On 10 April 2014, the USS Donald Cook entered the waters of the Black Sea and on 12 April a Russian Su-24 tactical bomber flew over the vessel triggering an incident that, according to several media reports, completely demoralized its crew, so much so that the Pentagon issued a protest. The USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) is a 4th generation guided missile destroyer whose key weapons are Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of up to 2,500 kilometers, and capable of carrying nuclear explosives. This ship carries 56 Tomahawk missiles in standard mode, and 96 missiles in attack mode.

The US destroyer is equipped with the most recent Aegis Combat System. It is an integrated naval weapons systems which can link together the missile defense systems of all vessels embedded within the same network, so as to ensure the detection, tracking and destruction of hundreds of targets at the same time. In addition, the USS Donald Cook is equipped with 4 large radars, whose power is comparable to that of several stations. For protection, it carries more than fifty anti-aircraft missiles of various types.

Meanwhile, the Russian Su-24 that buzzed the USS Donald Cook carried neither bombs nor missiles but only a basket mounted under the fuselage, which, according to the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, contained a Russian electronic warfare device called Khibiny.

As the Russian jet approached the US vessel, the electronic device disabled all radars, control circuits, systems, information transmission, etc on board the US destroyer. In other words, the all-powerful Aegis system, now hooked up - or about to be - with the defense systems installed on NATO’s most modern ships was shut down, as turning off the TV set with the remote control. The Russian Su-24 then simulated a missile attack against the USS Donald Cook, which was left literally deaf and blind.

The financial system has failed and remains a threat to us all. Only cheap money and the artificial inflation of asset values can make it appear temporarily healthy. Yet, the Fed (and the Obama Administration) continue to perpetuate the illusion that making the cost of (printed) money zero by any means has had a positive effect on the population at large, when in fact, all that has occurred is a pass-the-debt-ponzi-scheme co-engineered by the Fed and big US bank beneficiaries.

That debt, caught in the crossfires of this central-private bank arrangement, is still doing nothing for American citizens or the broader national or global economy.

After the meeting, Kerry said that a mechanism had been developed to end the violence in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. He was short on details, except to say that it would ensure that the status quo would be maintained at the holy site.

“The status quo is clear and the status quo will be maintained. The prime minister has made it clear that he will uphold that,” Kerry said. “I was pleased that Netanyahu and Abbas made clear their desire to see this situation deescalated and move in the right direction,” Kerry said.

Following the meeting, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said, “His majesty has explained to Kerry that we cannot allow the position of Jerusalem to be undermined, with his majesty emphasizing the importance of the city to Christians and Muslims.”

Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington's strategy against the IS group. While warplanes from a US-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming "moderate" rebel factions to push them back on the ground. Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups now are working together.

IS - the group that has seized nearly a third of Syria and Iraq with a campaign of brutality and beheadings this year - and al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, have fought each other bitterly for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Associated Press reported late last month on signs that the two groups appear to have curtailed their feud with informal local truces. Their new agreement, according to the sources in rebel groups opposed to both IS and Nusra Front, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria.

“This danger does exist and we can't ignore it,” Kissinger said. He warned that ignoring this danger any further may result in a “tragedy,” he told Germany’s Der Spiegel. If the West wants to be “honest,” it should recognize, that it made a “mistake,” he said of the course of action the US and the EU adopted in the Ukrainian conflict.

Europe and the US did not understand the “significance of events” that started with the Ukraine-EU economic negotiations that initially brought about the demonstrations in Kiev last year. Those tensions should have served as a starting point to include Russia in the discussion, he believes.

"Given the challenges, Bank of Russia is creating its own system for transmitting financial messaging… It’s time to hurry up, so in the next few months we will have certain work done. The entire project for transmitting financial messages will be completed in May 2015," said Ramilya Kanafina, deputy head of the national payment system department at the Central Bank of Russia (CBR).

