The US, UK and Ukraine may have been behind last Friday's terrorist attack on a concert venue in a suburb of Moscow, which claimed lives of 139 people and left around 200 injured, according to the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).

Aleksandr Bortnikov told reporters on Tuesday that the authorities are currently trying to establish the identity of everyone involved in the attack, both inside and outside Russia.

When asked whether the US, Britain and Ukraine could be behind the terrorist attack, the FSB chief responded: "We think that this is so. In any case, we are now talking about the information that we have. This is general information, but they [investigators] also have concrete results."

Different from many conventional cancer therapies, ivermectin kills cancer cells by enhancing immune response.

Rick Alderson was a retired sawmill worker who was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer in November 2020.

He experienced excruciating pain in his bowels for months; then, a gastroenterologist found a large tumor in his rectum and told him and his wife he only had six months to live.

Ansarallah has single-handedly disrupted global shipping power dynamics. Yemen is launching attacks against Israeli-linked vessels deep into the Indian Ocean to cut off the last waterway route to the occupation state.

Our people are ready to send hundreds of thousands of mujahideen to Palestine. Okay, geography might pose a problem. It could be a problem for our people to go there in large numbers. Nevertheless, and despite all the obstacles, we will not hesitate to do whatever we can. We are completely coordinated with our brothers in the Jihad and resistance front to do anything and everything that we can do.

- Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, 10 October 2023

Since Abdul-Malik al-Houthi's proclamation three days after the launch of the Palestinian resistance's 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, Yemen's Ansarallah movement, under his leadership, has undergone a remarkable transformation.

The alliance's strikes on Belgrade in the spring of 1999 forever changed relations between the West and Moscow

On the evening of March 24, 1999, student Elena Milincic was at home with her sister and a friend in Belgrade. Suddenly, the quiet evening was interrupted by an air-raid siren. The girls quickly hid under the table. It wasn't the safest place, but they got lucky - their part of the city wasn't attacked. Over the next 77 days, these girls and other Belgrade residents got a lot better at hiding from the bombs which threatened to kill them every day. The bombing was part of NATO's military operation against Yugoslavia - the campaign that shook up the world order, and not just in the Balkans.

Preconditions for bloodshed

The Kosovo problem goes back many centuries. Located in the southwest of Serbia on the border with Albania, the Kosovo region was historically inhabited by two Balkan peoples: Serbs and Albanians. The Serbs consider the region a major part of the country's history and culture. However, Albanians have also lived there for centuries.

By the mid-19th century, there were about as many Albanians as Serbs in Kosovo. Ethnic strife was a common problem in the Balkans. Retaining their particular cultural characteristics, Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Gypsies, and Muslim Serbs lived side by side for centuries. Conflicts between them, nonetheless, resulted in brutal massacres.

The past five months have been clarifying. What was supposed to be hidden has been thrust into the light. What was supposed to be obscured has come sharply into focus.

Liberal democracy is not what it seems.

It has always defined itself in contrast to what it says it is not. Where other regimes are savage, it is humanitarian. Where others are authoritarian, it is open and tolerant. Where others are criminal, it is law-abiding. When others are belligerent, it seeks peace. Or so the manuals of liberal democracy argue.

But how to keep the faith when the world's leading liberal democracies - invariably referred to as "the West" - are complicit in the crime of crimes: genocide?

When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.

The cows he was talking about are red heifers, which now graze at a secure, undisclosed location in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Some Jews and Christians believe they're key to rebuilding the Jewish temple that once stood in Jerusalem, and to beckoning the Messiah.

To understand, you have to look back almost 2,000 years in the tumultuous history of the Middle East, when the ancient Romans destroyed the last temple in Jerusalem.

To rebuild it, fervent believers point to the Bible's Book of Numbers, which commands the Israelites to offer "a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke."

Whether the U.S. and Europe likes it or not, Iran is a major regional political player.

Looking back to what I wrote in 2012, in the midst of the so-called Arab Spring and its aftermath, it is striking just how much the Region has shifted. It is now almost 180° re-orientated. Then, I argued,

"That the Arab Spring "Awakening" is taking a turn, very different to the excitement and promise with which it was hailed at the outset. Sired from an initial, broad popular impulse, it is becoming increasingly understood, and feared, as a nascent counter-revolutionary "cultural revolution" - a re-culturation of the region in the direction of a prescriptive canon that is emptying out those early high expectations ...

"That popular impulse associated with the 'awakening' has now been subsumed and absorbed into three major political projects associated with this push to reassert [Sunni primacy]: a Muslim Brotherhood project, a Saudi-Qatari-Salafist project, and a [radical jihadi] project.

"No one really knows the nature of the [first project] the Brotherhood project - whether it is that of a sect; or if it is truly mainstream ... What is clear, however, is that the Brotherhood tone everywhere is increasingly one of militant sectarian grievance. The joint Saudi-Salafist project was conceived as a direct counter to the Brotherhood project - and [the third] was the uncompromising Sunni radicalism [Wahhabism], funded and armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, that aims, not to contain, but rather, to displace traditional Sunnism with the culture of Salafism. i.e. It sought the 'Salifisation' of traditional Sunni Islam.

"All these projects, whilst they may overlap in some parts, are in a fundamental way competitors with each other. And [were] being fired-up in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, north Africa, the Sahel, Nigeria, and the horn of Africa.

[Not surprisingly] ..."Iranians increasingly interpret Saudi Arabia's mood as a hungering for war, and Gulf statements do often have that edge of hysteria and aggression: a recent editorial in the Saudi-owned al-Hayat stated:

"The climate in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] indicates that matters are heading towards a GCC-Iranian-Russian confrontation on Syrian soil, similar to what took place in Afghanistan during the Cold War. To be sure, the decision has been taken to overthrow the Syrian regime, seeing as it is vital to the regional influence and hegemony of the Islamic Republic of Iran".

Well, that was then. How different the landscape is today: The Muslim Brotherhood largely is a 'broken reed', compared to what it was; Saudi Arabia has effectively 'switched off the lights' on Salafist jihadism, and is focussed more on courting tourism, and the Kingdom now has a peace accord with Iran (brokered by China).

A renowned Moscow region concert venue and shopping centre is on fire on Friday evening, following reports of a mass shooting incident.

At least three gunmen, wearing combat fatigues, burst into Crocus City Hall and fired automatic weapons, injuring dozens of patrons and killing a significant number of them, according to Russian media.

Some media report that 40 people were killed and more than 100 injured as a result of the shooting. No official confirmation has been issued yet.

Press outlets report the use of explosives and video shows black smoke rising above the building. State news wire service TASS suggests up to a third of the huge complex has been engulfed in flames.

Hamas's incursion into Israel on October 7 transformed the politics of the Middle East. Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has carried out a forensic analysis of the events of that day - examining seven hours of footage from CCTV, dashcams, personal phones and headcams of dead Hamas fighters, and drawing up a comprehensive list of those killed.

In October 7, the I-Unit reveals widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from Gaza into Israel.

But the investigation also found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. This was especially true of atrocities that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the mass killing of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a blow to the Biden administration's attempts to keep the US border open - allowing Texas to enforce a new law giving local police the power to arrest migrants.

With three liberal justices dissenting, the conservative-majority court rejected an emergency request by the Biden administration which claimed that states have no authority to legislate on immigration.

The ruling means that Texas' law can go into effect while litigation continues in lower courts.

The law, SB4, allows police to arrest migrants who illegally cross into the United States from Mexico, and imposes criminal penalties. It also empowers judges to deport people to Mexico.