Families of five American oil executives being held as part of the 'Citgo Six' say their relatives are living in overcrowded and inhumane Venezuelan jails.

Five American men, from Louisiana and Texas, have been sleeping in cramped cells and been starved since their arrest in Caracas in November 2017, their relatives claim.

The oil company they worked for is in the grip of a power struggle between Maduro and his rival for the presidency, the US-backed Juan Guaido.

A recent picture of one of the executives Tomeu Vadell, whose family live in Texas, shows dramatic weight loss and he appears extremely malnourished.

An American destroyer is sailing to the Black Sea to conduct naval exercises with Ukraine to demonstrate “solidarity” in response to a clash with Russia that has a top U.S. admiral furious.

“The whole episode in the Sea of Azov was extremely bothersome to me,” Admiral James Foggo, commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and Africa, told reporters on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference over the weekend.

Russian forces fired on three Ukrainian naval vessels that attempted to pass through the Kerch Strait, the narrow waterway that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, and arrested the sailors in late November. The maritime incident was the first public act of violence by Russian forces against Ukraine since 2014, when unmarked Russian fighters helped annex Crimea and invade eastern Ukraine. Since the takeover, Moscow has used control of the land on both sides of the waterway to restrict access to key Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov.

It is often stated that those who choose not to vaccinate their children for reasons of conscience endanger the rest of the public, and this is the rationale behind most of the legislation to end vaccine exemptions currently being considered by federal and state legislators country-wide.

You should be aware that the nature of protection afforded by many modern vaccines – and that includes most of the vaccines recommended by the CDC for children – is not consistent with such a statement.

I have outlined below the recommended vaccines that cannot prevent transmission of disease either because they are not designed to prevent the transmission of infection (rather, they are intended to prevent disease symptoms), or because they are for non-communicable diseases.

Almost 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck barely able to afford to put food on the table. That’s terrible news considering the predictions currently assume that grocery prices will steadily continue to rise during 2019.

Grocery prices are expected to rise by 1 percent or 2 percent this year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. It may seem small, but with so many U.S. households already living paycheck to paycheck, it could be just enough to have a real financial impact. Although food prices rose by just a fraction of a percent last year, and that was the first increase in three years, and it looks like prices will rise consistently during 2019, according to WCVB 5, an ABC News affiliate.

A judge may send Roger Stone to jail after Stone posted a photo of the judge on Instagram Monday afternoon with crosshairs in the background next to her head.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over Stone's prosecution in D.C. federal court, scheduled a new hearing Thursday to discuss "why the media contact order entered in this case and/or his conditions of release should not be modified or revoked in light of the posts on his Instagram account." The judge's options include revoking his bail.

Jackson ordered a gag order last week to prevent Stone from speaking to the press about the case. Stone has been out on bail since he was arrested by the FBI in January. He faces seven charges in the Mueller probe, including five counts of lying and one count each of obstruction and witness tampering.

As the Free Thought Project reported last year, 2018 was the year of the snitches as neighbors turned in fellow neighbors to authorities for selling water, lemonade, or for simply being black at your own apartment complex pool. This see something say something society is the wet dream of the authoritarian and as a recent case of a boy selling hot chocolate in Pennsylvania illustrates, it is showing no signs of slowing.

A full court press is taking place in Florida today (Presidents Day) with Republicans, Democrats, expatriates from Cuba and Venezuela and the warmonger ministry of propaganda that constitutes the US media all denouncing Maduro and blaming him for the hardships imposed on Venezuelans by Washington’s sanctions and attacks on Venezuela’s currency.

Even “liberal” NPR is reading off the same fascist warmonger script. NPR managed to report on Venezuela without mentioning the sanctions, without mentioning the theft of Venezuela’s gold foolishly entrusted to the US and British central banks, or the orchestrated protests funded by US-financed NGOs that are small in comparison with the crowds that support Maduro that are never mentioned in the US media. In other words, NPR is just another part of the whorehouse brigade.

