Recent reports from the ground suggest that America and its allies are losing their covert war in support of the Al Nusra front. In recent weeks, the US sponsored Al Qaeda affiliated rebels have been decimated by the Syrian Armed Forces.

A nationwide offensive has been launched with the support of Russia and Iran. The weapons supply routes of the rebels have been disrupted:

"the [Syrian] army has concentrated on starving, and cutting off "rebel" supply routes and arms corridors, which predominantly run through Northern Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan" (See Buying Time in Syria by Phil Greaves, Global Research, May 11, 2013)

Al Nusra is largely made up of mercenaries recruited in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Covert (Western) special forces and military advisers have also integrated their ranks.

The Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists directly funded by Washington constitute the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance

Russia's Mediterranean task force will comprise 5-6 warships and may be enlarged to include nuclear submarines, Navy Commander Adm. Viktor Chirkov said on Sunday.

"Overall, already from this year, we plan to have 5-6 warships and support vessels [in the Mediterranean Sea], which will be replaced on a rotating basis from each of the fleets - the Black Sea, Baltic, Northern and, in some cases, even the Pacific Fleet. Depending on the scope of assignments and their complexity, the number of warships in the task force may be increased," Chirkov told RIA Novosti.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier said a decision to deploy a permanent task force in the Mediterranean to defend Russia's interests in the area had been made.

The Russian navy commander also said nuclear submarines could be deployed in the Mediterranean, if necessary.

The Lebanese Resistance Movement Hezbollah has all parts of Israel within the reach of its long-range missiles and it can surprise Tel Aviv with its high capabilities, the Israeli media said.

The Tel Aviv-based newspaper 'Israel Hayom' in an article titled 'Hezbollah 2013' stressed Hezbollah's high combat preparedness against Israel, saying that Hezbollah has 300 long-range missiles which bring all the occupied territories within the reach of its missiles.

It claimed that Hezbollah has an arsenal of 60,000 missiles posing direct and real threat to Israel.

The paper wrote that Hezbollah has 5,000 missiles with the range of 250 km.

Would you take out a loan that has an annual percentage rate of 391 percent? Yes, I know that sounds absolutely crazy, but millions of Americans do it every single year. The typical payday loan requires borrowers to pay about 15 dollars for every $100 that they borrow for two weeks. That comes out to a yearly rate of about 391 percent. And the payday loan companies know exactly who to target.

They have set up thousands of shops in the poorest communities all over the nation over the last several decades. Each year, approximately 12 million Americans take out payday loans and they pay approximately 7.4 billion dollars in interest and fees on those loans. Sadly, once you get hooked on payday loans they are very hard to stop. In fact, one study found that only 13 percent of payday borrowers get two loans or less per year.

All other borrowers take out more loans than that. In fact, more than a third of all payday borrowers take out between 11 and 19 loans during the course of a single year. And as was mentioned earlier, the interest rates on these loans are beyond exorbitant. Payday loans are estimated to be about 20 times more expensive than bank loans, with annual interest rates that are sometimes as high as 500 percent.

The payday loan companies circle the poor like vultures, because they know that the poor are the only ones desperate enough to agree to such terms. This is why we need to shut them down. The payday loan companies are making billions preying on the misery of the poor and it needs to be stopped.

Charleston - Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft and one of the richest people in the world, is spending time in the Lowcountry.

WCBD confirmed the American business magnate is at the Sanctuary on Kiawah Island.

Suspicion was raised when nearly 20 very expensive jets were seen lined up at the Charleston International Airport on Johns Island.

Officials with the Beach Company confirmed to WCBD that other big names such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, TV host Oprah Winfrey and billionaire Warren Buffet flew into the Charleston Executive airport on Johns Island Wednesday night.

Other prominent people said to also be staying there this weekend are Jeb Bush and Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The UK and US are removing some diplomatic staff from Libya amid political unrest throughout the country. Professor Mark Almond told RT that the spike in violence is mostly due to Libya's state of disorder - which has worsened since Gaddafi's overthrow.

The US State Department said that it has "approved the ordered departure of non-emergency personnel from Libya." It said that the US embassy in Tripoli would continue to remain "open and functioning."

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said that Britain's embassy is temporarily withdrawing a small number of staff - most of which "work in support of government ministries which have been affected by recent developments."

Those "recent developments" refer to an increase in violence which was sparked after two ex-rebels besieged two ministries last month over a law that would ban officials who served under former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Since then, gunmen have surrounded the Libyan foreign embassy and Benghazi has been the target of bomb attacks which left a police station damaged.

Mark Almond, an international relations professor at Turkey's Bilkent University, says the violence is largely to do with the country's chaotic state, as well as a power struggle regarding who should control the country's oil and gas industry.

Watch this video to see the shifting explanations given by our government following the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

President Barack Obama called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at approximately 10 p.m. on the night of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told CNSNews.com.

That was more than six hours after the attacks started, more than an hour before Tryone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed--and about the time that Clinton first released a statement linking the attacks to "inflammatory material posted on the Internet," a reference to an anti-Muslim video on YouTube.

"Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national security adviser," Carney told CNSNews.com on Tuesday. "He was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the secretary of state at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation."

Carney was responding to questions from CNSNews.com about who Obama communicated with on the evening of Sept. 11, 2012. Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee they first notified the president of the attack during a Sept. 11, 2012 meeting that began at 5 p.m. and ran for about 30 minutes. They also told the committee they did not talk to Obama or anyone else at the White House after that meeting.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who worked for CIA, were killed in the Benghazi attacks.

If the buildup doesn't disappoint, you can expect plenty of news out of the U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing on May 8, 2013.

The panel, which includes freshman U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, will review how President Barack Obama's administration -- including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- handled the Sept. 11, 2012 bombing at the U.S. consulate in Benghzai, Libya.

The attack killed four Americans -- and set off administration critics such as U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.

A few days before the hearing, it was disclosed that a top U.S. diplomat had said "everyone" at the consulate thought "from the beginning" that the attack was an act of terror.

And even before that, Johnson had reminded citizens at least twice of what Clinton told him about the attack during a Senate committee hearing in January 2013.

"Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they'd go kill some Americans," Clinton said. "What difference - at this point, what difference does it make?"

Physicist pulls out of conference hosted by president Shimon Peres in protest at treatment of Palestinians

Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president's conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres's 90th birthday.

Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking's approval described it as "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there".

Hawking's decision marks another victory in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions.

In April the Teachers' Union of Ireland became the first lecturers' association in Europe to call for an academic boycott of Israel, and in the United States members of the Association for Asian American Studies voted to support a boycott, the first national academic group to do so.