Reassurance. The mission is to build a town for 500 soldiers. According to commanding officer Lt.-Col. Chris Cotton, the installation will have «everything you would expect in a small town, from its kitchen to its quarters, its electrical distribution system, water distribution system, internet, gym facilities that would allow people to survive over the long term in Latvia». Obviously, this is an element of vast infrastructure to provide for a long-term commitment.

After the bombings, as more and more evidence came to light, it became so obvious that the Syrian government had nothing to do with the attacks that any further reference to Khan Sheykhoun should now conjure up memories of an American empire looking for any reason to launch attacks against Syria, so much so that it is ready to slaughter children under the guise of seeking revenge for the killing of children.

Now, however, there is little doubt left as to whether or not the Syrian government was involved in the attack since one of the West’s proxy terrorists recently confessed to taking part in the staging of the attack to be blamed on the Syrian government.

According to a report by Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA),

Washington Post story Trump leaked 'classified information' to Lavrov is phony and a further attempt to prevent a meaningful dialogue between the US and Russia.

The Washington Post story about President Trump’s supposed leak of highly classified intelligence information about ISIS to the Russians is a case study of the lengths to which the President’s enemies are prepared to go in order to discredit him and to stop any chance of a rapprochement with Russia.
Briefly, the Washington Post claims that Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Russians during his recent meeting with them in the Oval Office information about an alleged plot by ISIS to carry out attacks on passenger aircraft using laptops. The Washington Post describes Trump’s supposed wrongdoing in this way

There’s no Plan B for a state-corporate form of central-planning capitalism that is no longer functioning.

If there is one reality that is denied or obscured by the Status Quo, it is that the economy no longer works as it did in the past. This is the fundamental economic context of our current slide into political-social disintegration.

The Status Quo narrative is: the policies that worked for the past 70 years are still working today. Boiled down to its Keynesian state-corporate essence, the Status Quo economic narrative is simple:

All we need to do to escape a “soft patch” (recession) is for governments to borrow and spend more money to temporarily boost incomes and demand until the private sector gets back on its feet and starts borrowing and spending more.

To help the private sector, central banks lower interest rates so it’s cheaper to borrow and spend.

In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.
Similar expropriation measures have been proposed in Berlin, the German capital, but abandoned because they were deemed unconstitutional.
Some Germans are asking what is next: Will authorities now limit the maximum amount of living space per person, and force those with large apartments to share them with strangers?

Authorities in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to ease a housing shortage — one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow more than two million migrants into the country in recent years.

If Theresa May and the Conservative Party retain control of the government in the June 8 U.K. elections, they vow to beef up online protections for U.K. citizens, threatening fines against social media companies who fail to safeguard their users.

They want to introduce a new measure that could fine or punish internet firms which fail to adequately flag and take down content harmful to minors or “direct users unintentionally to hate speech, pornography or other sources of harm,” according to a press release.

“The internet has brought a wealth of opportunity but also significant new risks which have evolved faster than society’s response to them,” May said. “We want social media companies to do more to help redress the balance and will take action to make sure they do.”

Israeli forces have carried out raids on homes across the occupied West Bank and detained at least 14 Palestinians on Sunday, among them a prominent intellectual and former political prisoner.

Suha Barghouti, the wife of Ahmad Qatamesh, said "a large force" of Israeli soldiers arrived at their home in the West Bank city of al-Bireh at 4:30 am local time and detained her husband.

General strike against detention of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails
"Until now, we don't know what is going on or where he is," she told Al Jazeera by telephone on Sunday morning, explaining that Israeli soldiers also searched her brother-in-law's nearby home.

In 2013, Qatamesh, a prominent 66-year-old writer, was deemed a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty International while he was in an Israeli jail.

Israeli soldiers have been caught on tape standing by while settlers were throwing stones at Palestinians in the West Bank.

In the videos, shot on Friday near the village of Burin in the West Bank, the soldiers are seen standing meters away from the settlers, who are throwing the stones unimpeded.

North Korea’s state media has claimed that yesterday’s successful missile test was aimed at proving the nation’s capability of carrying a “large scale heavy nuclear warhead,” quoting leader Kim Jong-un as saying the United States mainland is in “sighting range for strikes.”

The missile flew 787 kilometers, landing between Russia and Japan. The Pentagon insisted that the missile was “not consistent” with an ICBM of the sort capable of traveling far enough to hit the US. Moreover, this is a rare successful test for North Korea, whose missiles have several times exploded during takeoff recently.

The claim of nuclear-capability is of course still a huge deal, however this too isn’t really proven by a missile test launch, as North Korea’s ability to miniaturize their nuclear weapons into a warhead is very much still in doubt, though clearly with tensions soaring in the region it is in their interest to claim they have such retaliatory capabilities.

Last week, mainstream media outlets gave minimal attention to the news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach had spilled an estimated 94,000 gallons of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. While the incident was by no means as catastrophic as some other pipeline spills, it underscores an important yet little-known fact – that the U.S. Department of Defense is both the nation’s and the world’s, largest polluter.

Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among others.

In 2014, the former head of the Pentagon’s environmental program told Newsweek that her office has to contend with 39,000 contaminated areas spread across 19 million acres just in the U.S. alone.

A clearly frustrated Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Sunday that there are "probably more" connections between Hillary Clinton and Russia than there are between Moscow and President Trump.

During an interview with John Catsimatidis that aired Sunday on New York's AM 970, The Hill reports that the lawmaker said:

"I am not aware of any evidence whatsoever of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia or between Russia and the Trump campaign,"

"There is probably more evidence of links between Russia and the Clinton campaign than anyone even could imagine between Russia and people involved in the Trump campaign,"
Whether this was a response specifically to this week's New York Times' "Russia-Trump Nexus" op-ed desperation, or more generally the tack that Democrats nationwide seem to remain focused on is unclear. However, as Investors.com's John Merline details below, Rep. King may not be far off the facts...

