Desperate parents join police, firefighters and volunteers as they work through the night in a frantic search for dozens of young children feared buried under a Mexico City school.

As colleges across the country struggle with questions related to free speech on campuses, some schools have implemented policies that appear to give administrators significant latitude to discipline students for speaking in unpopular ways.

Most recently, the dean’s office of Utah Valley University, a public institution located in the north-central part of Utah, distributed a guidance letter to all faculty encouraging them to report to the school’s Behavior Assessment Team any students who use “inappropriate language,” are “argumentative,” or who speak “loudly.”

British police and spy agencies have not found evidence that last week’s attack on a London commuter train was ordered or organized by a recognized militant group, according to U.S. and British government sources familiar with the investigation.

Counter-terrorism officers have arrested two men after a crude homemade bomb sent flames shooting through a packed carriage at west London’s Parsons Green underground station during the Friday morning rush hour, injuring 30 people although it apparently failed to detonate fully.

Less than 24 hours after CNN triggered the latest outbreak of 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' by relaying information from anonymous sources that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manfort has been under surveillance by the FBI since 2014, Manafort has fired back by calling on the Department of Justice to release all transcripts of his tapped phone calls so that the American public "can come to the same conclusion as the DOJ — there is nothing there." Per the Daily Caller:

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is calling on the Justice Department to release transcripts of any intercepted communications he may have had with foreigners.

Manafort, a longtime Republican political consultant, also called on the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the leak of details of secret surveillance warrants obtained by U.S. investigators.

The F-35 Joint Program Office has skimped out on spending a few million dollars to conduct more thorough testing of the fifth-generation plane’s potentially lethally flawed ejection seat despite its generous $400 billion budget.

Given how much flight time the US military plans to use the F-35 for, 22 pilots are projected to suffer injuries or be killed over the lifetime of the plane’s use because of insufficient testing, according to the report first obtained by CQ Roll Call.

The internal report created by the Technical Airworthiness Authority said the failure to implement extra safety tests is bound to prove “catastrophic,” the Stripes report states. “No less than $1 million” and 9 to 12 months of testing could lower the risk of pilot injury or death from 22 to zero, TAA said in its report dated May 1.

The Syrian Army liberating the Deir ez-Zor region from terrorists is facing strong resistance and massive fire from areas where armed opposition groups and US forces are stationed, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
The Syrian Army continues to liberate the Euphrates valley to the east of Deir ez-Zor with the help of the Russian Air Force, the statement from the ministry says, adding that the government forces have already retaken more than 60 square kilometers on the left bank of the Euphrates from Islamic State (IS, former ISIS/ISIL).

The Syrian Army, however, faces resistance not only from jihadists, but also apparently from US-backed armed opposition groups, according to the statement

In newly released emails which the mainstream media is willfully ignoring, Hillary Clinton invited Russian president Vladimir Putin to a Clinton Foundation event. The Russian collusion between Hillary Clinton is becoming very apparent.

Hillary Clinton likes to talk a tough game about Russian President Vladimir Putin. And she likes to put him on the list of those at fault for her loss in the election last November to Donald Trump. But that didn’t stop her from inviting him and other top Russian officials to a Clinton Foundation gala right after she became Secretary of State.

Clinton Foundation director of foreign policy Amitabh Desai sent dozens of invitations to world leaders including then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and Former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, emails recently obtained by Judicial Watch revealed.

Whether in response to rising scorching tensions with the US, or simply to provide support for the ruble, on Tuesday Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to approve legislation making the ruble the main currency of exchange at all Russian seaports by next year, RT reported citing the Kremlin website.

The head of Russian antitrust watchdog FAS Igor Artemyev, many services in Russian seaports are still priced in US dollars, even though such ports are state-owned. So, in order to "protect the interests" of dockworkers and their complyees with foreign currency obligations, the government was instructed to set a transition period before switching to ruble settlements.

Once again, the annual United Nations General Assembly is taking place in New York City with U.S. President Donald Trump set to take center stage as he is expected to focus on the North Korean Crisis and the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

As the Western media’s attention has been focused on the North Korea crisis (which is also another very serious matter), another development has been taking place in Tel Aviv, as calls for action by Israeli officials against Iran’s Nuclear Program although it’s not a new development (it’s been going on for many years). Channel 2 on Israeli TV reported that Mossad chief Yossi Cohen is calling on the Israeli government to take action against the Iranian government. The Times of Israel reported that

“Channel 2 on Sunday paraphrased Cohen as asserting that “Today’s Iran is the North Korea of yesterday, and so we need to act now so that we don’t wake up to [an Iranian] bomb.”

