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Senate Republicans, who have promised a repeal of the Affordable Care Act for seven years, took a major step on Thursday toward that goal, unveiling a bill to cut Medicaid deeply and end the health law’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance.

Magistrates in Sicily are investigating allegations that local mafia syndicate Cosa Nostra encouraged the murder of terminally ill people to drive business to funeral homes that they owned.

Eyewitnesses alleged ambulance workers were instructed to kill terminally ill patients by injecting air in their veins and were paid a €300 (£264) fee for each corpse.

Welch, a North Carolina resident, entered Comet Ping Pong on Dec. 4, 2016 with an AR-15 assault weapon and revolver. He told diners he was there to determine if a story he had seen online about kids being held by Democratic leaders in the basement was true.

The story was later found to be untrue.

Seven months after the election, Hillary Clinton remains as unpopular today as she was after November's election, a new poll found.

According to Gallup, Americans' views of the Democratic presidential candidate remain unchanged, as 41 percent of people said they have a favorable view of Clinton, who challenged President Trump in last year's presidential race.

Clinton's favorability has remained unchanged over the last seven months, Gallup reported, with 43 percent of Americans saying they had a positive view of the 2016 presidential candidate in November. Her favorability dropped to 41 percent in December, and has been the same since then.

With the exception of Clinton, losing presidential candidates over the last 25 years have seen a boost of at least 4 percentage points in their favorability after the election, according to previous Gallup polls.

The U.S. Navy conducted a failed ballistic missile intercept Wednesday with its SM-3 Block IIA off the coast of Hawaii.

The destroyer John Paul Jones, running the Navy’s top-of-the-line Aegis Baseline 9.C2 combat system, failed to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii.

The destroyer detected and tracked the target on the AN/SPY-1 phased array radar but was unable to intercept it. It was the second test of this latest iteration of the SM-3. The John Paul Jones successfully shot down a target in February with it. That test was the first intercept using Baseline 9.2C

To many around the world, U.S. foreign policy has been dominated for the past 16 years by military actions in the Middle East and South Asia, and large land and sea military exercises in Northeast Asia. On the world stage, American efforts in the areas of economics, trade, cultural issues and human rights appear to have taken a back seat to the waging of continuous wars.

Continuing the use of drone warfare to carry out assassinations will only exacerbate foreign distrust of American intentions and trustworthiness. It thereby plays into the hands of the very opponents we are trying to defeat.

During his campaign, Donald Trump pledged he would always put “America First,” and said he wanted to get out of the business of regime change. It is not too late for him to keep that promise by learning from his predecessors’ mistakes and reversing the continued militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

The latest worrisome development is the victory of the most hardline factions in Kosovo’s just-completed national elections. An alliance that Kosovo’s media have dubbed the “war wing,” emerged as the largest bloc in parliament, garnering 34 percent of the vote. The principal leaders of that faction, headed by the Democratic Party of Kosovo, are President Hashim Thaci, and another former leader of the infamous Kosovo Liberation Army, Ramush Haradinaj, who is likely to become prime minister. European Union and UN investigators have accused both men of numerous war crimes during Kosovo’s war of secession from Serbia in the late 1990s.

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was an attempt to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison guards. It was conducted at Stanford University on August 14–20, 1971, by a research group led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo using college students.[1] It was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research[2] as an investigation into the causes of difficulties between guards and prisoners in the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. The experiment is a topic covered in most introductory psychology textbooks.[3]

While Israel's current situation is "not yet apartheid," the country is on a "slippery slope" heading in that direction – thus says former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in an interview airing Wednesday night on German television.

Russia said on Monday it would treat U.S.-led coalition aircraft flying west of the River Euphrates in Syria as potential targets and track them with missile systems and military aircraft, but stopped short of saying it would shoot them down.

As a result of the threat, Australia said on Tuesday it would suspend its military campaign.

On Thursday, a decision was made to resume the air strikes in Syria after an assessment of the Russian statement, although it did not say when they would begin again.

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, seems to be championing a single cause: Israel.

When Haley speaks about Israel, her language is not merely emotive nor tailored to fit the need of a specific occasion. Rather, her words are resolute, consistent and are matched by a clear plan of action.

Along with Haley, the rightwing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is moving fast to cultivate the unique opportunity of dismissing the United Nations, thus, any attempt at criticizing the Israeli Occupation.

Unlike previous UN ambassadors who strongly backed Israel, Haley refrains from any coded language or any attempt, however poor, to appear balanced. Last March, she told a crowd of 18,000 supporters at the Israel lobby, AIPAC’s annual policy conference, that this is a new era for US-Israel relations.

