Jordan yesterday lodged a protest note with the Israeli foreign ministry, slamming provocative Israeli actions against Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jordanian news agency Petra reported.

Jordan called for Israel to stop its violations of Al-Aqsa’s sanctity immediately.

Meanwhile, spokesman of the Jordanian Foreign Ministry Sufyan Al-Qudah told the German news agency DPA that his ministry had condemned the Israeli occupation’s closure of the Al-Aqsa’s gates and their attacks on worshippers.

Al-Qudah demanded Israel “act in accordance with international law and immediately reopen the gates, respect the sanctity of the holy place, stop hampering the entry of worshippers, withdraw its security forces from Al-Aqsa Mosque and respect the feelings of Muslims.”

There has been more talk recently from the Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians about the option of a confederation as an alternative to the two-state solution in light of the political impasse reached between Ramallah and Tel Aviv. So what are the true positions of the three governments on this option, the chances of this being achieved on the ground, the official reactions of these countries, and public opinion on the matter?

Palestinian-Israeli relations have reached an unprecedented political stalemate because of the stalled negotiations between them since 2014. This may have prompted Palestinians to think outside the box or refer back to old talk of a confederation with the Hashemite Kingdom.

Jamal Khashoggi was working to promote reconciliation between the Saudi and Iranian people prior to his murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October, Middle East Eye can reveal.

In an unfinished opinion article drafted early in 2018 by the exiled Saudi journalist in collaboration with a leading Iranian human rights activist, Khashoggi called for civil society organisations in both countries to be “voices of reason and moderation” even as their governments risked open conflict.

The alleged plot involves Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who told CBS on Sunday night that Rosenstein was "absolutely serious" about covertly wiretapping President Trump.

In a pair of tweets on Monday, US President Donald Trump lashed out at two senior Justice Department officials for allegedly plotting to secretly record him in the Oval Office and gather support for ousting him from power.

"Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by [former Attorney General] Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught," Trump tweeted.

A fourth round of anti-Semitic flyers surfaced Monday in Missoula’s University District.

The flyers featured a disfigured service member with a controversial quote from Rabbi Ovida Yosef that said, “Goyim were born only to serve us.”

Other flyers have referenced circumcision, pictured President Donald Trump with the flag of Israel and said “Jews attack First Amendment.”

David Cox of Har Shalom knows that, although the flyers are hurtful, they are protected.

“There is a line that can be crossed, but as for putting out literature that is hateful or untrue,” he said, “people get to do that because of the free speech amendment.”

The flyers have been found in several spots around Missoula over the last few weeks.

n which country did a senior, state-salaried cleric urge his followers last week to become “warriors”, emulating a group of young men who had murdered a woman of another faith?

The cleric did so with impunity. In fact, he was only echoing other highly placed colleagues who have endorsed a book – again without penalty – urging their disciples to murder babies belonging to other religions.

Where can the head of the clergy call black people “monkeys” and urge the expulsion of other religious communities?

Where are these holy men so feared that women are scrubbed from billboards... and women find themselves literally pushed to the back of the bus?

Where does a clerical elite wield so much power that they alone decide who can marry or get divorced – and are backed by a law that can jail someone who tries to wed without their approval? They can even shut down the national railway system without notice.

Even as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to inspire a military coup against the elected president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, evidence is mounting that the U.S. government is enabling American mercenaries to violently quell a popular uprising in Haiti.

MintPress News previously examined the parallels between the uprising in Haiti and the Yellow Vest movement in France: both explicitly take aim at the economic oligarchy and government austerity policies; both have been the subject of violent crackdowns by the police; and the governments of both countries have gotten a free pass from Washington and its sympathetic media.

Five Americans and three others were arrested in Haiti on Sunday after they were discovered transporting a cache of weapons. Haitians have been engaged in an all-out uprising against the government for the past 10 days.

The Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal involved Lawrence Franklin passing classified documents regarding United States policy towards Iran to Israel. Franklin, a former United States Department of Defense employee, pleaded guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly 13 years of prison, which was later reduced to ten months' house arrest. Franklin passed information to American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy director Steven Rosen and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman, who later were fired by AIPAC. They were later indicted for illegally conspiring to gather and disclose classified national security information to Israel. However, prosecutors later dropped all charges against them without any plea bargain.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on Sunday praised Representative Ilhan Omar’s (D., Minn.) recent endorsement of an anti-Semitic trope and urged the freshman lawmaker not to bow to pressure from critics.

