Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his office said in a statement he had agreed to the move. The pullout was "in accordance with the situation on the ground", the statement said. Russia began its campaign of air strikes in Syria last September, tipping the balance in favour of the Syrian government and allowing it to recapture territory from rebels.

Mr Putin is effectively saying "job done" in Syria. He is clear, though, that a Russian air base and a naval base will remain, so this is not a total military pull-out. Coinciding with the Syria peace talks, it is yet another sign of Mr Putin's mastery of diplomatic showmanship.

"Five years ago, if you had asked me about bacteria in your gut playing an important role in your systemic immune response, I probably would have laughed it off," Daniel Chen, head of cancer immunotherapy research at Roche’s Genentech division, said in a phone interview. "Most of us immunologists now believe that there really is an important interaction there."

Two recent studies published in the journal Science have intrigued Chen and others who are developing medicines called immunotherapies that stimulate the body’s ability to fight tumors.

In November, University of Chicago researchers wrote that giving mice Bifidobacterium, which normally resides in the gastrointestinal tract, was as effective as an immunotherapy in controlling the growth of skin cancer. Combining the two practically eliminated tumor growth. In the second study, scientists in France found that some bacterial species activated a response to immunotherapy, which didn’t occur without the microbes.

That’s increased drugmakers’ interest in the human microbiome - the universe of roughly 100 trillion good and bad bacteria, fungi and viruses that live on and inside the body.

In other words, your tax dollars will be used to promote the so-called “benefits” of Monsanto’s GMOs — instead of promoting the devastating impact these vast commodity monocultures, and the toxic chemicals used to grow them, are having on your health, and the health of our entire ecosystem.

And this will all be done at the direction and insistence of the federal government.

If that’s not outrageous, I don’t know what is.

Prominent clerics, including a Church of England bishop, have lent their voices to calls for a reappraisal of the disciple who betrayed Jesus, leading to his crucifixion. The Rt Rev Nick Baines, the Bishop of Leeds, remarked that he feels “a bit sorry” for Judas. He said that the lost apostle, viewed by many Christians as a figure beyond redemption has, he said, had a “lousy press” for the last 2,000 years.

While Judas had long been reviled as “the ultimate traitor”, the truth behind Judas’s decision to hand Jesus over to the religious authorities may, he said, have been decidedly more complicated. One theory is that Judas was a dedicated revolutionary who saw Jesus as a reluctant political messiah and hoped that by handing him over for arrest he could trigger an uprising against Roman rule in Judea.

Kim made the comments as he supervised a successful simulated test of atmospheric re-entry of a ballistic missile that measured the "thermodynamic structural stability of newly-developed heat-resisting materials," KCNA said.

"Declaring that a nuclear warhead explosion test and a test-fire of several kinds of ballistic rockets able to carry nuclear warheads will be conducted in a short time to further enhance the reliance of nuclear attack capability, he (Kim) instructed the relevant section to make prearrangement for them to the last detail," the agency said.

The study was performed on more than 100 boys, many of whom were wards of the state and had been falsely declared "mentally retarded," according to The New York Times. The boys were recruited to join the "Fernald Science Club." They – and their parents, for boys who had parental guardians – were told that they were taking part in a study "in connection with the [MIT] nutrition department" aimed at "helping to improve the nutrition of our children."

In order to make the study sound appealing, the boys and their guardians were told they would be given "a quart of milk daily… taken to a baseball game, to the beach, and to some outside dinners," and that they would "enjoy it greatly." "You had to drink the milk. That was the thing," remembered one participant years later.

Shockingly, the entire point of the study was simply that Quaker Oats wanted to make advertising claims – similar to those made by competitor Cream of Wheat – that the nutrients in their cereal traveled throughout the body. In 1998, MIT and Quaker Oats signed a $1.85 million settlement of a lawsuit by 45 of the victims. The state of Massachusetts also paid $676,000 to 27 participants. Other lawsuits on the case are still pending. Quaker Oats still denies that it had a major role in the study.

