"Baghdadi has committed suicide in a tunnel. We have caught his wife in Syria, but we have made no noise of it. I'm now announcing this for the first time. We have also caught his sister and her husband," Erdogan said in an address in Ankara.

"Al-Baghdadi's close circle is paying a lot of attention to our country. We recently captured his sister's husband and their child in [Syria's] Azaz, and sent them to migration camps. Let's see what decision our Ministry of Justice will make. His wife has been in our hands for 1-1.5 years. It will be the same process. The number of [al-Baghdadi's relatives detained by Turkey] is already in the double digits", Erdogan told reporters.

He added that together with the wife of the killed Daesh leader, a child, whose kinship to al-Baghdadi was proved by DNA analysis, had been detained.

Later, he specified the exact number of al-Baghdadi' associates and relatives apprehended by the country's security forces.

"We now have 13 people from his inner circle", the Turkish president said.

Eight and a half years ago when the war on Syria began, Turkey played the most important role. Weapons were smuggled from Libya through Turkey to be delivered to 'Syrian rebels'. Over the years tens of thousands of foreign Jihadis traveled through Turkey to join the various groups fighting against the Syrian government. After the Islamic State came into existence even more followed.

When the U.S. changed course and started to fight ISIS it urged Turkey to clamp down on the stream of fresh fighters. Turkey did so to some extent after several ISIS bombings killed dozens within Turkey. But recent events show that Turkey still does not see ISIS as an adversary. Nor do ISIS leaders fear Turkish authorities.

After being shamed over its willful negligence towards ISIS assets in areas it controls Turkey took some diversionary steps.

On November 1 it captured the Belgian Islamic State member Fatima Benmezian in Kilis, Turkey. Benmezian had escaped from a refugee camp in northeastern Syria a few weeks ago when it was bombed by Turkey.

On November 4 Turkish forces captured the sister of Baghdadi, Rasmiya Awad, alongside her husband and daughter-in-law. They were living in a container trailer near the town of Azaz in Aleppo province. Azaz is only a few kilometers south of Kilis and under Turkish control.

Today Turkey claimed that it had captured another wife of Baghdadi but it did not say where she was found.

None of those persons Turkey nabbed have any operational value. They are expendables.

But it is really remarkable that all these ISIS persons happened to live in Turkish controlled areas near Turkish border crossings. Are we to believe that they had chosen an area where no other ISIS members are around? It is quite more likely that there are many more ISIS members who are now living in those border areas of Syria which are more or less under Turkish control.

Sorry, but Robach's response to the firestorm doesn't square with her initial comments, in which she states that "Roberts had pictures, she had everything . . . it was unbelievable what we had. [Bill] Clinton, we had everything."

"Everything" sure sounds like sufficient corroborating evidence. Even if employing the most scrupulous journalistic standards, a giant news organization wouldn't need three years to substantiate — or dismiss — a story with pictures, dates, and a credible witness.

We certainly know that ABC didn't need "everything" — or much of anything, for that matter - when it was running scores of pieces online and on television, highlighting every risible accusation against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

I'm not even talking about the prime accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, whose allegations still haven't been corroborated, but rather about someone such as Julie Swetnick, who was all over the ABC News at the height of the confirmation battle. Swetnick accused Kavanaugh not only of sexual assault but also of being present at parties where women were being drugged and "gang raped." She wasn't even remotely credible.

Yet here is Robach's colleague, former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos, meeting ABC's editorial standards by allowing Swetnick's shyster lawyer Michael Avenatti to smear Kavanaugh without offering a shred of substantiating evidence for her claims.
[...]
By the way, has Robach wrapped up that reporting on Clinton, yet?

The notion that she believes she was venting during "private moment" isn't plausible, either. Any regular guest — and Robach is on TV every day — knows that a gaggle of producers are listening to everything that's being said, and that everything that's being said is going to be on tape.

Paired with NBC News' burying of the Harvey Weinstein story, we now have evidence of two major media institutions protecting serial abusers. One wonders how many young women might have been saved if they hadn't.

Word that ABC News spiked a story on Jeffrey Epstein, left, shined a spotlight on chief anchor George Stephanopoulos' ties to former President Clinton.

However, what's really raising eyebrows is a 2010 report of a party Stephanopoulos attended that Epstein had hosted.

Page Six reported that the convicted pedophile held an event in honor of Prince Andrew, who was one of the high-profile figures implicated in the scandal, in his New York City townhouse, and on the guestlist were several members of the media, including Stephanopoulos.

[..]

Stephanopoulos is known to be highly influential inside ABC News, but a spokesperson told Fox News he had "no involvement" in Robach's interview.

In response to the IISS study, titled Iran's Networks Of Influence In The Middle East, a spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in London told the BBC, "If the report means that Iran's role in its region should be respected, it is a welcome sign."

"The policy of ignoring Iran did not work. Iran resisted. Iran has also successfully controlled damages of U.S. economic terrorism," the Iranian Embassy spokesman said.

Iran "is a powerful nation and has a lot of relations with other nations with a lot of initiatives for regional cooperation," he added.