Now, it’s Der Spiegel’s turn. The fabled German news magazine’s award-winning reporter Claas Relotius, 33, a legend in his time, replaced facts with fantasy. He quoted people he had not interviewed. He described streets and buildings he had seen on Google Earth only. Painted in exquisite detail, the scenes were nothing more than figments of his imagination.

For Spiegel, which prides itself on having the best fact-checking department in the business, this is Armageddon. To salvage its honor, it has launched a top-to-bottom investigation of the publication, ruthlessly trying to answer the Big Question that tortured the Times and USA Today as well: How could this have happened — and to us, the best of the best?

The issue transcends continents and publications. As Juan Moreno, the colleague who first raised suspicions about Relotius' work, put it in a video interview on Spiegel Online: “People are people, and journalists are people.” Basically, what we tend to forget is that journalists are human beings driven by vanity, pride, and greed for fame and advancement. This may well be true, but then the question becomes: Why did the system set up to corroborate every fact and assertion, every quote and statistic, fail to expose and stop the fake artist?

We need these scandals, embarrassing and awful as they are. They teach journalists that their first responsibility is to facts and the truth. Whatever your politics, some stories are just too good to be true.

The prime minister’s visit came as IAI scientists wrapped up preparations to launch the country’s first spacecraft to the moon, which, if successful, would be a breakthrough for both Israeli technology and commercial space travel. Officials from IAI and SpaceIL told reporters Monday that the landing craft, dubbed Beresheet, or Genesis, is expected to be launched from Cape Canaveral in the coming months, though a precise date has not been set. Organizers are hoping for February.

The spacecraft, which weighs some 585 kilos (1,300 pounds), will be sent via a Falcon 9 rocket from American entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm and will take around a month and a half to arrive. The cost of the project is some $95 million (84 million euros), with private philanthropists providing funding. Non-profit group SpaceIL partnered with IAI to develop the craft.

But back at the very beginning of October, most of the experts never would have imagined that the year would end this way. According to CNBC, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time record high of 26,951.81 in early October, and investors were feeling really good about things at that point. But on Thursday the index closed at just 22,859.60, and that means that the Dow has lost more than 4,000 points in less than three months.

All of the major trend lines have been shattered and all of the key support levels have been breached. When analysts look at stock charts these days, all they are seeing is sell signal after sell signal. This ridiculously absurd stock market bubble was not going to last forever, and now it is imploding at a speed that is absolutely breathtaking. Hopefully things will stabilize a bit as we roll through the holidays, but there is no guarantee that will happen.

The European Commission — the executive branch of the EU — after nearly three years of investigating this, announced today that is suspects four unnamed banks of colluding to manipulate the vast market for US-dollar-denominated government-backed bonds between 2009 and 2015.

“The European Commission has informed four banks of its preliminary view that they have breached EU antitrust rules by colluding, in periods from 2009 to 2015, to distort competition in secondary market trading in the EEA of supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency (SSA) bonds denominated in US Dollars,” the statement said.

The Commission has “concerns” that the four banks “exchanged commercially sensitive information and coordinated on prices…” it said. “These contacts would have taken place mainly through online chatrooms.” Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse confirmed that they are among the four. Clearly, the market sees these European banks as a mess that will remain a mess and has a superb chance of getting a lot messier.

Mr Juncker said: “Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi said in an impressive essay, so impressive that hardly anyone knows him anymore, he said, ‘We in Europe, if we want to avoid war between the European nations, we have to take coal and steel from the national hands and combine them on the European level.’ He was the one who talked about a European union of coal and steel for the first time.

“If only we had listened to him then we would have been spared a lot on this continent!” The Paneuropean Union was formed in 1923 with the vision of a single European state. But then was banned by Adolf Hitler, shortly after the Nazi leader became leader of Germany, but reformed shortly after the end of World War 2.

It was this decision, and that he stuck to it, which finally made him presidential. It is quite refreshing to see that Trump was finally able to liberate himself from the dictate of the borg. By moving the US out of Syria he fulfilled one of his election promises. During his campaign Trump also argued for better relations with Russia. But the borg pushed his policies towards the opposite stand.

Removing the US from Syria is eliminating one issue where Russia and the US were on opposing sides. Could Trump use his newly found backbone to defeat the borg again and to finally work towards better relations with Russia?