"The question is, if they would do this… if they would feed radioactive oatmeal to helpless children and lie to them and their parents about it for years… well, is there anything they wouldn't do?" asked Melissa Dykes, writing for Truthstream Media. "And what other experiments have been done on the public without its knowledge or consent?"

Almost everyone who worked for the government would be a foreigner, and the court would rule against us in almost every case. And every year, the bureaucracy would grab more power and the court would say it was fine, because the court was created to decide in its favor. I don’t think that would be democratic. Of course, I want friendly relations with Canada and Mexico. But I don’t want to run them, or be run by them. I don’t think a regime like that is what we fought for in 1776 — or 1941.

Well, the government I’ve described exists. It’s the European Union, the 28-nation organization that stretches from Finland to Portugal. But the EU may be about to lose a member: on June 23, Britain will hold a national referendum to decide whether it wants to leave. The EU likes to pretend that it’s a United States of Europe in the making. That’s incorrect. Americans were made into a single people by the revolution. After we fought a terrible Civil War, we ultimately decided it was a shared national experience.

That’s what we fought for in 1776 against Britain. Now, it’s British independence that’s at stake. If our principles were true in Philadelphia then, they’re true in London today.

And there’s another reason. The EU was designed to solve 1946’s problems. But it’s now 2016, and Europe has weak economies, uncontrolled immigration, and the undemocratic EU itself. The stodgy establishment EU isn’t solving these problems. It’s feeding them.

Millions of Americans are rebelling against our own top-down political establishment, which creates problems and then pretends to solve them by grabbing power. That’s what the EU does, too. Britain isn’t considering anything radical — just reclaiming the right to govern itself. We fought side by side with the British for that right in 1941. Today, the British struggle for independence from a faraway autocracy is one Americans should understand. For this is 1776 — the other way round.

“In two global conflicts, and throughout the Cold War, the United States has fought for the founding ideals of the republic: that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth. So it is on the face of it a bit peculiar that US government officials should believe that Britain must remain within the EU – a system in which democracy is increasingly undermined.

“There is no country in the world that defends its own sovereignty with such hysterical vigilance as the United States of America. The idea is laughable, and completely alien to American traditions. So why is it essential for Britain to comply with a system that the Americans would themselves reject out of hand? Is it not a blatant case of ‘Do as I say, but not as I do’?”

In a famous 1946 speech delivered at the University of Zurich, Winston Churchill called for the creation of a “United States of Europe” – but without the UK. “In this urgent work, France and Germany must take the lead together,” he said. “Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America, [and the Soviet Union] must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live.”

Today, far from championing Europe’s right to live, the UK is putting it at risk. And, in doing so, it is putting its own economy in greater danger than any time since the end of World War II.

As the continent faces the most difficult challenges it has seen in more than a generation, neither Europe nor the UK can afford such a self-defeating distraction.

Netanyahu has been vehemently opposed to the international deal with Iran which led to the lifting of economic sanctions in January, and his position has put him at odds with US President Barack Obama. A statement from Netanyahu's office said he had instructed the Foreign Ministry to appeal to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany, the powers who negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, to act.

"(The powers) must take immediate punitive steps following the repeated gross transgressions by Iran in the matter of the rockets," the statement said, adding that it would be "a test for the powers' ability to enforce the nuclear agreement."

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander was quoted last week as saying that Iran's medium-range ballistic missiles were designed to be able to hit Israel. "The reason we designed our missiles with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles) is to be able to hit our enemy the Zionist regime from a safe distance," Brigadier-General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by Iran's ISNA news agency.

“Mr Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events,” the George Soros funded MoveOn web page states. “To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough.

MoveOn has consistently functioned as a lobby group for the policies of the Obama administration, including the disaster of Obamacare and the continuation of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the escalation of the war on terror that has turned America into a police and surveillance state. In 2007 it backed a bill trotted out by then Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to continue financing the occupation of Iraq.

The violent demonstration in Chicago on Friday may represent a precursor to the sort of activity the organization will engage in as it tries to “shut down” its political enemies and elect either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. On Friday night many of the protesters shouted “Bernie!” and held placards announcing their support for the socialist Democrat.