Singapore, aiming high for the status of Asia’s unofficial capital, seems like the ideal venue for a conference to discuss how the Middle East could learn a few lessons from ASEAN’s multi-layered relations with China, especially involving partnership in the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

But first, let’s get things straight. The “Middle East” is, of course, a Eurocentric, Orientalist denomination. From Asia’s – and China’s – cultural and geographical point of view, the “Middle East” is correctly seen as Southwest Asia.

It’s enlightening to evaluate two Chinese informed perspectives on how China is deploying its geopolitical soft power across Southwest Asia in contrast to the Trump administration’s immensely muddled strategy.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s interview with Scott Pelley of CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired on Feb. 15.

McCabe played a pivotal role in what has become known as Spygate. He directed the activities of FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, provided an early approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, and was involved in all aspects of the Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the now-infamous “insurance policy” text message sent by Strzok to Lisa Page.

Notably missing from the “60 Minutes” interview was any mention of these and other critical components regarding McCabe’s involvement in the investigation into alleged Trump–Russia collusion.

The United States is lobbying Gulf states to hold off restoring ties with Syria, including the UAE which has moved closer to Damascus to counter the influence of its rival Iran, five sources told Reuters.

The opposing approaches are an early test of whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can gain political and diplomatic credibility after a nearly eight-year civil war turned him into an international pariah.

Many countries cut links with Syria at the start of the war.

Several Gulf states shut or downgraded their embassies, Syria was suspended from the Arab League, flights stopped and border crossings were closed. The United States and other countries imposed economic sanctions.

Washington, backed by Gulf countries Saudi Arabia and Qatar, does not want Syria welcomed back into the international community until a political process to end the war is agreed.

As Brian Stelter and CNN work overtime to pretend that the MSM didn't uncritically promote Jussie Smollett's absurd "hate crime" claim in a giddy rush to frame Trump supporters as violent, journalist Andy Ngo has pushed back.

In a running thread of hate-crime hoaxes that the MSM either uncritically reported - or gave little attention to once the truth came out, Ngo lists hoax after hoax designed to smear conservatives.

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.

Our sudden hostility to China reflects a consensus – at least within the Washington Beltway – that we need to wrestle China to the ground and pin it there. But what are the chances we can do that? What are the consequences of attempting it? Where are we now headed with China?

Realism is out of fashion in Washington even if it’s alive and well elsewhere in America. It should give us pause that our new enemy of choice is a very different, larger, and more dynamic country than any we have unbefriended before. China had a couple of bad centuries. But forty years ago, the Chinese Communist Party and government began to evolve what turned out to be a successful model of economic development that blended state capitalism with free enterprise. This unleashed the entrepreneurial talents of the Chinese people. The results have been staggering.

Researchers studying the brain have stumbled upon a mysterious, previously unknown form of neural communication that has stunned the scientific community.

Despite major scientific breakthroughs, the brain largely remains a mystery, and the team from Case Western Reserve University have added to it with their latest paper on a self-propagating ‘wireless’ communication they encountered that can jump across different sections of the brain.

On Monday, CNN’s Brian Stelter said, “There was a rush to judgment” in the case of Jussie Smollett’s alleged hate crime, but it did not come from media outlets.

“I think it was mostly in the celebrity press and among activists and among Twitter people. I think it was a really careful reporting by news organizations. But it all gets lumped in together at the end of the day,” he said.

With Stelter’s claim thoroughly debunked by our own Caleb Howe, and many others, the CNN media correspondent’s remarks were heavily criticized.

This week, now that the Chicago Police Department has “shifted the trajectory of the investigation” and now believes Jussie Smollett may have faked his own bias attack, we’ll be hearing apologies from a lot of progressive activists, celebrities and politicians.

With three simple words, they’ll disarm their detractors, pour oil on troubled waters. They’ll help to reunify a culture by admitting that sometimes their ideological opponents are correct.

