Lavrov said: We’ve made Americans the proposal announced by President Vladimir Putin yesterday. We suggested that they send a [US] military delegation to Moscow to coordinate a number of joint steps, and after that we could have sent to Washington a top-level delegation led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, [but] … It is sad that our American colleagues in this case in fact do not side with those who fight against terrorism.

Then, on Tuesday October 20th, as CBS News online reported the following day, “The US has told Iraq’s leaders they must choose between ongoing American support in the battle against militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and asking the Russians to intervene instead. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that the Iraqis had promised they would not request any Russian airstrikes or support for the fight against ISIS.”

However, Iraq already had done precisely that — and had even said that Russia seemed more committed to defeating ISIS than America is. The US has made clear, to the Iraqis, that America will do anything to defeat Russia — even abandon the fight against ISIS in Iraq, if need be — and that the US will absolutely not ally with Russia against ISIS, under any circumstances. This makes abundantly clear, to the whole world, that the current American government considers its main enemy to be not jihadists, but Russians.

In the US, on the other hand, we are being led by a weak, ineffective con man in the White House that has just a 45.3 percent approval rating. Under Obama, the federal government seems to be inept at just about everything, and this is especially true when it comes to foreign policy.

It has gotten to the point where it is really embarrassing to be an American. The Russians know this and aren’t afraid to gloat about it. In fact, one Russian commentator even suggested that Barack Obama isn’t “a real man”, and it is hard to argue with that.

And of course what is playing out in Syria right now is the latest example of this. Russia’s bombing campaign has accomplished in just a few weeks what the Obama administration was either unwilling or unable to do in over a year. The success of this campaign has propelled Putin to unprecedented heights of popularity.

Tensions between our two nations are rising, and the Russians are united behind a very strong leader that gets things done and that doesn’t mess around. What have we got? Perhaps we shouldn’t be so arrogant. We don’t exactly have a winning hand.

The FBI, state and local law enforcement and emergency officials, and the energy companies that own the tanks formed a group called the Safety Alliance of Cushing. Soon, guards took up posts along the perimeter of storage facilities and newly installed cameras kept constant surveillance. References to the giant tanks and pipelines were removed from the Cushing Chamber of Commerce website. In 2004, the Safety Alliance simulated a series of emergencies: an explosion, a fire, a hostage situation.

After the shale boom added millions of additional barrels to Cushing, its tanks swelled to a peak hoard of more than 60 million barrels this spring. That's about as much petroleum as the US uses in three days, and it's more than six times the quantity that triggered security concerns after September 11. The Safety Alliance has remained vigilant, even staging tornado simulations after a few close calls.

Now the massive oil stockpile faces an emerging threat: earthquakes. In the past month, a flurry of quakes have hit within a few miles of Cushing, rattling the town and its massive tanks. According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, more than a dozen quakes have registered 3.0 or higher on the Richter scale within a few miles of Cushing since mid-September. The biggest, registering at 4.5, hit about three miles away on October 10.

This is all part of the disturbing rise in earthquakes in Oklahoma, which has corresponded to increased fracking activity and oil production in the state. Since 2008, Oklahoma has gone from averaging fewer than two earthquakes per year that measure at least 3.0 in magnitude to surpassing California as the most seismically active state in the continental US. This year, Oklahoma is on pace to endure close to 1,000 earthquakes. Seismologists believe the quakes are the result of wastewater injection wells used by the fracking industry. For now the threat of quakes has the city on higher alert than the threat of a terror strike.

According to Sechin it’s the United States not OPEC that controls the global oil market. "OPEC is no longer the regulator, its meeting on October 21 [with non-OPEC members] did not bring any decisions," according to Sechin.

Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said shale oil is losing its influence on the world market, and there has been a steady decline in its production in the recent months. According to the minister, dropping prices cause investment outflow. Subsequently, the number of drilling rigs in the United States is also reducing: a year before there were 1600 rigs with about 600 now.