On the initial day of the offensive to recapture the city, the Pentagon was already congratulating the Iraqi military for being “ahead of schedule” in a campaign that was expected to “take weeks or even months.” Little did its planners — who had been announcing its prospective start for nearly a year — know. A week later, everything was still “proceeding according to our plan,” claimed then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. By the end of January 2017, after 100 days of fierce fighting, the eastern part of that city, divided by the Tigris River, was more or less back in government hands and it had, according to New York Times reporters on the scene, been “spared the wholesale destruction inflicted on other Iraqi cities” like Ramadi and Fallujah, even though those residents who hadn’t fled were reportedly “scratching out a primitive existence, deprived of electricity, running water and other essential city services.”

Officials from some of the top international government spy agencies have flocked to New Zealand’s Queenstown for a secretive meeting of the Five Eyes spying alliance between the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The secretive meeting is expected to bring FBI director James Comey and CIA chief Mike Pompeo together with the top officials from the Australian, Canadian, UK and New Zealand intelligence and security agencies.

Over 200 applications on the Google Play store contain software which uses inaudible sounds from TV commercials to obtain data about the end user. The developer, Silverpush, abandoned and denounced the intrusive software a year ago, but are unable to stop application developers from using their open-source toolkit.

Microsoft on Sunday said a software vulnerability stolen from the U.S. National Security Agency has affected customers around the world, and described the spread of the WannaCry/WannaCrypt ransomware on Friday in many countries as yet another example of the problems caused by the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments.

Referring to the attack as a “wake-up call,” Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith wrote in a blog post that governments have “to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.”

In a deal that will allow one broadcasting company to reach 72 percent of U.S. households through ownership of local news stations, it was reported this week that Sinclair Broadcast Group is buying Tribune Media for nearly $4 billion.

Such a move wouldn’t have been possible a few weeks back, but Donald Trump’s new Federal Trade Commission (FCC) chairman, Ajit Pai, just began implementing sweeping changes to previously established media ownership rules. Bloomberg explains:

“A Sinclair-Tribune merger was made easier last month when the FCC restored a rule that allows TV station groups to count just half of their coverage area for Ultra High Frequency stations to comply with a 39 percent nationwide cap set by Congress.”

Reporting on the news, Democracy Now invited the president and CEO of Free Press, Craig Aaron, to comment on the significance of the purchase.

Close to one-third of drugs approved by the FDA are found to have safety problems, according to a research report from The Journal of the American Medical Association.

JAMA’s report stated that these safety issues, known as “postmarket safety events,” are “common after FDA approval, highlighting the importance of continuous monitoring of the safety of novel therapeutics throughout their life cycle.”

The study sought to identify the “frequency of postmarket safety events” of FDA-approved drugs. It revealed that 222 “novel therapeutics” were approved by the FDA between 2001 and 2010. Out of those 222 FDA-approved products, there were 123 safety issues later found in 71, or 32 per cent, of the approved drugs. Actions taken for the 71 drugs included withdrawal of the substance, new safety announcements highlighting discovered risks, and issuing “black box” warnings.

On Friday the U.S. "Inherent Resolve" command of its operations in Syria and Iraq released an statement that points to unnecessary intensified fighting about the city of Raqqa and elsewhere.

The Syrian Arab Coalition and their Syrian Democratic Force partners completed the liberation of the Tabqah Dam, as well as the city of Tabqah and its nearby airfield May 10.

The Kurdish forces obviously made a deal with the ISIS rearguard. They offered free passage (safe conduct) to the ISIS fighters if those would dismantled their demolition charges on the Tabqa dam and leave their heavy weapons behind. The ISIS group accepted and fulfilled its part of the deal. The dam was saved. The ISIS forces withdrew.

The Kurdish commander had made the right decision. Any fighting around, on or within the dam structure could have led to a catastrophic dam failure which would have killed ten-thousands (at least) further down the Euphrates.

Jason Chaffetz is retiring from politics because elite Democrats, working on behalf of the financial industrial complex also known as the Rothschild’s central banking scam, threatened his children’s lives, according to an FBI insider.

Chaffetz effectively ended his career as an uncompromised politician when he pushed through the bill to audit the Federal Reserve, the FBI insider explains.

“You don’t go after the Fed. Nobody goes after the Federal Reserve and gets away with it.”

Ousted FBI Director James Comey will not appear in a closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee next Tuesday.

Comey had been invited by Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and top Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia. Their panel is investigating Russia’s election meddling and allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Warner announced that Comey would not be appearing before his panel in an interview on MSNBC Friday.

The session would have provided Comey a first chance to discuss with lawmakers the circumstances of his firing.

Speaking to reporters today during an official visit to London, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says that the United States has assured Turkey that even though the Kurdish YPG is being used to invade ISIS’ capital city of Raqqa, they will not keep control of the city after the battle.

These assurances appear to have been made to try to placate Turkish outrage over US plans to arm the YPG with heavy weapons for the Raqqa battle, and for the US choosing to back the YPG in the offensive against ISIS in general, something Turkey has repeatedly condemned.

Kurdish officials have never said anything about conquering Raqqa for somebody else, and it would be unusual for the group to be willing to commit so heavy to the invasion of a city if they didn’t have designs on incorporating it into their self-declared autonomous region.