“Ms. Omar from Somalia – she started talking about ‘the Benjamins’ and they are trying to make her apologize. Sweetheart, don’t do that. Pardon me for calling you sweetheart, but you do have a sweet heart. You sure are using it to shake the government up, but you have nothing to apologize for,” Farrakhan said during his annual Saviour’s Day address in Chicago, in comments first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) just inked billions in deals to secure new weapons from top Pentagon contractor Raytheon a week after an Amnesty International investigation further implicated the Gulf nation in war crimes for transferring Western weapons to unaccountable militia groups, thereby deepening the humanitarian crisis and fueling carnage in war-ravaged Yemen.

"Emirati forces receive billions of dollars' worth of arms from Western states and others, only to siphon them off to militias in Yemen that answer to no-one and are known to be committing war crimes."

“If you look at Trump in America and Bolsonaro in Brazil, you see that people want politicians that do what they promise,” said Spanish businessman Juan Carlos Perez Carreno.

The Spaniard was explaining to The New York Times what lay behind the rise of Vox, which the Times calls “Spain’s first far-right party since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975.”

Indeed, the growing impatience of peoples with elected leaders and legislators who cannot or will not act decisively explains two realities of our time: the eclipse of Congress and the rise of autocracy worldwide.

The QAnon community, which began on the message-board site 4chan, strongly overlaps with the support networks of far-right movements such as the EDL and Pegida. Most recently, it co-opted yellow vest demonstrations and boosted hardline Brexit campaigns and Tommy Robinson protests. By injecting conspiratorial narratives into these movements, its members can leverage existing networks and alter their political direction. A commonly used tactic is to combine conspiracist hashtags with those of viral campaigns and trending topics. The scale this generates is disproportional enough to distort public perception: In 2018, ISD identified close to 30m uses of the word “QAnon” across Twitter, YouTube and forums such as Reddit and 4chan.

Not one.

Not a single one.

Of all the media outlets in Kansas City, none dared show a picture of Barbara Harper. In not one of the local news affiliate broadcast (ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC) did a newscast show her face when they described how she died.

Not one.

Not a single one.

White people are on the point of extinction. If you say anything about it, you are labeled a “white supremacist.” Black lives matter, but not white lives.

We this, for example, in South Africa where white farmers are being massacred under the slogan “land or death” by blacks whose forebears arrived in South Africa after the forebears of the white farmers. The line is that the whites stole the blacks’ land and that Africa is black and, thereby, reserved for blacks. Whites are unwanted illegal immigrants.

If the roles were reversed and it was whites massacring blacks, the white media in the Western world would be shrill in its condemnation of the whites. As it is blacks massacring whites, there is not a peep. The only way you can learn about it is to read English language Russian Internet sites.

Only Russia has offered South African whites refuge. The US, Europe, and Canada are overflowing with non-white immigrants but have no room for white ones.

Jussie Smollett paid two brothers to stage an attack against him, directed them to buy items used in the alleged assault and actually rehearsed it with them, sources say.

Sources say at least one of the brothers bought the rope used in the incident at Smollett’s request. The sources also say the “Empire” actor paid for the rope, which was purchased at the Crafty Beaver Hardware Store in the Ravenswood neighborhood the weekend of Jan. 25.

The brothers, who were questioned by police this week before being released, were paid $3,500 before leaving for Nigeria and were promised an additional $500 upon their return.

Washington’s political establishment went berserk when US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) publicly noted that US-Israel relations are “all about the Benjamins” – slang for $100 bills, referring to money shoveled at American politicians by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Omar was accused of antisemitism – immediately by Republicans, shortly after by members of her own party – and bullied into apologizing. She may or may not be prejudiced against Jews, but even if she is, that wasn’t her real offense.

Her real offense was publicly mentioning the irrefutable fact that many members of Congress take their marching orders from a foreign power’s lobbying apparatus (an apparatus not, as required by law, registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act), at least partly because those marching orders come with promises of significant donations to those politicians’ campaigns.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday warned members of Venezuela's military who remain loyal to socialist President Nicolas Maduro that they are risking their future and their lives and urged them to allow humanitarian aid into the country.