They hate us enough to want to completely destroy us, they now have the technological capability of hitting major west coast cities with nukes, and they have an ultra-paranoid young leader with his hand on the trigger.  Meanwhile, we have an increasingly aggressive leader of our own sitting in the White House that seems to like to yank Kim Jong Un’s chain.

If push came to shove, North Korea would attempt to hit American targets with nukes.

Is Barack Obama trying to start a war, and will that war be used as an excuse to stay in office once his term is over?  Late in his second term, Obama is starting to become extremely aggressive with the rest of the world.  He just angered China by sailing an aircraft carrier task force past disputed islands in the South China Sea, he is provoking North Korea by simulating an invasion of that nation during a military exercise that is going to involve more than 300,000 troops, and he is backing Saudi Arabia and Turkey as they make moves that could very well start World War III in the Middle East.  If a war did begin, that could give Obama the excuse that he needs to exercise his emergency powers, and that could potentially include suspending the election that is scheduled for November.

I know that all of this sounds a little bizarre, but it would help to explain Obama’s extremely aggressive behavior lately. For example, why is the US military risking a major incident on the Korean peninsula?

In fact, US consumers accumulated more new credit card debt during the 4th quarter of 2015 than they did during the years of 2009, 2010 and 2011 combined.  That is absolutely insanity, because other than payday loans, credit card debt is just about the worst kind of debt that consumers could possibly go into.  Extremely high rates of interest, combined with severe penalties and fees, can choke the financial life out of almost any family in no time at all.

These days, most Americans use credit cards for various purposes, and they can be very convenient. And if you pay them off every single month, they don’t become a problem. Credit card debt truly is financial poison, and it is not something that you want to have during the hard times that are coming.

Unfortunately, most Americans never learn, and they continue to rack up credit card debt as if there is no tomorrow even as the global economy starts to spiral downhill all around them.

The free e-book is available on art publishing platform e-flux, The Blaze reported. The author, Walling Blackburn, is assistant professor of art at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts and founder of The Anhoek School. 

“Lee is Papa and Mama’s only child for now, although there once was a sister,” the book began. “Where does Sister live now?” 

At one point, Lee explained to his Papa, “Well, she used to live in Mama and doesn’t anymore.” After Papa agreed, Lee reiterated, “She lived before me, but Mama couldn’t keep her. Mama says she is a ghost.” 

When Lee’s Papa asked, “Des that make you sad or scared?” Lee changed his tune. “I’m not sad that my sister is a ghost! If you kept my sister, you would be tired, and sad, and mad!” When his father questioned why, Lee continued:

“Because we would be wild and loud and sometimes we would fight. Mama might be scared that she could not buy enough food for us. Mama might not have enough time to read to me, to paint with me, to play with me, to talk with me…” 

Papa also noted “good reasons” Lee doesn’t have a sister “right here right now.” “Maybe you will have another sister when there is more time, and there is more money,” Papa said.

Saxony-Anhalt - According to exit polls the AfD won almost 23 percent in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, making it the second largest party after the ruling CDU, which managed to win 29 percent.

Rhineland-Palatinate - In the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate the ruling SPD looks set to remain in power, with exit polls putting them at 37.5 per cent. The conservative CDU, led by Julia Klöckner, has lost around three percent, and was reported to stand at 32.5 per cent. The Greens reportedly barely managed to cross the five percent threshhold needed for representation in parliament. Meanwhile, the AfD managed to win around eleven percent.

Baden-Württemberg - According to early figures in Baden-Württemberg the ruling Green Party gained a substantial 32 percent, while the CDU, which ruled the state for almost six decades until 2011, lost a dramatic 11 percent bringing it out to 27.5 percent. The AfD also managed to win 13.1 percent in this state putting in third place before the SPD, currently the junior coalition partner in government, which fell to 13 percent (from 23) in 2011.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere meanwhile had cautioned voters against backing the AfD, saying its call to close the borders "harms our country." "The AfD has no political concept and no competence in terms of finding solutions" to Germany's problems, he told "Die Welt" newspaper.