New South Korean President Moon Jae-in has made clear he wants to get reconciliation talks going with North Korea, and took a bit of a shot at US sanctions pushes in comments yesterday, saying he thinks sanctions should only be considered as a tool to get North Korea to the table for talks.

The Trump Administration has insisted in recent weeks they consider diplomacy to have “failed,” and President Trump appeared very dismissive of the new push for diplomacy today, saying he would only accept discussion with North Korea “under certain circumstances.”

Trump didn’t make clear what those circumstances would be, naturally, but did appear to reject the need for talks in the near term, bragging that he’s handling North Korea “very well, very firmly” without diplomacy. The State Department added that they want North Korea to “cease all illegal activities” for the possibility of talks.

A new Wall Street Journal piece, primarily about the ISIS held city of Raqqa on the Euphrates, casts doubt on long term U.S. plans for such an occupation. Its core quote:

"We won’t be in Raqqa in 2020, but the regime will be there."

Oh, and the unintended consequences of trying to regulate a monster.

Economists at the New York Fed included this gem in their report on a two-day conference on “Derivatives and Regulatory Changes” since the Financial Crisis:

Though the notional amount [of derivatives] outstanding has declined in recent years, at more than $500 trillion outstanding, OTC derivatives remain an important asset class.

An important asset class. A hilarious understatement. Let’s see… the “notional amount” of $500 trillion is 25 times the GDP of the US and about 7 times global GDP. Derivatives are not just an “important asset class,” like bonds; they’re the largest “financial weapons of mass destruction,” as Warren Buffett called them in 2003.

Derivatives are used for hedging economic risks. And they’re used as “speculative directional exposures” – very risky one-sided bets. It’s all tied together in an immense and opaque market interwoven with the banks. The New York Fed:

It looks like the weapons manufacturers win again as the US approves selling weapons to a foreign military known for terrorist actions.

The United Arab Emirates’s recent military decisions include violently ending democratic protests in Bahrain and participating in Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen. There have recently been massive protests against the Saudi Arabian/UAE terrorism against Yemen civilians, including using US supplied chemical weapons. The UAE participated in the terrible crimes that some call a genocide, and now they will be armed with another $2 billion dollars worth of US supplied weapons.

The Pentagon has issued a statement today confirming that the US State Department has signed off on a $2 billion sale of US-made Patriot missiles to the United Arab Emirates, adding to the tiny Gulf nation’s ever-growing military arsenal.

Where is Stanley Kubrick when we need him? If he hadn’t died in 1999, he would be the perfect director to transform today’s hysteria over Russia into a theater-of-the-absurd movie reprising his Cold War classic, “Dr. Strangelove,” which savagely satirized the madness of nuclear brinksmanship and the crazed ideology behind it.

To prove my point, The Washington Post on Thursday published a lengthy story entitled in the print editions “Alarm at Russian in White House” about a Russian photographer who was allowed into the Oval Office to photograph President Trump’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The Post cited complaints from former U.S. intelligence officials who criticized the presence of the Russian photographer as “a potential security breach” because of “the danger that a listening device or other surveillance equipment could have been brought into the Oval Office while hidden in cameras or other electronics.”

In a deal that will allow one broadcasting company to reach 72 percent of U.S. households through ownership of local news stations, it was reported this week that Sinclair Broadcast Group is buying Tribune Media for nearly $4 billion.

Such a move wouldn’t have been possible a few weeks back, but Donald Trump’s new Federal Trade Commission (FCC) chairman, Ajit Pai, just began implementing sweeping changes to previously established media ownership rules. Bloomberg explains:

“A Sinclair-Tribune merger was made easier last month when the FCC restored a rule that allows TV station groups to count just half of their coverage area for Ultra High Frequency stations to comply with a 39 percent nationwide cap set by Congress.”

Reporting on the news, Democracy Now invited the president and CEO of Free Press, Craig Aaron, to comment on the significance of the purchase.

Ex-George W. Bush-era national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, one of the architects behind the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, has admitted that bringing democracy to the Middle Eastern country was not the real priority. Speaking to Sputnik, Norwegian political scientist Georg Jakobsen said that the US's real goal was to impose its own model on Iraq.

Speaking at a meeting at the Brookings Institution, a leading DC think tank, on Thursday, Rice revealed that "security," not democracy, was the real motivating factor behind the US invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Iraq's case, the former national security advisor (who also later served as Bush's secretary of state) revealed that the US "didn't go to Iraq to bring democracy to Iraq. We went to Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who we thought was reconstituting weapons of mass destruction, and who we knew had been a threat in the region. It was a security problem."

More Palestinian prisoners are joining the mass hunger strike which entered its 26th day Friday, with the campaign assuming global proportions amid worsening health conditions of hundreds of strikers languishing in Israeli jails.

Sawt al-Asra (Voice of Prisoners) radio cited anonymous sources as saying that nearly 100 Palestinian inmates from different political factions have decided to join the hunger strike.

The radio estimated that nearly 1,800 prisoners are currently participating in the strike. However, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club put the figure far higher, saying more than 3,000 prisoners are taking part in the strike.

Israeli authorities have, however, claimed that fewer than 1,000 prisoners are participating in the strike.

The Fatah Central Committee, considered the Palestinian movement’s top decision-making body, called on Thursday for all its members in Israeli prisons to join the hunger strike immediately.

Netflix isn't alone: Agencies and others are balancing demands for money against the fears of stolen data ending up online.
Phones are the lifeblood of a talent agency like UTA, but on April 11, its IT department discovered an intruder lurking in the voicemail system and computer network and quickly decided to shut them down, sending agents to conduct business on their iPads. Soon thereafter a demand from a hacker arrived: Pay a ransom or watch the agency's most confidential data get posted online.