Speaking to a cheering crowd mostly of Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants in Miami, Trump said if the Venezuelan military continues supporting Maduro, "you will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You’ll lose everything.”

Maduro retaliated late on Monday that Trump's speech was "nazi-style" and said he acted as if he were the owner of Venezuela and its citizens his slaves.

Facebook has suspended a number of accounts linked to Maffick Media following a report by CNN claimed the group is secretly linked with the Russian government. Maffick Media is based in Germany, and while it is partly owned by a Russian subsidiary, the company says it has full editorial independence.

CNN noted Maffick’s part-ownership by Ruptly, a Russian state media subsidiary, and accused them of not disclosing this ownership on Facebook, even though Facebook had never required any such disclosure, and no one is even accusing Maffick of spreading any disinformation on the pages.

Public documents show Maffick is 51% owned by Ruptly, a Germany-based news agency which is itself owned by Russia’s state television station RT.

Despite this, Facebook responded to the CNN report by taking down Maffick’s pages, accusing them of misleading the public “about who’s behind them,” and that in the future they will ask these pages to disclose “their Russian affiliations.”

One thing that should be said about Representative Ilhan Omar’s tweet about the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (more commonly known as AIPAC, or the “Israel lobby”) is that the hysterical reaction to it proved her main point: The power of AIPAC over members of Congress is literally awesome, although not in a good way. Has anyone ever seen so many members of Congress, of both parties, running to the microphones and sending out press releases to denounce one first-termer for criticizing the power of… a lobby?

Somehow, I don’t think the reaction would have been the same if she had tweeted that Congress still supports the ethanol subsidy because the American Farm Bureau and other components of the corn/ethanol lobby spend millions to keep this agribusiness bonanza going (which they do). Or that if she had opposed the ethanol subsidy, she would have been accused of hating farmers.

Disgraced former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe has provided clear evidence that in 2017 a small cabal of high-level officials inside the Department of Justice (DOJ) weighed whether to attempt to remove the duly-elected president of the United States. McCabe claims that he and others at the top of the FBI and DOJ held multiple discussions about invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to declare President Trump unfit for office and install the vice president in his place.

Is this proof that a rolling bloodless coup really existed within the government? McCabe himself previously provided false information to the DOJ, for which he was unceremoniously fired, rendering any statements he now makes while promoting his book highly suspect. But, given the underpinnings of the entire Russia collusion investigation and what we know now about its early steps, McCabe’s statements ring disturbingly true.

In the process of continuing work to secure the liberated areas in Damascus Countryside, the authorities found large quantities of weapons and ammunition including US and Israeli-made rockets.

A source told SANA that while the engineering units were combing areas liberated from terrorism in Damascus Countryside, the authorities found American and Israeli-made rockets, in addition to large quantities of ammunition, shells and various types of medium and light weapons hidden in underground warehouses.

Commissioner of the International Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in the Middle East Haitham Abu Said affirmed the US’s involvement in smuggling and transporting terrorists from Raqqa countryside and others areas in northern Syria to countries in Africa , in collaboration with the Turkish regime’s army.

Nineteen Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were wounded on Sunday during clashes in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army and Palestinian medical sources said.

"IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldier injured when an explosive device was thrown during Gaza riots on Israel's border fence," the army said on Twitter.

It added that Israeli tanks struck "two Hamas military posts in Gaza in response to the explosive device".

In Gaza, the health ministry of the Islamist Hamas movement that runs the enclave said 19 Palestinians were wounded by live ammunition during the clashes.

Poland's prime minister canceled plans for his country to send a delegation to meeting in Jerusalem on Monday after the acting Israeli foreign minister said that Poles "collaborated with the Nazis" and "sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk."

The Polish pullout triggered the collapse of a planned summit of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with leaders of four Central European nations known as the Visegrad group.

Seven MPs have resigned from the Labour Party in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's approach to Brexit and anti-Semitism.

They are: Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes, Gavin Shuker and Ann Coffey.

Ms Berger said Labour had become institutionally anti-Semitic and she was "embarrassed and ashamed" to stay.