Just kidding. Don’t hold your breath waiting for mea culpas from Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris, or (throwback time!) Al Sharpton, who opined that if Donald Trump simply remained silent on the Smollett matter, it would be sinister. The formerly successful actress Ellen Page blamed the nonexistent assault on … Mike Pence.

ABC’s Good Morning America team went into full damage control mode Monday, after news broke over the weekend that actor Jussie Smollett had allegedly paid two men to stage his assault. Just last Thursday, anchor Robin Roberts had given the actor a softball interview, even refusing to call his story of a Trump supporter assaulting him, “alleged.”

Leading into the report, Roberts finally did call the quickly unraveling story “alleged:”

"A new twist in the Jussie Smollett case. The actor firing back this morning as the story of his alleged attack faces questions. Police in Chicago say they're working to corroborate allegations that Smollett paid two men to stage the assault," she stated.

A major storm will bring snow, rain, ice or a wintry mix to more than 200 million Americans beginning Tuesday, impacting roughly 60 percent of the U.S. population.

Parts of 39 of the 48 contiguous United States will be touched by the massive storm, including every state east of the Mississippi River. The storm will have such an impact on so many because it will reach parts of 26 of the 30 most populous states.

As the large storm rolls up the Eastern Seaboard at midweek, it will bring snow, ice and difficult travel to the Midwest and Northeast.

This latest round of snow gave us a little more than we expected as southeastern Wisconsin is waking up Monday to almost 10 inches of snow in some areas.

Sunday's all-day light snow turned to overnight lake-effect snow along Lake Michigan.

Early snow totals from the National Weather Service office in Sullivan included 9.5 inches in West Allis, 6.5 at Mitchell International, 8 in Pleasant Prairie, 4.6 in Oconomowoc, 7.5 in Racine and 6 in Jackson.

You'll want to get that cleared off the driveway because more is in the forecast overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, perhaps around 2 to 3 inches, plus some freezing rain or freezing drizzle.

Delivering another speech in support of Venezuela regime change during his visit to Miami on Monday, President Trump warned Venezuelan military members will “lose everything,” and find “no safe harbor” anywhere in the world if they continue to defy US expectations.

For weeks, Trump has endorsed opposition leader Juan Guaido as the rightful ruler of Venezuela. In practice, President Maduro remains in power, and still has overwhelming loyalty among the military leadership. Officials have conceded that without a shift in the military, an actual regime change is unlikely.

Which is where Trump’s threats come in. Though some in the administration are arguing Trump was referring to secret Venezuelan military official money stashes worldwide, the reality is that most have little but their future and their lives, and that’s what Trump is saying they’ll lose, reiterating that all options are on the table.

A winter storm moved through Las Vegas Sunday covering the ground with snow and prompted road closures.

Up to two inches of snow accumulated on the western areas of Las Vegas overnight, FOX 5 Vegas reported Monday. The snowy conditions caused traffic issues throughout the area.

Nevada Department of Transportation closed both directions of Interstate 15 between Stateline and St. Rose Parkway Monday morning. Las Vegas Boulevard near I-15 was also closed to traffic.

Over the weekend, Facebook prevented people from sharing two conservative articles on the unraveling case of Empire star Jussie Smollett, which seems to be a hate hoax. Both Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, and Daily Caller reporter Jen Kerns saw their articles censored on Facebook.

"You are not allowed to say on Facebook that Jussie Smollett carried out a hate hoax," Dreher tweeted on Sunday with a screenshot of Facebook blocking his article at The American Conservative.

When he swept into office back in 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised supporters of a Liberal Party reinvigorated by a decade of conservative rule that he would bring about "real change" - both in Ottawa, and for a Liberal Party marred by allegations of corruption.

So far, he has largely failed at both, cozying up to the country's energy industry while masking his maintenance of the pro-business status quo with legalized marijuana and a "progressive" agenda that has included banning misgendering and hiring the first cabinet in Canada's history with an equal number of men and women.