After carrying out bombing drills over the Korean peninsula on Monday following North Korea’s firing of an intermediate-range missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido, US and South Korean forces are planning to continue their displays of military might early next month, according to a report from Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. However, in a move that is sure to provoke a barrage of threats from North Korea, the US is reportedly sending a nuclear-armed aircraft carrier to the waters off the Korean peninsula, where it will take part in an upcoming round of military drills.

Earlier this year, the US sent three aircraft carriers to waters near North Korea in an unprecedented show of force. However, it's unclear if any of those carriers are still positioned so closely to the peninsula. Here's the latest map of US naval strike groups, which was compiled by Stratfor using publicly-available information. Deployments considered "sensitive" would not be included on this map.

We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we could do at the Security Council at this point,” said Nikki Haley on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, referring to North Korea. “We wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get their attention first,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said. “If that doesn’t work, General Mattis [Defense Secretary James Mattis] will take care of it.”
The comments, no off-the-cuff remarks, mirrored her words at a White House press briefing Friday, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, standing next to Haley at that briefing, was even more explicit. “I think we ought to make clear what’s different about this approach is, is that we’re out of time,” he noted, referring to sanctions. “As Ambassador Haley said before, we’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”

Syrian troops crossed to the eastern side of the Euphrates in Deir al-Zor on Monday, state media and a monitoring group said, increasing their presence in an area where U.S.-backed militias have also advanced.

The rival forces are conducting offensives against Islamic State and have generally stayed out of each other’s way, with the river often acting as a dividing line.

However, incidents this year have raised tension between the government side, backed by Russia, and the U.S.-backed forces.

Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Donald Trump at the White House and push the U.S. to withdraw from the nuclear accord with Iran. Netanyahu will present an argument that Trump already has come to accept: America’s adherence to the nuclear deal cannot solely depend on Iran’s compliance with the agreement, but also whether Iran’s other policies challenge US national interests. It’s a more honest argument compared to the slogans Netanyahu has used in the past. But it is also a line that fundamentally contradicts Netanyahu’s central message of the past decades: That Iran’s nuclear program constitutes an existential threat to Israel.

Israel and the U.S. inaugurated the first American military base on Israeli soil on Monday, which will serve dozens of soldiers operating a missile defense system.

The move comes at a time of growing Israeli concerns about archenemy Iran's development of long-range missiles. Together with the U.S., Israel has developed a multilayered system of defenses against everything from long-range guided missile attacks from Iran to crude rockets fired from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

The base's opening is largely symbolic and isn't expected to bring operational changes. But the Israeli military says that along with other measures, it sends a message of readiness to Israel's enemies.

"It's a message that says Israel is better prepared. It's a message that says Israel is improving the response to threats," said Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, the commander of Israel's aerial defense.

Sex traffickers in America have the police and prosecutors pursuing them, but they do have one crucial (if secret) ally: Google.

Google’s motto has long been “Don’t be evil,” and I admire lots about the company. But organizations it funds have for years been quietly helping Backpage.com, the odious website where most American victims of human trafficking are sold, to battle lawsuits from children sold there for sex.

Now Google is using its enormous lobbying power in Washington to try to kill bipartisan legislation that would crack down on websites that promote sex trafficking.

It’s not that Google is taking ads from Backpage (it doesn’t) or giving it money. But as Backpage fights off prosecutors and worries about the legislation, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, Google has emerged as its behind-the-scenes champion.

To promote “racial reconciliation” after the deadly clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville last month, Brown University plans to offer segregated events to its black students and female Muslim students.

Ukraine’s and the United States’ refusal to work on the text of Russia’s draft resolution on deploying a UN contingent in Donbass to ensure security of the OSCE mission reveals their real plans to realize a kind of the Croatian scenario, Denis Pushilin, the chief negotiator for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic at the pace talks in Minsk, said on Monday.

"Ukraine’s and the United States’ refusal to work on the text of the Russia-initiated draft resolution on a UN mission in Donbass reveals the real motives of the Western partners. Such actions openly show what [Ukrainian President] Pyotr Poroshenko and his American friends really want," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying.