The blistering behind-the-scenes book, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, illustrates how Hillary Clinton furiously blamed her defeat on the FBI investigation into her private emails, Russian interference, and Trump’s supposed support from “white nationalists.”

The authors detail how Clinton went out of her way to pass blame for her stunning loss on “Comey and Russia.”

“She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way,” a longtime Clinton confidant is quoted as saying.

The book further highlights how Clinton’s Russia-blame-game was a plan hatched by senior campaign staffers John Podesta and Robby Mook, less than “within twenty-four hours” after she conceded.

After having successively elected an agent of the CIA and an employee of the emirs of the Gulf to the Presidency of the French Republic, the French have been ripped off a third time, this time by an Israeli product. They believe that they have chased away the spectre of fascism by voting for a candidate supported by NATO, the Rothschilds, all the companies of the CAC40 and the unanimous Press. Far from understanding their mistake, they are still in a trance, and will probably not wake up before the end of the general elections.

A free press and right to dissent are endangered. Western media operate as virtual press agents for power, reliable independent media called fake news.

In America, digital democracy is threatened, truth-telling assaulted. Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai calls Net Neutrality’s days “numbered,” wanting an online level playing field for everyone abolished.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu shuttered Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) with less than two hours notice, ending a near half century of public broadcasting, a staple on Israeli television, its first news program – IBA to be replaced by Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC).

On its final night, anchors openly wept. Journalists blasted the shutdown on air. The final broadcast ended with staff singing Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, sounding more like a dirge because of grief felt by all.

Anchor Haim Yavin on air called closure of IBA and its Mabat news program

Hey, since many of the refugees and other immigrants now causing expensive infectious diseases to spread in the state are a result of Obama’s migration policy, maybe he could contribute his $3 million speaking fee to Minnesota as a partial payment to handle the crisis!

Here is the latest news generated by the recent Measles epidemic in Minnesota. As of Tuesday there were 50 diagnosed cases, most (45) are in the ‘Somali community.’

And, we are told that refugees don’t cost state and local taxpayers a dime!

From Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart:

Minnesota Health Commissioner Dr. Ed Ehlinger sounded an alert on more frequent and costly threats to the public health, referencing measles, tuberculosis, and even the Zika virus and syphilis, according to a statement released by the MDH on Wednesday as reported by Hometownsource.com.

Islamabad, Pakistan - At least two civilians have been killed on either side of the disputed border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, officials say, as the South Asian neighbours traded artillery and small-arms fire.

Pakistan's foreign office said on Thursday that a man called Muhammad Rizwan was killed by Indian shelling on in the village of Subzkot, in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. At least two other people were wounded in the exchange of fire, it added.

A 35-year-old woman was killed on Thursday in the Nowshera area, in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Lieutenant Colonel Manish Mehta, an Indian army spokesman, said Pakistani soldiers attacked Indian military posts with automatic weapons and mortars along the highly militarised Line of Control (LoC) that divides Kashmir between the nuclear-armed countries. The woman's husband was wounded in the shelling, police said.

READ MORE: Deadly attacks hit Indian-administered Kashmir

In a move that is simultaneously seen as undermining the Saudi War in Yemen and also a virtually necessary consequence of that war, a group of political, military, and tribal figures, led by former Aden Governor Aidaroos Zubaidi, have announced that they are launching a formal movement for the secession of South Yemen, making the announcement with the flag of the former country.

South Yemen was conquered by North Yemen in 1994, unifying the country under northern ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh ruled unified Yemen until 2012, when Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi was appointed to replace him. Hadi resigned in 2015, leading to the Saudi invasion to try to reinstall him by force.

Northern Yemen is controlled by the Shi’ite Houthi movement now, while the Saudi-backed forces of Hadi rule the south, with the country once again split largely along the historic border. There was always some southern nationalism within Yemen, and the war’s de facto split has brought it back to the fore.

In the course of his interview with Time Magazine, President Trump revealed an exchange during a recent tour of the USS Gerald R. Ford, an aircraft carrier, during which he discovered that newer US aircraft carriers like the Ford use digital catapult systems for launching aircrafts.

Trump was apparently livid with the discovery, saying that digital “sounded bad to me” and demanding that the aircraft carriers go back to using “goddamn steam” for their launches, claiming it would save hundreds of millions of dollars.

There’s no evidence to support the money-saving suggestion, and the switch to the digital EMALS launchers was seen by the Navy as a necessary one. Steam-based launchers, which use the steam produced by the carrier’s nuclear power plant, are described as high-maintenance system with no feedback control, and that’s just the start of their problems.

South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-in has, in the day since his inauguration, engaged in a series of conversations with leaders from around the region and the world, and today insisted that he wants to see any sanctions imposed against North Korea done only parallel to negotiations with them.

Moon, who has long advocated peaceful reunification with North Korea, has made clear he wants a return to the Sunshine Policy, and the attempt to return to the old policy of trying to improve relations, and to avoid military confrontation.

The Trump Administration has rejected diplomacy in recent months, talking up either a military solution or the imposition of new sanctions. Moon likely figures he can avoid the former by accepting the later, though even here he insisted sanctions should only be used as a way to get North Korean officials to the bargaining table.

The US Army has confirmed that Israeli and US pilots will be engaging joint drills this week at Uvda Air Force Base near the Israeli city of Eliat. Aircrews will be trained in a number of exercises at the base’s advance facilities while other squadrons train in the Negev Desert.

While the role of enemy aircraft will be played by the Israel Defense Forces' "Flying Dragon" or "Red" Squadron, based at Uvda, teams will operate “enemy” missile launchers and radars and infantry troops will be acting as terrorists, according to the Jerusalem Post. Haaretz reported that a number of F-15 fighters have already been sent over by the US; the "Flying Dragon" squad flies F-16 jets.