Mr Corbyn said he was "disappointed" the MPs had felt unable to continue working for the policies that "inspired millions" at the 2017 election.

George Galloway says he has formally asked the Labour Party to let him rejoin after his “ridiculous expulsion” by Tony Blair over his opposition to the Gulf War.

The former Labour MP revealed his application in a nine-minute-long video commenting not only on his hopes for the future of the Labour Party, but criticising the party’s breakaway MPs, dubbing them the ‘Seven Dwarfs’.

British lawmakers have accused Facebook of behaving like "digital gangsters", abusing its dominant power in social networks, and behaving "ahead of and beyond the law."

The comments come in a devastating report on fake news by British Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, made up of cross-party UK politicians and led by Conservative MP Damian Collins.

Facebook deliberately flouted privacy and competition laws and should be subject to new regulation, the committee wrote.

Lawmakers accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of showing "contempt" for UK Parliament, and a larger gathering of international parliaments after he refused to give evidence three times.

In September of last year, we noted that Facebook representatives were meeting with the Israeli Government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constitute “incitement.” The meetings – called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, its pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked – came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.

A school running a community arts center in Ohio was forced to stop advertising a party game where kids are instructed to ‘eliminate’ the president with toy guns, after it sparked national outrage.
The game entitled ‘President’ had been advertised as a part of Nerf gun-themed party organized by the Olmsted Performing Arts community center in Berea, a suburb of Cleveland.

“There is one president with body guards. Everyone else tries to eliminate or shoot the president,” read the description of the game on the center’s website, since deleted.

OHIO COMMUNITY CENTER Offers “SHOOT THE PRESIDENT” Birthday Party Package On Website https://t.co/D4x6YTsbrWpic.twitter.com/W7umxrkaiv

— Earl Pearl (@EarlPdxPearl) February 17, 2019

CNN went in search for a story about a Russian-funded digital media project that produces viral videos aimed at undermining American democracy. When CNN journalists could not find what they were looking for, they effectively manufactured the news by giving Facebook a pretext for removing the project’s pages used to share videos. Now, the cable news network had their story.

Four CNN journalists worked on the report, “Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American millennials.” It appeared online late in the day on February 15 and broke the news that Maffick Media had their Facebook pages for three video channels suspended.

Maffick also produces In The Now, which Facebook took down as well.

Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe tells 60 Minutes about taking over for James Comey, starting investigations of President Trump, interactions with the president and his own firing

Rand Corporation's Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) no longer uses the term "Countering Violent Extremism" (CVE) it has been replaced with "Terrorism Prevention."

Let that sink in for a moment, a private company with strong ties to DHS and law enforcement is in charge of Terrorism Prevention!

What could possibly go wrong?

The RAND Corporation's 259 page report titled, "Practical Terrorism Prevention" boasts that their federally funded research will help law enforcement determine who is an extremist.

"The report presents a framework to consider different facets of terrorism prevention policy, issues with measurement and assessment, analysis of past CVE and current terrorism prevention funding in the United States and internationally, and assessments of current efforts and future options for each component of terrorism prevention."

SOURCE: THE DURAN
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation:

Moscow and Beijing, following a complex relationship from the period of the Cold War, have managed to achieve a confluence of interests in their grand objectives over the coming years. The understanding they have come to mainly revolves around stemming the chaos Washington has unleashed on the world.

The guiding principle of the US military-intelligence apparatus is that if a country cannot be controlled (such as Iraq following the 2003 invasion), then it has to be destroyed in order to save it from falling into Sino-Russian camp. This is what the United States has attempted to do with Syria, and what it intends to do with Venezuela.

Originally published at WhoWhatWhy.org

In August 2018, Saudi Arabia expelled the Canadian ambassador in Riyadh, halted direct flights to Toronto, suspended new trade deals, and threatened to relocate thousands of Saudis studying in Canada.

The diplomatic fallout was all because Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland tweeted her concern for a Saudi activist, Samar Badawi, who was arrested for her human rights advocacy in the Kingdom.

Very alarmed to learn that Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi’s sister, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time, and we continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi.

— Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland) August 2, 2018
The social media post, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in response, was an “overt and blatant interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom” and violated “the most basic international norms.”

“Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws” – Baron M.A. Rothschild

For over a decade, under multiple administrations, the U.S. government had a secret agreement with the ruthless Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to operate with impunity, an in-depth investigation by a leading Mexican newspaper confirmed this week. In exchange for information and assistance in quashing competing criminal syndicates, the Bush and Obama administrations let the Sinaloa cartel import tons of drugs into the United States while wiping out Sinaloa competitors and ensuring that its leaders would not be prosecuted for their long list of major crimes. Other revelations also point strongly to massive but clandestine U.S. government involvement in drug trafficking.

“An anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.”– Joe Sobran

The new portable Russian anti-tank systems being developed can be a major problem for NATO tanks.

The new missile launcher system can be considered a response to North American systems Javelin, in addition, can become a true “killer” of tanks, says Colonel Roman Borisovich Spirin of the Russian Ministry of Defense, according to The magazine National Interest .

Charlie Gao, the author of the article, points out that the developers are aiming to increase the penetration capacity of the new missile, resistance to interference and destruction capability of armor, such as the NATO M1A2C Abrams.

“The new missile system is innovative because it operates based on the principle of ‘fired, forgot’,” according to Gao.

President of Ukraine Poroshenko during a speech at the Munich Security Conference said that Ukraine does not intend to stop shelling the republics of Donbass, because if Kiev ceases firing, the Ukrainian state will cease to exist.
“If Russia stops shooting, there will be peace. If Ukraine stops shooting, there will not be Ukraine,” Poroshenko said.

In this he maintains what we have called the Volker Doctrine, after US Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, who insists that the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics do not exist and the only entity to talk to — is Russia. And it is not a civil war, but purely “Russian Aggression.”

At the same time, he described the political and economic situation in Ukraine as a “success story.”
Poroshenko also boasted that during his presidency in Ukraine “the most profound reforms in the history of the country” were carried out. The day before, Poroshenko ordered to come up with “evidence of Russia’s aggression” to use in his speech in Munich.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the European project failed to provide security and prosperity for the continent while the European Union (EU) is wasting its energies to confront Russia to please Washington.

“A unified Europe has not yet been built,” Lavrov said in his speech at the Munich Security Conference. “Everyday issues – from eradicating terrorism to steady economic growth – have not been addressed with adequate solutions.”

Instead, the Russian diplomat said that Europe has enjoyed being a “follower” of Washington’s “lead” while pursuing a “NATO-centered” foreign policy.

British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson said the United Kingdom intends to strengthen the military presence in the Arctic to “protect” NATO’s northern flank from Russia’s actions, according to The Telegraph.

According to the newspaper, more than 1,000 British Navy marines will conduct annual training with Norwegian colleagues as part of a 10-year program, forming a new detachment in the near future, Williamson said during a visit to the military base in Bardufoss, Norway.

The British minister also mentioned that the United Kingdom will send to the Arctic region next year a Poseidon P8 maritime patrol plane to monitor the growing activity of Russian submarines.

Major banks on the Continent will be able to carry on using London for £60 trillion of crucial trading activity even if there is a No Deal Brexit.

Large lenders inside the European Union have been given permission by Brussels to continue accessing so-called clearing houses in the City for a year after we leave.

These clearing houses allow banks to trade complicated derivatives which underpin vital lending to households and businesses.

Sadiq Khan's oversight of the Crossrail fiasco was called into question today as secret documents revealed his spin doctors were drafting crisis plans almost a fortnight before the date on which he claims he discovered the line would not open on time.

Documents obtained by the Evening Standard under Freedom of Information laws show the first of 10 draft press releases, announcing the axing of last December’s royal opening, were sent by Crossrail to Transport for London on August 17 last year.

This was 12 days before the Mayor says he was told the cross-London rail line could not open as planned.

The BBC is in a mess. The brand is arguably already damaged beyond repair yet the broadcaster seems unable to change tack.

According to some analysts trust in brands is declining and has been for some time. It would appear that when it comes to slogans and promises the twenty first century customer is much more discerning than their predecessors, more demanding, less compliant. We’ve become sceptical. Experience has shown that all too often reality fails to match the rhetoric.