Agreement on setting up the natural gas pipeline infrastructure for Iraqi Kurdistan may be sealed between Rosneft and the region’s government by the end of the year, according to the company.

Investment in the project will be made under the BOOT (Build-Own-Operate-Transfer) arrangement and will be recovered through tariff charges.

The capacity of the pipeline is expected at up to 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

"The Kurdistan Region gas pipeline will not only supply natural gas to power plants and domestic factories throughout the region but also enable exporting substantial volumes of fuel to Turkey and the European market in the coming years," said the report.

Commissioning of the pipeline and the first domestic supplies are planned for 2019. Exports will begin starting 2020.

Countless concerned individuals are still searching for answers surrounding the mysterious death of the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. The official narrative, that a lone former Marine named Harvey Oswald assassinated him, is widely disputed.

All available documents from all government entities are required by the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 to be released on October 26th of 2017. But if history repeats itself, the Central Intelligence Agency may not release an entire volume of documents on Oswald, known as “volume 5.”

When it comes to the U.S. economy, the “con” part offers the best description of the current relationship between business, government and the preyed upon consumer. The way things work in early 21st century America is large businesses bribe politicians in a variety of ways at both the local and federal level, and the end result is laws that are designed to increase corporate profits at the expense of the wellbeing and freedom of the American public. Politicians end up with financial war chests to run their next campaign, while bureaucrats see a lucrative opportunity to swing through the ever spinning revolving door should they play ball with lobbyists and their patrons. Yes, there’s always some degree of corruption within any society of humans, but there are peaks and valleys in such cycles. I’d argue we are somewhere in the peak corruption phase.

The Senate is expected to pass by a wide margin a $700-billion defense bill today. When it comes to extravagant military spending, Congress is relentlessly bipartisan, and all bickering stops, as long as the bacon gets spread to every district and state.

“The 1,215-page measure defies a number of White House objections, but Trump hasn’t threatened to veto the measure,” the Washington Post mused. “The bill helps him honor a pledge to boost military spending by tens of billions of dollars.”

So who gets this money?

It’s going to get spread around, but defense contractors are going to get a chunk of it, and they’ve been on cloud 9 all year. Their shares – fired up by plenty of saber-rattling – have mostly soared from all-time high to all-time high.

These are some of the biggest defense contractors and their shares year-to-date as of this morning:

Rockwell Collins (COL), to be acquired by United Technologies: $130.90, up 40.6% YTD

First broadcast in Great Britain 50 years ago, The Prisoner—a dystopian television series described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly tranquil retirement community known only as the Village. The Village is an idyllic setting with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team reportedly advised former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that they plan to indict him after a July raid of his home in Alexandria, Va.

The New York Times reports that prosecutors and investigators under Mueller’s command warned Manafort that they plan to bring an indictment against him to a grand jury. The report is sourced to two individuals close to the investigation. Though The Times is not specific as to the nature of the charges, Manafort is under investigation for possible violations of tax laws and failure to abide by disclosure requirements relating to his lobbying work for Kremlin-aligned governments in eastern Europe.

Who here is scrambling around in the aftermath of the recent breach at Equifax to figure out if you’ve been compromised? Who here is wondering what to do about it if you are? If you’re one of the 143 million Americans whose data was accessed by cybercriminals, then you probably raised your hand.

Even if you weren’t one of the 143 million, you might still want to take some precautions. You could instead be part of the millions of folks who’ve had their data stolen over the course of online history. Basically, if you have a social security number, have ever run a credit check, or have a pulse, you should listen up. Why? Two words: identity theft.

Toys “R” Us Inc., the largest US "brick and mortar" toys retailer, filed for bankruptcy late on Monday night, as a result of a crushing post-LBO debt load and relentless competition from warehouse and online retailers, the "latest blow to a retail industry reeling from store closures, sluggish mall traffic and the gravitational pull of Amazon.com" according to Bloomberg. The Chapter 11 filing is among the largest ever by a specialty retailer and casts doubt over the future of its about 1,600 stores and 64,000 employees. It comes just as Toys ‘R’ Us is gearing up for the holiday shopping season, which accounts for the bulk of its sales, and as vendors halt shipments to the now insolvent retailer.

With assets of $6.9 billion, it’s the second-largest retail bankruptcy, trailing the filing in 2002 by Kmart, which had $14.6 billion in assets.