Yet as Canada's leader braces for what promises to be a bruising reelection campaign ahead of a vote in October, his office has been marred by a blossoming scandal surrounding reports that it pressured the former attorney general into dropping years-old corruption charges against Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin, a Canadian construction company with close ties to Trudeau's party.

After a relative lull that was punctuated by a handful of small terror attacks and military exercises along the line of control in divided Kashmir in 2018, tensions between South Asia's two nuclear armed neighbors - India and Pakistan - are escalating once again in the wake of a suicide car bombing that killed 44 Indian paramilitary police officers in the restive border region, the deadliest attack in the three decades of insurgency in Kashmir.

US President's day

Another fascinating weekend… It’s a holiday in the US, and much of UK is off for mid-term. I’m still trying to digest the importance of last week’s news about Amazon pulling out of its New York HQ2 deal in light of protests by liberal lefties. I’m thinking it’s a very interesting moment, and rather changes the game.

How much do current events, like Amazon, change the game of Macro Strategy decisions? In the past the role of strategist was to carefully scrutinise, analyse and conceptualise Central Bank interest decisions, input the available economic data into our calculations, spice it up with some expectations about global trade prospects, and make rosy assumptions about growth and consumption to determine (ie; guess) if stock and bond prices will rise or fall, and therefore what to buy.

Car sales in China continued their relentless descent in January, falling 17.7%, as we recently expected would happen when discussing Europe's tumbling January auto sales. This follows the country's first full year slump (2018) in more than two decades and it puts further pressure on the state of the global automotive market.

The drop marked the eighth monthly retail sales decline in a row and was the biggest one-month drop in seven years.

The Indian government is wary of people – militants and refugees alike - crossing over the border and taking shelter inside the country.

New Delhi (Sputnik) — India has deployed additional Indian Army units in the past few days along its Myanmar border after the threat of militants entering into the Indian side increased.

"A large number of troops have already been deployed in the sensitive area," a source told Sputnik.

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.

For some time, it was assumed that Yulia Tymoshenko would challenge Petro Poroshenko for the Ukrainian presidency in next month’s election. However, out of nowhere, Vladimir Zelensky has now emerged as the frontrunner.

For Ukrainians able to vote in next month’s presidential election, the choice is now pretty clear. There are three options: the incumbent oligarch anti-Russia hardliner, the femme fatale of Kiev’s political scene, or a comedian best known for playing a fictional president in a popular TV drama.

While his candidacy originally inspired much bemusement, nobody’s laughing now at Zelensky. Because the entertainer has surged into a nine-point polling lead with just six weeks left before the big day.

According to Asheley Landrum, assistant professor of science communication at Texas Tech University, all but one of 30 Flat Earthers interviewed said they hadn't considered the Earth to be flat until watching videos promoting the theory on YouTube. Presenting her results at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, Landrum said that most were recommended videos after watching clips about other conspiracies, such as alternative 9/11 theories and fake moon landing theories.

The White House has narrowed down its search for the next United Nations ambassador to four names, according to Bloomberg.

Potential nominees include Dina Powell, a partner at Goldman Sachs; Kelly Craft and Richard Grenell, the current ambassadors to Canada and Germany, respectively; and John James, a former GOP Senate candidate from Michigan, sources told the news service.

The new list of candidates come after State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert withdrew her nomination for the post over the weekend. Nauert, who was reportedly favored by President Trump, was to replace former Ambassador Nikki Haley in the job. Her decision to withdraw followed reports that she once employed a nanny who wasn’t authorized to work in the U.S.

Sometimes, things just all seem to come together. In his 60 Minutes interview, fired former FBI acting director Andrew McCabe threw a ton of shade on Justice Department operative Rod Rosenstein, effectively saying that yes, there was a Deep State coup attempt against President Trump, but Rosenstein Did It. It was all his fault.