How to win back trust once it has eroded? Is it even possible to win it back? When Jewellery impresario Gerald Ratner mocked his own products back in the 1990s trust evaporated immediately. It was commercial suicide. The brand never recovered, nor did Ratner.

Taking over the annual Munich security conference, the Atlantic Council has come out with a declaration of principles that seeks to legitimize the rogue behavior of the West after the Cold War as a ‘rules-based’ world order.

For almost three decades now, Washington and its numerous clients and allies have insisted they were only upholding a “rules-based international order” against those who seek to challenge it, be it “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran or great powers such as Russia and China. In the process, this self-styled “international community” trampled actual rules and laws to sanction, bomb, invade, occupy and regime-change countries that stood in its way – while claiming to be acting in the interests of the peace, democracy and commerce.

A group of seven foreigners and one local were apprehended by Haitian authorities amid violent unrest in the nation. The suspects, who allegedly have military backgrounds, were equipped with an arsenal of guns and even drones.

The group was apprehended on Sunday in the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince, shortly after leaving the Bank of Haiti, local newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported.

The suspects, traveling in two vehicles without license plates, were well-equipped with military-grade weapons, body armor and even drones. They had several sets of plates with them, but it was unclear if they were genuine or fake. The individuals initially refused to leave their vehicles, reportedly claiming they had been working “for the Haitian government.”

Earlier, President Trump urged the US' British, French, German and other European allies to take back over 800 terrorist militants captured by the US and its allies in Syria and bring them to justice, warning that alternatively, Washington could "be forced to release them."

French Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet ignored President Trump veiled threat to release European ex-Daesh fighters back onto European soil.

"There is a new geopolitical context, with the US withdrawal. For the time being, we are not changing our policy," Belloubet said, speaking to France 2 TV on Monday.

"At this stage France is not responding to [Trump's] demands," she added, noting that Paris would stick to its policy of repatriation of French nationals from Syria and Iraq on a "case by case" basis."

At least 2030 recipients of Centrelink's basic human services in Australia died over a two-year period following the initiation of a ‘robo-debt' machine-automation program to address discrepancies in income support payment data.

According to reports, after Canberra placed much of its human services branch into the digital realm, hundreds of thousands of resource recipients — particularly those considered to be psychologically ‘at-risk' — mistakenly received letters between July 2016 and October 2018 demanding new proofs for payment eligibility, resulting in the deaths of over 2030 people, cited by Abc.net.au.

Canberra's Centrelink program supplies income support and many other services including healthcare to pensioners, indigenous Australians, military veterans, students and families with small children, among many other social groups. An estimated 5.1 million people were noted to depend upon one or another of the services, according to the most recent data.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders launched his second campaign for president on Tuesday with an all-out assault against Donald Trump, entering an already crowded field in the hope of improving on his second-place finish to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

'You know as well as I do that we are living in a pivotal and dangerous moment in American history,' the 77-year-old said in a more than 10-minute-long launch video.

'We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction.'

Sanders called for 1 million Americans to help him turn Trump into a one-term president.

A former North Korean diplomat says leader Kim Jong Un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons and sees his upcoming second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump as a chance to cement his country's status as a nuclear weapons state.

Thae Yong Ho, who defected to South Korea in 2016, said in a news conference in Seoul on Tuesday that next week's meeting in Vietnam will be a failure if Trump can't get Kim to declare he will abandon all of his nuclear facilities and weapons and return North Korea to the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

Thae worked as a minster at the North Korean Embassy in London before fleeing to South Korea. He is the highest-level North Korean diplomat to defect to the South.

In a rice field in northern Vietnam, 14 headstones are an enduring symbol of the wartime friendship of Vietnam and North Korea.

They mark the original burial ground of North Korean pilots who died while secretly fighting alongside Vietnamese comrades against U.S. Air Force and Navy planes during the Vietnam War.

The role of North Korea is a footnote in the sweeping history of that conflict, one that speaks mostly of the fraternal relations of two nations that separately fought bruising armed conflicts against the United States in the context of the Cold War.

Decades later, the communist nations' friendship is apparent as Vietnam gets ready to host a summit of the North Korean and U.S. leaders later this month.

Famed 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan has broken ranks with mainstream media, claiming news outlets are now 'mostly liberal' and have become ‘propagandists’ while covering President Trump.