One of the major objectives of this site over the years has been to highlight the demoralizing and extremely destructive reality that two completely different justices systems exist in America — one for the wealthy, powerful and connected, and another for everyone else. While there will always be some element of this in any society of humans, extremes can and do occur, and the pendulum now has shifted in these United States to extremely dangerous Banana Republic-like levels.

Nowhere is this divergence of justice more in your face and deplorable than with respect to how Wall Street financiers are treated compared to the rest of us. Not only was the industry rewarded with endless financial lifelines and zero executive prosecutions after it destroyed the global economy, but the industry continues to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, with zero repercussions. It doesn’t take genius to understand that if there’s no risk in committing financial crimes, you get a lot more of them.

George Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice was speaking at the neo-con Brookings Institution when she said the following,

“We didn’t go to Iraq to bring democracy to Iraq we went to Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein… It was a security problem”.
She also stated,

“I would never have said to President Bush (to) use military force to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan”.

Iraq threatened the ability to American financial institutions and arms dealers to expand with impunity because Iraq by 2003 had been cut off from the western financial and corporate apparatus. Iraq didn’t threaten anyone’s security, but it did threaten the expansion of certain western interests in the region. Could this be the ‘security’ about which Miss. Rice spoke?

Glyphosate, a chemical ingredient found in Monsanto’s Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, has been found in vaccines. Moms Across America received preliminary screening results from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri which show the DTap Adacel (Sanofi Pasteur) vaccine had 0.123 ppb, Influenza Fluvirin (Novaris) 0.331 ppb and HepB Energix-B (Glaxo Smith Kline) 0.325 and Pneumonoccal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23, (Merck) had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate.The MMR II (Merck) vaccine, which CDC whistle blower Dr.William Thompson has linked to autism, had levels up to 25 times higher than the other vaccines, at 2.671ppb. Subsequently, multiple rounds of additional independent tests have confirmed these findings at or above the same levels.

Glyphosate, a chemical ingredient found in Monsanto’s Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, has been found in vaccines. Moms Across America received preliminary screening results from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri which show the DTap Adacel (Sanofi Pasteur) vaccine had 0.123 ppb, Influenza Fluvirin (Novaris) 0.331 ppb and HepB Energix-B (Glaxo Smith Kline) 0.325 and Pneumonoccal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23, (Merck) had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate.The MMR II (Merck) vaccine, which CDC whistle blower Dr.William Thompson has linked to autism, had levels up to 25 times higher than the other vaccines, at 2.671ppb. Subsequently, multiple rounds of additional independent tests have confirmed these findings at or above the same levels.

Glyphosate, a chemical ingredient found in Monsanto’s Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, has been found in vaccines. Moms Across America received preliminary screening results from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri which show the DTap Adacel (Sanofi Pasteur) vaccine had 0.123 ppb, Influenza Fluvirin (Novaris) 0.331 ppb and HepB Energix-B (Glaxo Smith Kline) 0.325 and Pneumonoccal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23, (Merck) had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate.The MMR II (Merck) vaccine, which CDC whistle blower Dr.William Thompson has linked to autism, had levels up to 25 times higher than the other vaccines, at 2.671ppb. Subsequently, multiple rounds of additional independent tests have confirmed these findings at or above the same levels.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday he would not make concessions on sovereignty, independence and national interests of his country, in an interview with BELARUS’ ONT channel.

"All the things related to sovereignty, national interests, the constitution, and independence are not the prerogative of the president and he cannot make concessions regarding them. I make concessions on personal issues which are of no importance to the people, the crisis, and they are not required of me anyway," Assad said as translated and quoted by state SANA news agency.

North Korea built a mockup of the building, seen in propaganda photos, for its troops to destroy.

Images released by state-run media last year showed Kim's special forces storming the building in a mock invasion.

And now fresh satellite photos have revealed that this replica of the Cheong Wa Dae or Blue House has been totally destroyed.

They come as a chilling reminder to South Korea's newly-elected president, Moon Jae-in, of the crisis on the peninsula.

Comparing the new photos from satellite image provider, Airbus, to shots from last year provides a sharp contrast.

In the new images the replica is reduced to ruin, destroyed almost completely except for the facade.

There's also what looks like a test site for a laser or wire-guided anti-tank missiles to the north.

North Korea built a mockup of the building, seen in propaganda photos, for its troops to destroy.

Images released by state-run media last year showed Kim's special forces storming the building in a mock invasion.

And now fresh satellite photos have revealed that this replica of the Cheong Wa Dae or Blue House has been totally destroyed.

They come as a chilling reminder to South Korea's newly-elected president, Moon Jae-in, of the crisis on the peninsula.

Comparing the new photos from satellite image provider, Airbus, to shots from last year provides a sharp contrast.

In the new images the replica is reduced to ruin, destroyed almost completely except for the facade.

There's also what looks like a test site for a laser or wire-guided anti-tank missiles to the north.

Millions of Americans believed the fix was in when Hillary Clinton escaped criminal charges for sending classified information over her private email server.

And at the center of this controversy was Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

But FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony is beginning to raise new questions about her role in the cover up.

When Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was asked about a document written by a Democratic operative.

The memo declared that Lynch would protect Clinton from any criminal charges.

The New York Times reported:

“During Russia’s hacking campaign against the United States, intelligence agencies could peer, at times, into Russian networks and see what had been taken. Early last year, F.B.I. agents received a batch of hacked documents, and one caught their attention.

