In any forward operating theater of any war, the first battle to be waged is for the control of information, and hence, the US and other government have contingencies in place to block or obscure online news sources by way of regional internet hubs.

The idea is simple: keep citizens from seeing any alternative reporting or analysis in times of crisis or domestic strife, and to reinforce the corporate monopoly of information and commentary by state-sanctioned, or ‘trusted news sources’ only, namely, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX News, MSNBC and CNN.

A number of top alternative news site (including this one) have noticed that our website has been offline in certain regions at certain times. Others have noticed, and documented, the same observations.

Las Vegas, whose homeless population has doubled in the past decade to about 12,000 people in and around the city, joins several other cities across the country that have adopted or considered ordinances limiting the distribution of charitable meals in parks. Most have restricted the time and place of such handouts, hoping to discourage homeless people from congregating and, in the view of officials, ruining efforts to beautify downtowns and neighborhoods.

But the Las Vegas ordinance is believed to be the first to explicitly make it an offense to feed “the indigent.”

Sears shares fell Thursday, after the struggling department store announced an adjusted net loss of $296 million—in line with the updated guidance it gave in November.

The retailer also said it's accelerating the number of stores it plans to close this year, boosting its list from the 130 underperforming stores it announced in its second-quarter earnings release, to a total of 235 stores.

Analysts called the move a step in the right direction for the company, which has been tapping into its real estate in creative ways to compensate for downward-spiraling sales. Still, they said the haircut won't be enough on its own to turn the tide at Sears, adding that it needs to close even more stores—and figure out how to become profitable.

In an overwhelming 35-10 vote, the state Senate advanced a bill naming a 650-acre site currently under construction after the nation’s 44th president. Governor Jack Dalrymple is expected to sign the measure into law Tuesday.

Israel has issued new military orders to confiscate and ban the use of tens of dunams of the Palestinian land west of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, Safa news agency reported yesterday.

A Safa correspondent said that yesterday morning; Palestinians found copies of the Israeli orders at the entrance of the Palestinian village of Rantis.

The orders included information telling the villagers that the Israeli army had confiscated 231 dunams from the villages of Rantis, Shuqba, Qibya and Badras for security reasons. They told the villagers to appeal against the decision or claim compensation.

According to Safa, the land which is being confiscated is located along the Separation Wall. The agency believes that it will be used to widen the Wall.

The far north of Ontario is being plunged into the deep freeze. For Fort Severn, the forecast is calling for a few clouds tonight. Winds will be northwest 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming light this evening. Low minus 34. Wind chill minus 46.

If it’s so cold, goes the reasoning, how could global warming be real?

University of Nebraska-Lincoln climatologist Ken Dewey has had a succinct answer for years now: “It’s called global warming, not Nebraska warming.”

Yes, you knew it was cold in November across Northern Ohio. The numbers prove it. In fact, November finished in the Top 10 COLDEST Novembers for some of the major cities across the region.

For Cleveland, November was FRIGID! The average temperature for the month was 37.1 degrees. That's a whopping 6.8 degrees below average for Novembers here. This ties 1910 for the 8th COLDEST November on Record in Cleveland.

19.4 inches of snow fell at Hopkins Airport during November 2014. That makes this past month the fourth SNOWIEST November on Record!

Mansfield's average temperature was 36 degrees... 5.3 degrees below average for the month. That's good enough for the No. 7 spot in the Top 10 COLDEST Novembers on record.

In the past, whenever an American citizen or a police officer complained that there are illegal aliens from Latin American countries impersonating Puerto Ricans in order to avoid arrest and deportation, he or she would be met with ridicule and contempt by politicians and their cohorts inhabiting the nation's newsrooms. But now that a case has gone through the criminal justice system and adjudication was completed on Wednesday, the same journalists -- many of whom work at the nation's major news outlets --and politicians are ignoring the story, according to a former New York police detective, who was one of the first Puerto Rican first-grade detectives in city history.

The Prosecutor General's Office is looking into the Central Bank's operations after a ruling party lawmaker accused it being an "enemy of the country" by supposedly driving down the ruble and plotting "evil" against Russia.

Pension board records show a Tulsa police officer accused of killing his daughter’s boyfriend retired from the force last month and collected a $162,000 pension in a lump-sum payment.

While state law would prevent officers convicted of felonies from collecting monthly payments, the state Police Pension and Retirement Board won’t be able to reclaim Shannon Kepler’s lump-sum payment if he is convicted.

“Our position is that we haven’t been able to do that. We are going by kind of the plain reading of the statutes,” said board executive director Steven Snyder.

A 2010 Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities details what critics say is a troubling policy that envisions the Obama administration’s potential use of military force against Americans.

The directive contains noncontroversial provisions on support to civilian fire and emergency services, special events and the domestic use of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The troubling aspect of the directive outlines presidential authority for the use of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, in operations against domestic unrest.

A bitter Arctic blast from Iceland is expected to see temperatures plummet to as low as -6C in parts of the country - colder than Moscow

Dilapidated, muddy and squalid though it was, it was all they had to call home.