Calls not to use the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system in Russian banks began to grow as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated over sanctions. So far, SWIFT says despite pressure from some Western countries to join the anti-Russian sanctions, it has no intention of doing so.

Well, it turns out that we lied to them. Nearly half of all Millennials are spending at least half of their paychecks to pay off debt, more than 30 percent of them are living with their parents because they can't find decent jobs, and this year the homeownership rate for Millennials sunk to a brand new all-time low. When you break US adults down by age, our long-term economic decline has hit the Millennials the hardest by far.

And yet somehow we expect them to bear the burden of providing Medicare, Social Security and other social welfare benefits to the rest of us as we get older. No wonder there is so much anger and frustration among our young people.

Britain had accepted ‘one of if not the largest population movement in peacetime European history’ and further big influxes would cause ‘huge public disquiet’. ‘It is a matter of numbers. Whereas some European populations are falling, the UK has grown by seven per cent in a decade,’ he added.

Sir John dismissed those in Brussels who insist free movement of labour is a ‘sacrosanct’ principle of the EU. He pointed out that of the EU’s other so-called ‘founding freedoms’, not one is fully honoured. ‘If freedom of movement is immutable, when will member states complete the single market? When will they end closed shops and protectionism, and open their markets to British services?’ he demanded.

Incredibly, their corrupt activities continued for more than a year after the authorities started dishing out an earlier £4 billion in fines for the fixing of Libor interest rates. The illicit dealing was going on even as the big banks told MPs they had got to grips with past misconduct. Furious politicians insisted the culprits should be jailed.

‘They are lying to make money – it’s fraud and someone should go to jail,’ said LibDem MP John Hemming. Andrea Leadsom, a Tory Treasury minister, said: ‘This is absolutely disgusting, I don’t know if corruption is a strong enough word for it. Every taxpayer will be horrified to see that throughout the period of the financial crisis where they were bailing out the financial system, there was a group of foreign exchange traders and other traders who decided they would rig the system to suit their bonuses.’

The FCA said it could not say how many individuals were involved in the scam which lasted from January 2008 to October 2013. But it is widely expected to be more extensive than the Libor interest rate scandal, for which a string of banks including Barclays started to be fined in June 2012. In the latest scandal, RBS failed to act despite receiving complaints from clients about foreign exchange trading as far back as 2010.

George Osborne said the Government would offer its full support to a Serious Fraud Office investigation, which was launched in July but is now expected to be escalated. The Chancellor said: ‘We are absolutely determined to clean up corruption in the City by the few so that financial markets work for everyone and we have a banking system that works for everybody.’

Unfortunately Spitznagel isn’t alone. “We are in a gigantic financial asset bubble,” warns Swiss adviser and fund manager Marc Faber. “It could burst any day.” Faber doesn’t hesitate to put the blame squarely on President Obama’s big-government policies and the Federal Reserve’s risky low-rate policies, which, he says, “penalize the income earners, the savers who save, your parents — why should your parents be forced to speculate in stocks and in real estate and everything under the sun?”

Billion-dollar investor Warren Buffett is rumored to be preparing for a crash as well. The “Warren Buffett Indicator,” also known as the “Total Market Cap to GDP Ratio,” is breaching sell-alert status and a collapse may happen at any moment.

Kerry was due to arrive in Jordan later on Wednesday and have a private dinner with King Abdullah II, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, at which the two men will discuss the simmering tensions in Jerusalem and other regional issues.

She confirmed Kerry was to also meet with Abbas, saying it was "the most likely option" that their talks would be on Thursday. So far no meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been scheduled although Kerry speaks with him "probably almost every day and he'll continue to do that."

Kerry's arrival comes as Israel continues to combat a wave of violence which has gripped Jerusalem for the past four months and has spread to Judea and Samaria, as well as to some Arab towns in northern Israel. Much of the tension has been focused on the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, which has seen numerous clashes instigated by Islamist factions, as Jewish groups continue to campaign for the right to pray there.