As ISIS loses ground in Syria, the US continues to deploy additional forces in the area. There is no expectation of the war so much ending as the US transitioning to a war against Syria and Iran for control over Syria, something some members of the National Security Council are openly advocating.

America’s long-stated goal of regime change in Syria makes this transition something of an easy sell as part of the narrative, and hawks have been salivating at a shot at fighting Iran so long they’ll likely embrace anything Iran is involved in, much as they have wars like the Saudi War in Yemen, where Iran’s connection is largely a myth.

In backing the rebels in the early part of the Syrian Civil War, the US was rather cynically engaging in a proxy war against Russia, angling for regime change in Russia’s main Mediterranean ally, and the host of their lone Mediterranean base.

Syria’s been a source of tension ever since between the two countries, but as America’s direct ground involvement in Syria increasingly involves attacking government targets, the risk of direct military conflict between the US and Russia, with Syria as the backdrop, is growing precipitously.

US military involvement in Syria long was limited to attacks against ISIS targets, with the occasional attack against al-Qaeda forces in the Syrian northwest. Despite US assurances that strikes a few months ago against a Shi’ite militia in the country’s southeast were a one-time deal, those strikes have grown increasingly common.

Images by Carlos Latuff

Though the details are not yet a matter of public record, US officials are confirming that Saudi Arabia and its allies have prepared a “list of demands” for Qatar related to ending the blockade of the tiny Persian Gulf nation. It is not clear if the Qataris have been given the demands yet, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying he hopes they will be presented with them “soon.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Foreign Minister of Qatar
While we don’t know the content of this list of demands, we do still have the huge list of demands given to Qatar by Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, which may well form the basis for this latest list. This included severing all diplomatic ties with Iran, the permanent shut down of al-Jazeera, and a pledge never publicly contradict any GCC member nations, among other things.

Mr. Lyons pronouncement about a distinct possibility of suicide, not even PROBABILITY, should be enough of a RED FLAG to convince even the true believers that something is rotten in Sacramento. If Gary Webb committed suicide with 2 shots to the head via a .38 caliber pistol, then I've got a nice condo to sell you in Fallujah! But wait, there's more compelling evidence to refute the lie that what we have here is a suicide. And it looks a lot like cotton candy all spin and mostly hot air evidence. Once you bite into it you realize it's a bundle of perception control, mostly innuendo, or black magic designed to conjure a pre-determined picture in your mind, in order to reinforce the BIG lie. Then there's the issue of 2 shots to the head with a .38 caliber pistol.

House Democrats are continuing to block testimony from about a dozen witnesses who sought to appear before the intelligence oversight panel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Congressional officials said one of the key witnesses, former informal adviser to the Trump campaign Carter Page, was scheduled to testify at a closed hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

But Democrats on the committee blocked the testimony, asserting they needed more time to prepare.

"He's the guy that many Democrats have been pointing to as the supposed mastermind and you would think they were interested hearing his story," said one Capitol Hill official.

Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist, expressed his “hope” that President Donald Trump will have a “massive stroke” and be “carted out of the White House on a gurney.”

President Trump wasted no time on Wednesday calling the newly named crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. Less than 24 hours after King Salman elevated Prince Mohammed, his 31-year-old son, Mr. Trump offered congratulations and celebrated the monarchy’s cooperation in rooting out terrorist financing and other issues.

Even more than Karen Handel, the Republican who won a hotly contested House seat in a special election in Georgia this week, Prince Mohammed was Mr. Trump’s anointed candidate — in this case, for the byzantine struggle to control the House of Saud.

THANK YOU to all the Natural News readers and fans who submitted water samples to our lab for ICP-MS testing. Over the last year, we’ve processed over 600 water samples, and we’ve recently updated the 2017 numbers to include the most recent samples. Now, we have 364 water samples in 2017 alone, all tested for heavy metals like copper, arsenic and lead. We’ve also begun including aluminum results, given the very high level of interest in aluminum and its neurotoxicity.

You can view the 2017 water sample test results chart, sorted by zip code, at the following link at the Natural Science Journal:

Using historic footage, dramatic re-enactments and interviews with a cast of fascinating characters – including former CIA and DEA agents, drug traffickers and gang members – the series makes the case that the drug trade has always been entwined in America's military adventures: all the way from the CIA's secret experiments with LSD in the early Cold War, to opium production in Afghanistan during the War on Terror. "We really wanted to do an epic look at the secret history of the war on drugs in America and tell this much bigger story," says Anthony Lappé, who produced the four-part series along with Julian Hobbs and Elli Hakami . "It's almost like the secret history of the last 50 years."