A 'power hungry president' has 'kicked a power player out of office', and the mainstream media is having a field day. Headlines have obsessively focused on Trump’s termination of FBI Director James Comey and the implications that come with it, drawing comparisons to Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and questioning Trump’s decision to fire the man who was leading an investigation into the president’s own alleged misconduct.

While the drama currently unfolding will certainly have profound implications for the present and future, the theatrics playing out on telescreens around the country are hardly representative of the bigger picture in the United States. As millions of Americans fix their eyes and minds on the ongoing developments, other stories are lurking behind the curtain — and reveal far more about the struggles we face.

Having gone all-in on a Hillary Clinton victory ahead of the elections, Saudi Arabia has quickly pivoted in its "appreciation" of the Trump administration, and having realized that the fastest way to Trump's heart is through the US Treasury's bank account, it is preparing to invest an "unprecedented" amount of money in the US. According to Bloomberg, the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund will announce plans to "deploy as much as $40 billion into U.S. infrastructure." The investment will likely be unveiled as early as next week when Trump is scheduled to visit the kingdom.

While secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made a personal call to pressure Bangladesh’s prime minister to aid a donor to her husband’s charitable foundation despite federal ethics laws that require government officials to recuse themselves from matters that could impact their spouse’s business.

The Office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina confirmed to Circa that Mrs. Clinton called her office in March 2011 to demand that Dr. Muhammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner, be restored to his role as chairman of the country’s most famous microcredit bank, Grameen Bank. The bank’s nonprofit Grameen America, which Yunus chairs, has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. Grameen Research, which is chaired by Yunus, has donated between $25,000 and $50,000, according to the Clinton Foundation website.

United States National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster released an official statement Saturday expressing the need for a “quick and peaceful solution” to Venezuela’s “ongoing crisis”.

The press release was made public after McMaster met with Venezuelan opposition leader and current National Assembly President Julio Borges at the White House earlier that day.

It reads:

“They [Borges and McMaster] discussed the ongoing crisis in Venezuela and the need for the government to adhere to the Venezuelan Constitution, release political prisoners, respect the National Assembly, and hold free and democratic elections.”

Despite the deadly unrest, opposition leaders have said that they will boycott a constituent assembly called by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as a way out of the impasse and have continued to call for their supporters to take to the streets.

According to the Pentagon, it isn’t necessary to tarnish Syrian President, Bashar Assad, for the U.S.-led coalition’s large-scale invasion to Syria. It is enough to make ISIS cross the Jordanian border. Such a scenario was discussed by Assad at the end of April this year.

This time Washington decided to rely on the Free Syrian Army (FSA), that began an offensive against ISIS in Syria’s Daraa, located about 13 kilometers north of the border with Jordan, on May 9, 2017. Apparently, according to the coalition command, the FSA will force the Islamists to leave their positions and cross the Jordanian border.

In its turn, this could be an ideal pretext for the coalition’s immediate ‘defense’ of its ally. So, according to our sources, more than 400 units of US military equipment and more than 4,000 soldiers have already been deployed along the border between Syria and Jordan. This fact indicates the ongoing preparation for the operation.

New DHS files raise questions about Arnon Milchan’s US visa.

On May 3, 2017 the Department of Homeland Security released the most detailed files to date on the 1979-1983 Richard Kelly Smyth/Arnon Milchan/Benjamin Netanyahu krytron smuggling ring. The 100-page dossier (PDF) answers important questions about how highly sensitive US nuclear weapons technologies were smuggled out of the country in the early 1980s.

The pages leave two key questions unanswered. The first is why Arnon Milchan was not indicted alongside his co-conspirator Richard Kelly Smyth. The second is why in 2016 Secretary of State John Kerry granted Milchan a long-term visa to reside in the United States even after career Department of State officials initially refused.

‘This decision has destructive implications for the chronically ill and children,’ a ministry official says, adding he sees Ramallah's decision as a political one.

The Palestinian Authority is to stop providing medicines and baby formula to hospitals in the Gaza Strip, which could have disastrous consequences for residents in the Strip, the Health Ministry in Gaza warned Tuesday.

The director general of the Gazan Health Ministry’s pharmacy department, Dr. Munir al-Bursh, was quoted on a number of Palestinian websites identified with Hamas as saying this was a political decision. He is in contact with senior officials in the Health Ministry in the West Bank to determine the meaning of the decision – which was announced by Ramallah on Tuesday – and how long it will be in effect, he said.

Haaretz reported last month that the PA was taking a number of steps to punish the Hamas government in Gaza, and that the PA intended to reduce health expenditures in Gaza this month.

A new round of joint military exercises has fueled considerable speculation among Jordanians that their government may be about to participate in a surprise US invasion of Syria. The speculation was growing to the point Syria issued a statement yesterday warning them against doing so.

Those familiar with the situation say it’s likely an idle rumor, however, with retired Gen. Mousa al-Odwan, a former special forces commander, saying he doesn’t believe the Jordanian government would offer direct military support in the event of any ground invasion of Syria.

Jordanian political analysts appeared to agree with this assessment, saying their nation’s military is in no position to get into a protracted involvement in a ground war in Syria, and that doing so would have “dire consequences” for the nation’s military and its stability.

While Jordan isn’t on good terms with Syria, their official stance is that the Syrian Civil War should be resolved peacefully.

President Trump is considering the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to replace James Comey, according to Bloomberg.

Rogers is a seasoned swamp veteran and an ardent supporter of the surveillance state.

In 2013, he voiced his support for NSA surveillance programs. “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated,” he said.

In 2006 as a congress critter, he voted to allow electronic surveillance without a warrant, a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. He voted to let the government gather intelligence without congressional oversight and also voted to extend the PATRIOT Act.