The South African-born foreign affairs journalist said that most of the American press is biased against Trump because journalists are overwhelmingly Democrats.

‘You say the media is mostly liberal,’ Logan told Mike Ritland on his Mike Drop podcast.

‘I agree with you. It’s true. Why can I say that with certainty?

‘Well first of all I’ve been part of this for all my life, I’m 47 now and I’ve been a journalist since I was 17 and the media everywhere is mostly liberal not just in the U.S, but in this country 85 percent of journalists are registered Democrats so that’s just a fact.’

A huge statue of President Trump dressed as a Warhammer warrior with Twitter birds on his sword and the head of Vladimir Putin on his shoulder has been unveiled in Italy.

Covered in golden armour and wearing a gold leaf crown, the gigantic effigy brandished a huge claw hand with long talons and a Twitter-themed blade.

As it moved through the streets the animated Caesar-like figure turned from side-to-side and moved its arms, as people stood at its feet waving US flags.

The famous Las Vegas strip was covered in white on Sunday night as snow covered the desert city for the first time in a decade.

Weather warnings for the desert region were issued as residents and tourists took to social media to share the stunning scenes.

Although there had been a flurry ten days ago this was the first measurable snow in over a decade.

Israeli forces expelled a Palestinian family from their home in the Muslim Quarter of occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday and handed it to Jewish settlers.

The Abu Asab family received eviction orders earlier this month demanding they vacate the building by 12 February.

Hatem Abu Asab was able to postpone his family’s expulsion until 28 February through his lawyers, but Israeli police paid no heed.

On Sunday, with no prior warning, Israeli forces surrounded the house and blocked the road leading to it, eyewitnesses told Wattan TV.

They then stormed the house to forcibly evacuate it and prevented family members from collecting their belongings.

“They destroyed me. They destroyed my life. They took everything I own here. My entire life is here,” Rania Abu Asab said in a video after she was kicked out of her house.

“They did not give us time to organize our things. They came in barbarically, attacked my husband, attacked my children and beat my aunt,” she added.

Israel’s freezing of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenue will cause the dire situation in Gaza to deteriorate even further, Al Mezan, a human rights group in the territory, warned on Monday.

Thousands of civil servants in the coastal enclave, its population of two million plunged into poverty after more than a decade of economic blockade, have already had to contend with salary cuts and late payments due to “discrimination” by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Now Israel is planning to withhold some $138 million in taxes it collects on behalf of the PA as a form of sanctions over stipends to political prisoners.

Jewish Canadians are deeply divided in their opinions on Israel, and many are highly critical of it. Moreover, a majority does not see criticism of Israel as necessarily anti-Semitic.

Those are key findings of the first survey to ask Jewish Canadians about their views on the situation in Palestine.

The deputy director of the Ukrainian Institute of World Politics, Beleskov, on Monday, February 18, at a press conference in Kiev, said that the Ukrainian fleet needed missile systems to deliver ground strikes, as Russia “saturated the Crimea with equipment” that gave the queue “devalues ??the maritime component”, reports “Tsargrad”.

“Otherwise, Russia will have a big trump card in its hands,” he noted.

Beleskov also expressed the hope that the fleet of Ukraine would be equipped with land-based anti-missile anti-missile complexes in 2020. In addition, the expert recalled that over the past five years, the Ukrainian Navy has been learning to fight against Russia along with ships from NATO countries.

An article in a local Minneapolis/St. Paul newspaper reported Tuesday that Jewish leaders in Minnesota had spoken to Omar about her views last year — and that she failed to learn anything,” reports Breitbart.

A powerful storm that began its journey Sunday in California will roar across the country over the next two to three days, spreading heavy snow, torrential rain and crippling ice to more than 200 million Americans.

That's about 60 percent of the population, AccuWeather said. "Parts of 39 of the 48 contiguous United States will be touched by the massive storm, including every state east of the Mississippi River," AccuWeather meteorologist Faith Eherts said.

On Monday, the storm aimed its fury on the southern Rockies. As much as a foot of snow fell in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

By Tuesday, the storm will spread heavy snow and strong winds into the central U.S., the National Weather Service said.

Gary Martin took a gun into work Friday, a pistol he didn't legally own.