Surprisingly, 165 inches of snow remain at the Summit and 35 inches can be seen at the Main Lodge, according to reports from Mammoth Mountain Ski Area.

Mammoth has announced that it will be open daily for skiing and riding into August. Children aged 12 and under can ride for free through the end of the season.

Since the U.S.-led NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the production of opium in the country has increased by 40 times according to Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, or FSKN, fueling organized crime and widespread death.

The head of the FSKN, Viktor Ivanov, explained the staggering trend at a March U.N. conference on drugs in Afghanistan. Opium growth in Afghanistan increased 18 percent from 131, 000 hectares to 154, 000, according to Ivanov’s estimates.

“Afghan heroin has killed more than one million people worldwide since the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began and over a trillion dollars has been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales,” said Ivanov according to Counter Current News.

And now the six million dollar question. Was Warmbier an Israeli spy? Who knows, but it is likely that someone in North Korea thought he was.

We know that Israel and North Korea are extremely hostile towards each other. North Korea has never recognised the Jewish State and in 1988 it recognised the State of Palestine as including all of Israel. Israel often accuses North Korea of trading arms with Hamas and Syria.

Peculiarly, not a single MSM outlet has referred to Warmbier's ties with Israel. Until his last hours, Israel and the Jewish community kept silent about Warmbier’s Jewish identity, his Zionist affiliation and his visit to Israel. Maybe this silence is more revealing than anything else.

For decades the U.S. government has engaged in a shifting series of alliances of convenience with the world’s largest drug cartels.

The good news for Grassley, and for everyone else, is that starting Sunday night and running through Wednesday the History Channel is showing a new four-part series called “America’s War on Drugs.” Not only is it an important contribution to recent American history, it’s also the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past 50 years.

That core truth is: The war on drugs has always been a pointless sham. For decades the federal government has engaged in a shifting series of alliances of convenience with some of the world’s largest drug cartels. So while the U.S. incarceration rate has quintupled since President Richard Nixon first declared the war on drugs in 1971, top narcotics dealers have simultaneously enjoyed protection at the highest levels of power in America.

Officials tasked with enforcing strict fire regulations didn’t prevent use of material effectively banned on tall buildings

US Senator Rand Paul has spoken out during the debate on war powers, saying that the current wars the US is leading are “illegal,” and that he isn’t “voting to go to war in 50 or 60 countries” where terrorist powers are now based.

The hearing during which Rand Paul spoke out was the latest one in a yearlong string of debates over what to do with the open-ended 9/11 Proclamation on war authorization.

The divide between the members of Congress over the issue has been growing, with some using “this debate for the singular purpose of imposing limitations on our president — it’s just a fact,” according to Republican Senator Bob Corker, while “others may refuse to limit a president at war in any way.”

In the wake of Sunday’s US shoot-down of a Syrian fighter plane and the following day’s warning from Russia that it will treat all American warplanes flying west of the Euphrates River as targets for its surface-to-air missiles, the threat of an armed confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers is now greater than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly 55 years ago.

This threat, which carries with it the grim prospect of the annihilation of humanity, is the product of a calculated escalation on the part of US imperialism.

The national Democratic Party and many liberals have bet heavily on the Russia-gate investigation as a way to oust President Trump from office and to catapult Democrats to victories this year and in 2018, but the gamble appears not to be paying off.

The Democrats’ disappointing loss in a special election to fill a congressional seat in an affluent Atlanta suburb is just the latest indication that the strategy of demonizing Trump and blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat may not be the golden ticket that some Democrats had hoped.

James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, who aspired to end his life as a mass murderer of Republican Congressmen, was a Donald Trump hater and a Bernie Sanders backer.

Like many before him, Hodgkinson was a malevolent man of the hating and hard left.

His planned atrocity failed because two Capitol Hill cops were at that Alexandria baseball field, providing security for House Whip Steve Scalise. Had those cops not been there, a massacre would have ensued with many more dead than the gunman.

On June 21st, ISIS terrorists blew up the Al-Nuri Kabir Mosque in the Old Mosul area in western Mosul. The mosque is located in the center of Old Mosul, the last remaining ISIS stronghold in the Iraqi city. The Al-Nuri Kabir Mosque was the place where ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a ‘Caliphate’ in 2014.

The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq released a statement arguing that a US airstrike destroyed the mosque.

The comments by Zakharova come as the United States last week transferred two high mobility multiple-launch rocket systems from Jordan to the US special operations forces base at Al-Tanf, Sputnik reported.