Rogers voted for $78 billion in “emergency” funds to keep the pointless wars going in Iraq and Afghanistan and also voted against bringing the troops home. He voted yes to declare the Iraq occupation part of the endless war on terror.

A half-hour before dawn, the pedestrian bridges that connect the Venezuelan towns of San Antonio and Ureña with the Colombian city of Cúcuta begin to fill with people. The traffic is circular, as it has been for years, with large numbers crossing in both directions — but those headed into Colombia are greater in number.

Venezuelans crossing the border are easily distinguished by their luggage. Many drag rolling suitcases behind them, bulging at the edges; others lug duffel bags and cardboard boxes on their shoulders. Some even have their cats and dogs in pet carriers.

In January, 47,095 Venezuelans entered Colombia, more than double the number from January of last year. Some 21,000 of them crossed into Norte de Santander, the state of which Cúcuta is the capital. Here and at other points along the nearly 1,400-mile border, the situation is beginning to feel like a refugee crisis.

Nations are beginning to take more seriously the control of their respective information space after years of allowing US-based tech giants Google and Facebook to monopolize and exploit them.

Vietnam, according to a recent GeekTime article, is the latest nation to begin encouraging local alternatives to the search engine and social media network in order to rebalance the monopoly over information both tech giants enjoy in the Southeast Asian country today.

Google and Facebook: More than Search Engines and Social Media

The two tech giants and others like them may have appeared at their inceptions to political, business, and military leaders around the world as merely opportunistic corporations seeking profits and expansion.

However, Google and Facebook, among others, have become clearly much more than that.

Aetna Inc. will leave the few remaining states where it had been selling Obamacare plans next year, making it the latest health insurer to pull out of the health law as Republicans attack the program as failing and work to dismantle it.

New South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday he was open to visiting rival North Korea under the right conditions to talk about Pyongyang's aggressive pursuit of nuclear-tipped missiles.

Moon's softer stance on North Korea could create friction with Washington, which has swung from threats of military action to hints of dialogue as it seeks to formulate a policy under President Donald Trump.

Moon, speaking during his oath of office as the first liberal leader in a decade, also said he'll "sincerely negotiate" with the United States, Seoul's top ally, and China, South Korea's top trading partner, over the contentious deployment of an advanced U.S. missile-defense system in southern South Korea. The system has angered Beijing, which says its powerful radars allow Washington to spy on its own military operations.

It's been 24 years since a president fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In 1993, President Clinton ousted William Sessions as FBI director after Sessions refused to voluntarily step down amid ethical concerns. It was the first and only time to happen in U.S. history. That is, until Donald Trump fired James Comey.

Sessions, appointed by Ronald Reagan, had been under investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility during George H.W. Bush's final year in office.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s dismissal of FBI Director James Comey citing “serious mistakes” and mishandling of the Hillary Clinton investigation, emerging information appears to indicate that in the aftermath of Comey’s firing the FBI intends to begin releasing documents on the Clinton investigation and the Department of Justice may request a second look at the investigation.

Back in February, Seattle's Mayor Ed Murray called for a 2 cent per ounce tax on sugary soft drinks in order to "improve Seattle's educational opportunities for students of color." Per Lynx Media, the tax was expected to raise some $16 million per year.

Of course, when someone on his staff pointed out that a tax on sugary drinks would disproportionately impact the minorities that he was apparently trying to help, Murray knew that something drastic had to happen. So that's when he decided to launch a new attack against the most recognizable symbol of "white privileged institutionalized racism" on the planet: DIET SODA!

In what may be an attempt to bolster now ex-FBI director James Comey's oft-derided "Ferguson Effect" claims, the FBI has released a "study" that gathers facts feelings from law enforcement officers around the US and attempts to build a narrative somewhere between "life is unfair" and "there's a War on Cops." It's not a study. It's an opinion poll with the word "study" appended to it.

In short, the Ferguson Effect theory is this: cops are afraid to do their jobs because they're undergoing intense scrutiny in the wake of controversial shootings. It's bullshit, but there are plenty of law enforcement officials willing to stake their reputations on assertions that portray their officers as cowards. Faced with heightened public scrutiny, officers are apparently deciding to do less work than before, supposedly to head off any misrepresentation of their tactics.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing policy changes set in place by the Obama administration that eliminated harsh punishments for low-level drug crimes and could direct federal prosecutors to again charge drug offenders with crimes carrying the most severe penalties, according to U.S. officials.

The change, if adopted, would overturn a memo by then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that instructed prosecutors to avoid charging low-level defendants with drug offenses that would trigger severe mandatory minimum sentences. Only defendants who met certain criteria, such as not belonging to a large-scale drug trafficking organization, a gang or a cartel, qualified for the lesser charges under Holder’s instructions.

During a routine surveillance of the area this morning, a 20-foot-wide hole in the roof of one of the tunnels was observed, leading to the precautionary sheltering of employees and notifications to area counties and states. After no contamination was detected, the shelter in place order was lifted and employees were sent home from work early as a precaution. Workers continue to monitor the area for contamination as a crew prepares to fill the hole with clean soil.

The approximately 360-foot-long tunnel where the partial collapse occurred contains 8 rail cars loaded with contaminated equipment. That tunnel feeds into a longer tunnel that extends hundreds more feet and contains 28 rail cars loaded with contaminated equipment. The hole opened up in the shorter tunnel near where it joins the longer tunnel. The tunnels were sealed in the mid-1990s and are checked periodically.

And now one of them has collapsed...

Close to one-quarter of students at a California elementary school have been directed by school officials to stay home for three weeks due to a small onset of chickenpox cases that began in March.