In the absence of any smoking gun against President Trump from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, that suggests President Trump's deep state opponents are now turning on each other.

I’ve been going over and over in my head what "missing money" means. Let’s review.

Dr. Mark Skidmore did an analysis of the DoD and HUD budgets from 1998-2015. He and his students found that there were $21 trillion dollars in undocumentable adjustments, for a budget that started out at $271 billion in 1998 and ended at $637 billion in 2015.

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to crack down on hate crimes after neo-Nazis scrawled swastikas on nearly 100 graves at a Jewish Cemetery.

Macron went immediately to the cemetery in Quatzenheim in the Alsace region near Germany, a few hours ahead of nationwide rallies to denounce a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes.

'We shall act, we shall pass laws, we shall punish,' Macron told Jewish leaders while inspecting the 96 tombstones spray-painted with blue and yellow swastikas.

Late last month, Jussie Smollett’s claim about being attacked by two White Trump supporters in MAGA hats in Chicago led Senator and Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris to unleash a stunning tweet calling the attack a “modern day lynching:”

But with Smollett’s story collapsing into a sick, race-baiting hoax, Harris was asked about the tweet on Monday while on her first campaign visit to New Hampshire.

To say she was at a loss for words is an understatement. Kamala short-circuited…

“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, upset after a racist letter sent to the show’s studio didn’t get a “bigger reaction,” is suspected of paying two men to attack him a week later, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.

“When the letter didn’t get enough attention, he concocted the staged attack,” a source told CBS 2 Investigator Brad Edwards. Other sources corroborated that information…

De Mar spoke on the phone exclusively with the Osundairo brothers Monday afternoon. In a joint statement, they said: “We are not racist. We are not homophobic, and we are not anti-Trump. We were born and raised in Chicago and are American citizens.”

Supporters of a measure to cut off U.S. support to Saudi Arabia in Yemen are projecting victory in the coming weeks when the Senate takes up a House-passed resolution.

The Trump administration is expected to ramp up its lobbying against the Yemen war powers resolution as the vote nears in hopes of flipping some of the Republicans who back the measure.

But opponents have few tools at their disposal to stop the resolution, which only needs a simple majority for a procedural vote and subsequent final passage.

Backers say they now have added momentum as the administration’s missteps in handling the Jamal Khashoggi killing have only increased ire at Saudi Arabia.

“I think we’re going to win,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said.

He declined to say whether he expects any Republicans who supported the measure in December to switch their vote.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave his role at the Justice Department by mid-March, a senior DOJ official told Fox News on Monday.

An official announcement of who has been selected to replace Rosenstein could come as early as this week. A Trump administration official added that Attorney General William Barr has picked Jeffrey Rosen, who currently serves as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, to take over for Rosenstein.

Russia’s position on Venezuela is to prevent American-backed regime change, the country’s Foreign Ministry has announced, amid a jostle for power among rival political factions in the crisis-struck Latin American country.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the United States of backing a coup in his country after Washington recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as president. Moscow and Beijing have continued to express support for Maduro, who retains control over key state institutions including the military.

The attorneys general of California, New York, and 14 other states on Monday filed a lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit against the White House's recent national emergency declaration over border security, claiming President Trump has "veered the country toward a constitutional crisis of his own making."

President Trump sarcastically had predicted the lawsuit last week. He's slammed the Ninth Circuit multiple times as "disgraceful" and politically biased.

In a recent interview, CBS News Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan critiqued the international “liberal” media while holding up outlets like Breitbart and Fox News as the opposite side of the coin.

Logan spoke to retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland about a variety of topics on Friday for his Mike Drop podcast (h/t Breitbart), and the conversation eventually turned toward her agreement with Ritland that “the media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S.” As Logan lamented that voter registration among journalists shows that the media is out of balance, she came with a metaphor to explain how she believes the press is tinged by the sameness of opinion.

Combined ticket sales were down sharply even before the worst Presidents Day weekend in 15 years.