And today signaled the end for more than 300 residents of a shantytown known as the 'The Jungle' - who have been forced out of their makeshift abodes and underground homes.

But with many having nowhere else to go, charities say the evacuated residents will simply set up camp elsewhere.

Its location is of note - at the heart of opulent Silicon Valley, home to tech giants Google, Apple and Facebook, and its dismantling has stirred up controversy.

The truth is that far from being the poor victim it likes to portray itself as, Israel is in fact the most aggressive and belligerent nation in the region, having invaded pretty much everyone it shares a border with.

The following maps show just who is wiping who off of the map!

Since June 1967, Israel demolished over 48,000 Palestinian houses and other structures. Dispossessing occupants.

An American Baptist pastor has called for the mass killing of all homosexuals and transgender people to bring about an “Aids-free world by Christmas”.

Cold weather has been causing havoc in east and central Europe.

In Serbia emergency workers “risked their lives”, according to the electrical grid company EMS, to mend power cables which had been brought down by high winds and ice up to 20 centimetres thick.

Power supplies have finally been restored to the eastern town of Majdanpek, where for three days people had been without electricity, heating or running water.

The local hospital kept going thanks to an emergency generator.

Elsewhere in Europe, there has been similar disruption to daily life.

This could be a troll, but it is likely that in the on-line polling, Putin is winning hands-down.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services waited less than one day to launch a hiring drive – seeking 1,000 new federal workers – after President Obama announced November 20 that he would act on his own to provide legal papers for millions of illegal immigrants.

Bankrupt Detroit’s thousands of empty buildings are being flogged at rock-bottom prices — and Chinese investors are answering the siren call of unbeatable deals, reports NBC News.

Over 400,000 who called for help weren’t served, audit finds

A Queens police officer who once won his precinct’s “Cop of the Year’’ award has been busted on cocaine-trafficking charges, sources said Tuesday.

Officer Philip LeRoy, who works in the 114th Precinct, was nabbed just before midnight Monday in Sunrise City, Fla., with two other men while allegedly buying 10 kilos of cocaine, sources told The Post.

Bill doesn't include Israel joining U.S. Visa Waiver Program, something Netanyahu, pro-Israel lawmakers pushed for during almost two years of legislative wrangling.

Yesterday I was invited by Press TV to participate in their daily program, ‘The Debate.’ In the last few years I have occasionally participated on the show. Usually I am confronted with banal Hasbara mouthpieces. I tend to demolish their arguments within the first round of questions.

Yesterday, I was asked to debate professor Geoffrey Alderman – an avid Zionist academic. To my great surprise Alderman and I agreed on pretty much everything: we had similar views on Israeli politics, the nature of the Jewish State, Netanyahu's Politics, Netanyahu’s engineered crisis, Jewish Lobby Domination in the West and other topics. Fascinating exchange but hardly a debate.

The Fort Lauderdale ordinance that has become infamous throughout the world in just one month has now been suspended by a Florida judge.

Broward Circuit Judge Thomas Lynch suspended enforcement of the ordinance restricting the all public feeding of homeless people. But the suspension is only for 30 days so far. During that time, the judge has ordered mediation on the issue.

Attorney to court: Charge parents or give babies back

The Orion spacecraft is still to blast off for its first test flight from Cape Canaveral - this time on Friday. NASA's replacement for the retired Shuttle, the Orion may one day take humans to an asteroid or even Mars.

The spacecraft will lift off aboard a Delta IV heavy rocket and will orbit the earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific. The flight, which is to test Orion's performance, will be unmanned. However, the the spacecraft will be loaded with 1,000 sensors to record and measure all aspects of the flight.

In an unprecedented challenge to federal dominance of Western state lands, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert in 2012 signed the “Transfer of Public Lands Act,” which demands that Washington relinquish its hold on the land, which represents more than half of the state’s 54.3 million acres, by Dec. 31.

The natives of the US, Georgia and Lithuania were hastily granted Ukrainian citizenship in order to become key ministers in the new government of Ukraine, which was approved by the country’s parliament on Tuesday.

President Poroshenko has also announced he will sign a decree to grant citizenship to foreigners fighting on Kiev’s side in the east of the country.

According to what I'm hearing from several sources in my network of contacts, the U.S. government is putting systems in place to black out online news sites like Natural News, Drudge Report, The Blaze and many others. A practice run that took place earlier this week in California has already achieved this result and confirmed the technical ability to make it happen at will.

The recent outage of news sites experienced by internet users in California was reported by this article on BeforeItsNews.com and confirmed by The Washington Times, The Blaze and other sites. The Natural News reader service team also recorded numerous complaints from California users who were unable to reach our website even though our site was fully functional and serving pages worldwide.

Iran is seeking a senior post on a United Nations committee that decides accreditation of non-governmental organizations, a move that Israel on Tuesday compared to gangster Al Capone running the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Iran was elected to the 19-member committee in April for a four-year term from 2015. The United States and Israel are also members of the committee, which acts as a kind of gatekeeper for rights groups and other NGOs seeking access to U.N. headquarters to lobby and participate in meetings and other events.