The chickenpox outbreak at Mariposa School of Global Education in Augora Hills, California is unique because the first case of chickenpox discovered at the school was found in a student who had been fully vaccinated.

Daniel Stepenosky, the superintendent of Las Virgenes Unified School District that includes the Mariposa School, acknowledged to CBS Los Angeles that three students were found to have chickenpox. “A kindergartner, a first-grader, a third-grader. The first case happened around mid-March. The student was immunized, however still contracted chickenpox.”

According to local newspaper The Acorn, Stepenosky noted that “(It’s) interesting . . . the first of three cases was a student that was fully immunized. . . . He was the vaccinated one.”

Israel’s parliament gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill defining the country as the “national home of the Jewish people” which downgrades Arabic from official language status.

The bill, supported by 48 against 41 of the Knesset’s 120 members, seeks to “defend (Israel’s) status as a Jewish and democratic state”, said Avi Dichter, the bill’s sponsor, of the ruling Likud party.

On Sunday, ministers gave the bill the initial green light.

It needs to be debated by a parliamentary committee and voted on three more times in the plenum before it becomes part of the country’s so-called “basic laws”, which are similar to a constitution.

It would give special status to the “Jewish and democratic” nature of Israel, to the Jewish calendar and to Hebrew as Israel’s official language.

Last week we noted that Chicago's police officers were taking their own lives in record numbers...the devastating consequence of having to work everyday in the "war zone" that is Chicago (see: "Chicago Is A War Zone": Police Suicide Rate Surges To 60% Above The National Average).

Now, yet another brutal weekend of violence and an ambush of police officers sitting in an unmarked vehicle offers a small glimpse of what Chicago police officers have to face on a daily basis. The escalation in violence this weekend even prompted Chicago's police department to issue a new bulletin warning officers of an ongoing gang war in which "gunmen are using weapons powerful enough to pierce bullet-proof vests" which shows an increasing tendency to "arm themselves with weapons most associated with soldiers in battle." Per the Associated Press:

Update: Reuters confirms that the US arming of yet another ethnic group in the middle east is now a "go"

WHITE HOUSE APPROVES SUPPLYING WEAPONS TO YPG FIGHTERS IN SYRIA - U.S. OFFICIAL TELL REUTERS
WEAPONS TO HELP YPG FIGHTERS IN RAQQA OFFENSIVE, NO TIMELINE DISCLOSED FOR START OF SUPPLYING ARMS

Turkey's 'sultan for life' Erdogan will not be happy. NBC News is reporting that two US defense officials have confirmed President Trump has approved a plan to arm the Syrian Kurdish militia - an important U.S. ally in Syria in the fight against ISIS.

Washington, Pentagon. The US has responded to Russia’s creation of “no fly zones” in Syria by indicating the US will fly “wherever it wants” and “whenever it pleases” according to Pentagon spokespersons.

The Coalition forces headed by the US will strike at the Islamic State anywhere in Syria, including in the security zones established by Russia, Turkey and Iran, In Russian news agency reports citing a Pentagon representative.

Earlier, Russia, Turkey and Iran signed a memorandum on the establishment of security zones in Syria. According to the memorandum, check points and observation centers will be established along the borders of these security zones. The zones exclude aircraft from hostile action.

When answering the question whether the Coalition will stop the flights over these security zones, the Pentagon official said that the Coalition will carry on with its operations as usual, with no regard for Russia’s plans to end air strikes in the region.

The US and Jordanian militaries may be prepping a massive invasion of Syria, intelligence reports gathered from surveillance drones suggest.

Damascus is reportedly on high alert after some 400 American and Jordanian military vehicles were located at a Jordanian military base near the Syrian desert border earlier today.

Twice in seven days the United States shot nuclear-capable long-range missiles toward the Marshall Islands, but the same government refused in March to join negotiations for a new treaty banning nuclear weapons.

In late March, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley explained why the US would boycott the "treaty ban" negotiations that began March 27 at the UN in New York City. Haley said about nuclear weapons, "[W]e can’t honestly say that we can protect our people by allowing the bad actors to have them, and those of us that are good, trying to keep peace and safety not to have them." North Korean president Kim Jong-un could have said the same thing about his seven nuclear warheads, especially in view of US bombs and missiles currently falling on seven countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya – and engagement in massive war games off the Korean peninsula.

US military: "We are prepared to use nuclear weapons"

Advisers to US President Donald Trump have worked out and proposed a new plan that could significantly change the situation in Afghanistan expanding the military activities against militants, local media reported.

The Washington Post reported Monday that a group of Trump's military and foreign policy advisers had proposed a strategy aiming to push the Taliban terrorist movement, outlawed in Russia, to the negotiating table with the Afghan government.

According to the news outlet, the plan implies strengthening of the Pentagon's role in anti-Taliban struggle as it could be allowed to make decisions on the issues related to the number of troops in the country, as well as their presence at the battlefield and to attack the terrorists not only with the use of drones.

The program could result in reverse of the steps of ex-US President Barack Obama reducing the country's presence in Afghanistan along with the costs of the operation, the newspaper added.

Syria on Monday dismissed the idea of foreign forces patrolling four so-called de-escalation zones that are to be established under a deal struck by Russia, Iran and Turkey, suggesting Damascus would agree only to Russian "military police" who are already on the ground.

Syria planned to abide by the agreement signed in Kazakhstan last week, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters in the Syrian capital, but he cautioned it was "premature" to say whether the deal would succeed.

"There will be no presence by any international forces supervised by the United Nations," al-Moallem said. "The Russian guarantor has clarified that there will be military police and observation centers."

Though he did not specify who the military police would be, he appeared to be referring to Russian observers already in Syria.