US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed a "cautious measure of optimism" after a four-hour meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin on Thursday about proposals that could help defuse the deadly wave of recent violence in Israel. Kerry, his voice hoarse after an overnight flight and the lengthy talks, told reporters that he planned to raise the proposals with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah in a meeting Saturday in Jordan's capital, Amman.

"I come directly from several hours of conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu and I would characterize that conversation as one that gave me a cautious measure of optimism that there may be some things that maybe in the next couple of days put on the table which would have an impact - I hope," Kerry said. "I don't want to be excessive in stating that, but I am cautiously encouraged."

"I think it’s time for the international community to say clearly to President Abbas: 'Stop spreading lies about Israel'," Netanyahu told Kerry at the beginning of the meeting. "Lies that Israel wants to change the status quo on the Temple Mount, lies that Israel wants to tear down the al-Aqsa Mosque and lies that Israel is executing Palestinians. I think it’s time that the international community told President Abbas to stop the incitement and hold him accountable for his words and his deeds," Netanyahu added.

After being hit with criticism from all directions, the prime minister went back on his comments and clarified, saying on Wednesday, "I had absolutely no intention of absolving Hitler of his diabolical responsibility for the extermination of Europe's Jews. Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution to murder six million, it was his decision. At the same time it is absurd to ignore the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, in encouraging and goading Hitler, Ribbentrop, Himmler and others to exterminate European Jewry."

During a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, the prime minister directed the blame to Abbas, saying, "I think the real question should be directed not at me, but at President Abbas. Why do he, and the Palestinian Authority, glorify, officially, the mufti of Jerusalem as a Palestinian icon? They call him the father of the Palestinian nation. This is a war criminal who was sought for war crimes in Nuremberg. This is a man who collaborated with the Nazis. And yet he is glorified in school books, in texts, as the father of the nation and a figure of emulation."

The three-week gathering, known as a synod, has erupted into a theological slugfest over Pope Francis’s vision of a more-inclusive church, and it has displayed the most bitter and public infighting since the heady days of Catholic reform in the 1960s. Archbishop Tomash Peta of Kazakhstan captured the magnitude of the divide, raising eyebrows — and a few incredulous laughs — as he decried some of the policy changes floated at the meeting as having the scent of “infernal smoke.”

It was just another day at a gathering that, more than any event since Francis began his papacy in 2013, has highlighted how the pontiff’s outreach to once-scorned Catholics has triggered a tug of war for the soul of the Catholic Church. More important, it underscored just how hard it may be for the pope to recast the church in his image. The pushback by traditionalists has been so strong that the chances of fast changes on contentious family issues — whether to offer Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics or to craft more-welcoming language for gays and lesbians — have substantially dimmed, if not died.

As the synod’s end nears, there has been a last-ditch push to find common ground that could at least open the door to policy alterations. But some observers already are comparing Francis to President Obama — a man whose reformist agenda was bogged down by a conservative Congress. “Francis has the same problem that Obama had,” said the Rev Thomas J Reese, a senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. “He promised the world, but Congress wouldn’t let him deliver. If nothing much comes of this synod, I think people will give the pope a pass and blame the bishops for stopping change.”

John Schindler, a security expert and whistleblower who now writes for The Daily Beast, has claimed that a senior EU official from an undisclosed country also inquired about impeachment proceedings, saying that the nation believes Obama is not fit for office.

The wording indicates that the opinion is not that of a single person, but rather the whole government of whichever European country the diplomat is from. According to Schindler’s source, one of the governments of those nations considers Obama to be mentally unstable. Schindler is a former US Naval War College lecturer and is known to have many high level military and government contacts.

In two separate Icelandic Supreme Court and Reykjavik District Court rulings, five top bankers from Landsbankinn and Kaupping — the two largest banks in the country — were found guilty of market manipulation, embezzlement, and breach of fiduciary duties. Most of those convicted have been sentenced to prison for two to five years. The maximum penalty for financial crimes in Iceland is six years, although their Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments to consider expanding sentences beyond the six year maximum.

After the crash in 2008, while congress was giving American banks a $700 billion TARP bailout courtesy of taxpayers, Iceland decided to go in a different direction and enabled their government with financial supervisory authority to take control of the banks as the chaos resulting from the crash unraveled.