A conservative group wants to let Montana voters decide whether transgender people must use public restrooms and locker rooms designated for their gender at birth — a move that could thrust the state into the national debate over transgender rights.

The Montana Family Foundation launched its campaign to place the matter on next year’s fall ballot after lawmakers declined to do so.

In what she has called an "all-hands-on-deck moment for our democracy," Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub has inserted herself into the fading 'Russia-did-it' narrative demanding the federal government's probe into alleged Russian influence is widened to foreign companies and internet sites that take political ads, like Facebook or the Drudge Report.

Hospitalizations for opioid related conditions increased by 64 percent between 2005 and 2014

The Trump administration has come under growing pressure to open negotiations on a temporary freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests in return for reducing the American military footprint in the Korean Peninsula, according to American officials and foreign diplomats.

The battle between national sovereignty and globalism is the defining conflict of our era, and at the end of the day, it is assuredly economic in nature

Paris sweet-talks Russia's veteran FM, confirming again that Macron harbors ambition of resetting French-Russian relations

A dramatic drop in U.S.-funded opium eradication efforts in Afghanistan over the last few years is fueling a growing heroin addiction problem afflicting tens of thousands of women and some children in the war-ravaged country, reports the Washington Post (WaPo).

Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has become notorious over the past several weeks for interrupting witnesses testifying on Capitol Hill — or, to her liberal fans, for being “silenced” by her white male Republican colleagues. Now she is turning those confrontation into campaign dollars.

ANGELA MERKEL is to play the patriot card as she makes a desperate bid to cling on to a fourth term in power by displaying the German flag in the face of a growing political challenge from the right.

THE United States’ proposals to slap tariffs on steel imports is hitting Brussels “very hard”, the EU’s trade commissioner has warned.

If you’re German father, and a culture-enricher sexually harasses or molests your daughter, you can’t shoot him. You can’t hit him upside the head with a board. You can’t kick him. And you can’t smack him. If you do, you may expect the full legal force of the Modern Multicultural State to come down hard on you.

About all you can do is say: “Good day, sir. My daughter welcomes refugees. You may have your way with her — please avail yourself of her services. Would you like her little sister, too?”

Russian Deputy Minister of Economic Development Alexey Gruzdev said Wednesday that Moscow renewed intergovernmental cooperation with two-thirds of European Union's member states, despite tensions with Brussels.

Russia views the downing of the Syrian Air Force Su-22 warplane on June 18 by the US-led coalition as disrespect for the United Nations Charter, calling for a thorough investigation, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Thursday.

"The Russian side considers these steps as a flagrant violation of the international law, principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria and disrespect for the UN Charter," Zakharova said.

"The forces of the US-led coalition first destroyed Syrian Su-22 fighter-bomber and then downed its UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle]. While everyone discussed the first incident, they made the second one. It is only too clear that both incidents convey a certain message to Moscow, a close ally of Damascus," Celalettin Yavuz told Sputnik.

Turkey has been concentrating its troops around the Kurdish city of Afrin in Syrian Kurdistan from late Tuesday and is preparing to attack, a spokesman for Kurdish self-defense groups told Sputnik on Wednesday.

Communicating with Israelis may leave one bewildered. Even now when the Israeli Air Force is practicing murder in broad daylight of hundreds of civilians, elderly persons, women and children, the Israeli people manage to convince themselves that they are the real victims in this violent saga.

Experts agree: CNN is the proud owner of the world's most poorly edited news website.

Every day, thousands of geriatrics using dial-up and Netscape Navigator wait 10-15 minutes to load up their favorite website, CNN, only to be immediately bombarded with the sloppiest journalism money can buy.

And unfortunately, today is just like every other day.

CNN has once again outmaneuvered its media competitors with an explosive and extremely inaccurate report about an incident that happened nearly 24 hours ago:

The U.S. mainstream media gushes over Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller as an upright man of the Establishment, ignoring how he oversaw abuses of innocent Arabs after 9/11, reports Jonathan Marshall.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of former prisoners reveals new details
about a program that used techniques widely viewed as torture.

Like other Democrats foisted on voters by party leaders, Ossoff engaged in “me-tooism” to show just how tough – and ignorant – he could be when it comes to the Middle East, particularly the question of Palestine and the Israelis.

The family of a Palestinian man shot dead by Israeli soldiers on Tuesday are rejecting the military’s claim that Bahaa al-Hirbawi, 23, was attempting a stabbing attack when he was slain.

French President Emmanuel Macron signals abandonment of regime change policy saying removal of President Assad from power is no longer France's "priority" which will focus on working with Russia to defeat Jihadi terrorism instead.