The contradiction between the Western attempt to appease Turkey, and the tentatively emergent strategy vis-à-vis Syria had been apparent for some months. It was now set to be resolved – one way or the other.

If the US indeed now follows through with the rapid withdrawal of the American military presence in Syria in its entirety, as a number of news outlets have reported and the president appears to have confirmed, then we have an answer. It means that the US has indeed blinked first, and is set on reversing course in Syria – by embarking on a hurried exit from the country. This will be interpreted by all sides as a strategic defeat, an abandonment, under pressure, of allies and a debacle.

Dakota Bracciale, a 29-year-old transgender/queer witch and co-owner of Catland Books and witch shop in Brooklyn, is pleased with the outcome of the ritual hex placed on US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in October. The curse, carried out from Catland Books, was well attended by witches, atheists ad humanists - and was followed around the country on social media.

Millennials, says Bracciale, are looking for spiritualism outside traditional religion. “The hex centres on the notion that we live in a universe of chaos, entropy, destruction, death, decay with a final ending of oblivion - scientists are telling us. So the witch does everything for themselves - there is no other help in this universe of decay and chaos. If you don’t get in the driver’s seat things will just get worse,” the witch said.

My point is this: the bipartisan interventionist/militarist consensus of centrist Dems and hawkish Republicans has brought only disaster, death, humanitarian crisis, exploding debt and endless war for nearly two decades. For ample evidence see Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc. So, why are we still listening to these folks? Well, partly because the United States is an increasingly militarized (ostensible) republic in which a world-leading domestic arms industry all but owns Congress and the corporate media. Then there’s the matter of Trump - a man that the bipartisan Washington establishment simply loathes. Indeed, The Donald can do no right as far as these folks are concerned. Now, few authors - especially serving on active-duty in the military - have been as (constructively) critical of this president as I have, but occasionally the man demonstrates good sense, especially in foreign affairs. Fairness demands that we recognize this, whatever we think of the president’s general personality.

Let us return, then, to Syria, and take Representative Hoyer’s assessment apart one piece at a time. In point of fact there was nothing particularly "impulsive" about President Trump’s announcement. More than six months ago, in May, he announced that the US military would be withdrawing from Syria "like, very soon." In fact, arguably the only reason American troops have remained in the country as long as they have can be attributed to poor advice from the last "adult-in-the-room," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Candidate Trump ran on a largely anti-interventionist platform, and - during the Obama presidency - regularly tweeted that the US should "stay out" of Syria. So there’s nothing exceptionally impulsive or surprising about Trump’s latest decision on troop withdrawal.

Next, Hoyer called Trump’s decision "irresponsible." But is it, really? One could, in fact, argue the exact opposite. Besides the originally stated mission to defeat ISIS’s physical caliphate - which has essentially been accomplished - ever more expansive, unachievable, and flimsy justifications for a perpetual US troop presence in Syria have begun to creep in. Trump’s own cabinet members, and the usual (perennially wrong) Beltway insiders have alternately argued that America must stay in Syria to check Russia, counter Iran, deter Turkey, protect the Kurds, and on and on. No one, not Trump nor his "grown-up" advisors, seemed capable of articulating a cogent, sustainable strategy or communicating an exit strategy. And military occupation of a sovereign country - sanctioned neither by the US Congress nor the United Nations - ought to be driven by more than policy inertia.

Only that’s become the norm in US Mideast policy. We stay because we don’t know what else to do - remaining not for positivist goals but out of fear of negativist what-ifs. When policy goals are muddled and end-states unclear, now that’s "irresponsible." If Trump’s team can’t enunciate a vital national interest in maintaining a military intervention - which they’ve proven time and again that they can’t - then the president has a duty to pull the plug on the latest forever war.

He pointed at Washington’s intention to walk away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, and its reluctance to negotiate the extension of the 2010 New START agreement, which expires in 2021 unless the two countries agree to extend it. “We are witnessing the breakup of the arms control system,” he said.

Moscow and Washington have been at loggerheads over the INF, which bans an entire class of weapons — all nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles of intermediate range. US officials say Washington’s withdrawal from the pact was prompted by Russian violations of the treaty, which Moscow vehemently denies.