When Iceland’s President, Olafur Ragnar Grimmson was asked how the country managed to recover from the global financial disaster, he famously replied, “We were wise enough not to follow the traditional prevailing orthodoxies of the Western financial world in the last 30 years. We introduced currency controls, we let the banks fail, we provided support for the poor, and we didn’t introduce austerity measures like you’re seeing in Europe.”

Meanwhile, in America, not one single banking executive has been charged with a crime related to the 2008 crash and US banks are raking in more than $160 billion in annual profits with little to no regulation in place to avoid another financial catastrophe.

The surprise proposal by Beijing's central bank governor reflects unease about its vast holdings of US government bonds and adds to Chinese pressure to overhaul a global financial system dominated by the dollar and Western governments. Both the United States and the European Union brushed off the idea.

The world economic crisis shows the "inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system," Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said in an essay released Monday by the bank. He recommended creating a currency made up of a basket of global currencies and controlled by the International Monetary Fund and said it would help "to achieve the objective of safeguarding global economic and financial stability."

Zhou did not mention the dollar by name. But in an unusual step, the essay was published in both Chinese and English, making clear it was meant for a foreign audience. China has long been uneasy about relying on the dollar for the bulk of its trade and to store foreign reserves. Premier Wen Jiabao publicly appealed to Washington this month to avoid any response to the crisis that might weaken the dollar and the value of Beijing's estimated $1 trillion in Treasuries and other US government debt.

It’s not just efforts to improve our quality of life at home that will suffer. Billions less will be available for international efforts to combat disease, fight hunger, support economic development or help poor countries deal with climate change.

It’s this reality of America’s tough budgetary outlook that leads me to insist that our wealthy Asian and European allies stop essentially free-riding on American taxpayers — and to argue that my fellow liberals should strongly support (but probably won’t) an increased military role for both Japan and Germany.

The British soldier and diplomat, Hastings Lionel Ismay, once remarked (whilst he was Secretary General of NATO) on the purpose of NATO that it was “to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” Such a mentality may have been justifiable in the past but now, it merely serves to hinder NATO and the fight for freedom for which Germany can potentially be an invaluable and more active ally.

Modern Germans are no more culpable for atrocities committed by the Nazis than modern Britons are for any suffering caused by colonialism, than modern Americans are for slavery, than Russians are for Stalin’s genocide(s), than Chinese are for the catastrophic failings of Mao’s Great Leap Forward or the horror of Tiannanmen Square or Indians are for the acts of Tipu Sultan.

It would also be ideal for the people of Germany to realise that they have nothing to blame themselves for and, though the lessons of history should be remembered, it does not mean that history is doomed to repeat itself; the people of Germany can fight for and defend that which they believe in and love just as we can, if only they choose to.

The Bundeswehr’s duty is to defend the rights and freedom of the German people; who are we and, in fact, who is anyone to stop it? It is time we place genuine trust in the people of Germany. The way in which freedom resonates with humanity is universal and it transcends simple things such as nationality, culture, history and so on; to limit that same impulse by showing a lack of trust in Germany through outdated treaties is a disgrace to those who served “for peace and freedom” (those whom we most publicly honour on Remembrance Day). For the humanitarian vision of the European Union as an institution of peace to succeed (for all its socioeconomic and legal shortcomings), the peoples of Europe need to restore their faith in Germany.

Abbott’s letter references the battle between Texas landowners and the BLM first reported nationally by Breitbart Texas in April, 2014. At that time, then Texas Attorney General Abbott told Breitbart Texas in an exclusive interview, “I am about ready to go to the Red River and raise a ‘Come and Take It’ flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas.” Abbott sent a letter to Kornz on April 22 detailing the concerns over actions taken by the BLM to “swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations.”

The governor reminded Kornz of his previous letters on this issue. “My fellow Texans and I are still waiting for an answer,” Abbott wrote. “The BLM has yet to identify what land the federal government newly claims as its own. The BLM has yet to identify the legal basis for that claim. And the BLM has yet to identify the process by which Texans can protect their land and private property rights.”