If there is a message or mission that they oppose they may be tempted to delist it from their search engine. If Google executives are on the payroll of a specific political campaign, they will be tempted to prioritize certain kinds of information that reinforces their worldview, while suppressing information that challenges it. In order to expand their influence, these Internet gatekeepers will censor and blacklist information that they disagree with.

When Google delisted the entire root domain of NaturalNews.com, including over 140,000 quality health, science and self-reliance articles, the public fired back, denouncing Google’s obvious censorship tactics. Due to the backlash, Google ultimately unblocked Natural News after six days, but questions arose. Was the censorship politically motivated?

Is Google doing favors for some websites while making up reasons to penalize other news organizations that they ideologically oppose? Could it be that Google’s top executives were working for the Clinton campaign – something Natural News stood against? Should Google be regulated as a public utility to prevent future censorship?

However, dissatisfaction with public policy and European Union frustrations will undermine her efforts to stay the course, founding member of the AfD, Frank-Christian Hansel, told CNBC. The latest INSA poll released Tuesday shows the CDU and its sister Christian Social Union (CSU) party gaining 37 percent, a notable lead on the second- and third-largest parties, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which are forecast 25 percent and 10 percent respectively. Still, the CDU will have to form a coalition to gain a parliamentary majority.

"The problems are getting so big with the migration crisis etc that this next government will not be in power for the full four years," Hansel said over the phone, insisting that Merkel's efforts to appease all voters are unsustainable amid rising European pressures.

Polling suggests that the AfD will win above the five percent minimum voter threshold needed to enter into parliament. This will be the first time that a populist right-wing party, which counts a number of right-wing extremists among its members, has done so since the end of World War II. It marks a sudden rise in popularity for the party which launched in just 2013.

Determined to keep a check on Donald Trump’s ambitions in their backyards, Mr Brenton said Russia would “stay close” to Beijing in order to put pressure on America to back down against Kim Jong-un’s warmongering regime. Mr Brenton said: “We are a long way from a real resolution. 

“Russia certainly won’t want war between the US and North Korea. The Russians don’t like the fact North Korea acquired nuclear weapons. They will be keen to find a process to stop this position. They don’t want America to step in and throw the regime off and reignite a Korean War. 

“Russia and China both share a border with North Korea, it’s an unattractive prospect. They will work together to get the temperature down by oppressing America.” Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping last month issued a joint statement in Moscow, where both called for a common peace plan for the peninsula and together condemned US militarisation in the region.

But just six weeks out from the European Union's top economic power and most populous nation going to the polls, Germans are barely taking notice of the election. Even after 12 years in power, Merkel, frequently called the world's most powerful woman and Europe's de facto leader, looks set for a fourth term. Gone are the warnings of her political demise heard at the height of the 2015 refugee influx, when nearly 900,000 asylum seekers entered the country.

Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) lead their closest rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD), by a 12-to-17-point margin, meaning it would take a political earthquake to shift the field at this point. "It is probably the strangest election race in the history of the Federal Republic," Heribert Prantl of the national broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote this week. "There is no wind, never mind a wind of change."

Chancellor Merkel, who has been in power in Germany since 2005, is nearing the end of her third four-year government term. She is the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU), which is allied with its sister party from Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Her present Cabinet is one of a “grand coalition” with her party’s supposed main ideological opponent, the SPD, the German Social Democrat Party.

In 2005-2009, Merkel also ruled in a grand right-left coalition with the SPD, while in 2009-2013, she relied on the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) for running another coalition Cabinet. Based on public opinion polls and recent wins in German provincial elections, she is expected to win a fourth term in the general elections in September, regardless of the criticism of her immigration policy.

The weapon is capable of both hitting deep underground bunkers as well as destroying large surface areas. South Korea's significance for Taurus, based in Germany's Bavaria state, is seen by the fact that the company set up a representative office in Seoul in 2014. In October 2016, 177 cruise missiles were handed over by the firm to the South Koreans. The delivery of 90 more has already been decided.

But cruise missiles were only a part of the armaments bought by South Korea last year. In the first half of 2016, South Korean purchases of German military gear amounted to over 200 million euros, according to German government data.

After studying the plan “for a long time” and having “discussed it” with commanding officers, the North Korean leader ordered the army to be fire-ready should he and the ruling party make the decision to further demonstrate his country’s military power. “If they fire at the United States, it could escalate into a war very quickly,” Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters. He added, however, that if the projectile does not pose any immediate threat it would be up to politicians to decide what to do next.

“War is up to the president, and perhaps up to Congress,” Mattis said. “The bottom line is we will defend the country from attack.” Stressing that US military would know the trajectory of a missile “within moments,” Mattis promised take out any missile that is headed towards Guam. On Monday, the Pentagon made clear that a Pyongyang missile fired at the US would be considered a declaration of war.

Specifically, in a blockbuster report this morning, the NYT alleges that North Korea has been making black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines from a Ukrainian factory citing "expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies."

The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

According to the report, analysts who studied photographs of Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. "The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents."

On June 1, Mr Elleman struck an apprehensive note. He argued that the potent engine clearly hailed from “a different manufacturer than all the other engines that we’ve seen.” Mr Elleman said the North’s diversification into a new line of missile engines was important because it undermined the West’s assumptions about the nation’s missile prowess: “We could be in for surprises.” That is exactly what happened. The first of the North’s two tests in July of a new missile, the Hwasong-14, went a distance sufficient to threaten Alaska, surprising the intelligence community. The second went far enough to reach the West Coast, and perhaps Denver or Chicago.

But the numbers can be stark. Of the nation’s 75 conventional and nuclear B-52s, only about 33 are ready to fly at any given time, according to Air Force statistics. Of the 62 conventional B-1s, only about 25 are ready. With the 20 nuclear B-2 stealth bombers, the number drops further. Seven or eight bombers are available, according to the Air Force.  

“On a nominal basis you don’t have more than single digits of B-2s available to do anything,” said retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dave Deptula, currently the dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace. “If anything good comes out of the North Korea crisis, it should be a wake-up call,” he said.

Despite the reduced numbers, the bombers can still meet the president’s call if needed, said Colonel Robert Lepper, chief of the combat aircraft division at Air Force Global Strike Command. Despite the challenges facing all three airframes, Lepper was confident.  “The bomber fleet is ready,” he said. 

Unusually busy, I’d say,” Orr told WWJ’s Sandra McNeill. “It’s definitely an increase, just in selling all the normal prepper stuff, end of the world stuff. A lot of water prep stuff, food, MREs — the military meals.” And there’s been a substantial increase in the sale of a particular item they don’t sell much of — a so-called radiation antidote called potassium iodide.

As we’ve reported previously, the situation has gotten so serious that the island nation of Guam, recently threatened for annihilation by North Korea, has issued a nuclear emergency guide warning residents to not look at the flash or fireball following a nuclear detonation. President Trump announced Friday that the US military is “locked and loaded,” ready to respond to North Korean aggression.

With panic buying taking hold, it’s only a matter of time before prices for items like gas masks and anti-radiation pills go through the roof. Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, panicked US West coast residents pushed prices for a single package to $200 on auction sites. Under normal circumstances, a package of the FDA approved pills sells for about $20.