Yemen's President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi has voiced his approval of a peace agreement for the country's warring sides proposed by the United Nations, media reports said Sunday.

On Saturday, Yemen's Houthi rebels and the General People's Congress (GPC) of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh nearly pulled out of UN-backed peace talks with Hadi government representatives before agreeing to extend talks for another week due to what was reportedly a last-ditch effort to pursue peace negotiations by Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN special envoy for Yemen.

The agreement proposed by the UN envoy includes clauses on both the Houthis and Saleh forces laying down arms, withdrawing from the Yemeni capital Sana, as well as the cities of Taiz and Hudaydah, and creating a military committee responsible for overseeing the process, the Sky News Arabia channel reported.

The Hadi government delegation has reportedly told Ahmed that its side would sign the document in case the Houthi side does likewise before August 7. However, the Houthis refused approving the proposal and have insisted on forming a national unity government, according to the media outlet.

There's a blue hole in the South China Sea. Longdong ("Dragon Hole") is an astonishing 300,89 meters deep, in deep blue waters around Yongle, a major coral reef in the Paracel islands (or Xisha, in their Chinese denomination).

Cynics may argue that after the recent ruling in The Hague largely against China's "nine-dash line", the whole South China Sea would be more like a black - not blue - geopolitical hole, where serious turbulence is all but inevitable.

I have examined before how the South China Sea's history is now colliding with imperatives derived from the Westphalian system, and how the US's "pivot to Asia" is accelerating conflict. I have also examined how the US Navy's obsession with "access" actually tramples which sovereign nation is entitled to profit from the surrounding waters of a bunch of islands or "rocks".

And then, there's that inescapable logic that envelops all energy wars: "It's the oil, stupid".

A program overseen by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of the "reset" with Russia wound up enhancing Russia's military technology and funneling millions of dollar to the Clinton Foundation, according to a new report by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute he heads.

The report says both the U.S. Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that the program, intended to support Russia's version of Silicon Valley, was exploited to improve Russia's military capability.

The "innovation city" of Skolkovo on the outskirts of Moscow was center of the program. Its stated purpose was "identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the American and Russian people."

Instead, the FBI warned several American technology companies in 2014 that Skolkovo "may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation's sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application." Indeed, it was.

By 2035, the US could find itself in an environment where Russia or China may match or even exceed the West's military and economic might in some areas, taking advantage of a "disordered and contested world," the Pentagon's research unit said. In just 20 years, the US and its allies will live in a world where shaping a global order the way they have since the end of the Cold War would be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, Pentagon's research division, the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), warned in a new foresight report.

The future world order will see a number of states with the political will, economic capacity, and military capabilities to compel change at the expense of others," reads the paper entitled The Joint Force in a Contested and Disordered World. "Rising powers including for example, China, Russia, India, Iran, or Brazil have increasingly expressed dissatisfaction with their roles, access, and authorities within the current international system," it states.

"Russia will modernize its land, air, and sea-based intercontinental nuclear forces" and make use of deterrent operations such as "snap nuclear exercises, bomber flights, and strategic reconnaissance overflights into US territory," the Pentagon's researchers predict.

The report admits Russia and China are among countries dissatisfied "with the current Western-derived notion of international order." Russia, China, India, and others, labeled "revisionist states" in the report, would promote alternate international alliances, while the West's shrinking resources would also have an impact on Washington's dominance across the globe.

Theresa May's government has backtracked just hours before signing a deal for a China-backed nuclear power station. Beijing state media says the UK is acting irrationally by delaying the project, jeopardizing the hard-won 'Golden Era' of China-UK ties.The US$24 billion deal, with France's EDF as producer of two nuclear reactors and China's General Nuclear Power Corp as principle investor, has been put on hold, despite Britain having abandoned coal as a source of electricity production.

A comment from China's official Xinhua agency says that while Beijing understands and respects Britain's decision to reconsider the deal, it cannot understand the "suspicious approach that comes from nowhere to Chinese investment in making the postponement."

China's Foreign Ministry said Monday that there is a hope that a decision on the Hinkley Point nuclear plant deal can be made as soon as possible in order to guarantee its smooth implementation, Reuters reports. "I would like to stress that this project was agreed upon by China, Britain and France in the spirit of mutual benefit and cooperation, and win-win cooperation, and has always had the strong support of Britain and France," ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying Hua told Reuters.

Xinhua says that the project is set to create thousands of local jobs and replace the coal power generating facilities outgoing by 2025. Hinkley Point is predicted to produce up to 7 percent of all electric power generated in the UK daily.

"Such a rosy prospect underpins the program's win-win nature and dispels the groundlessness and sci-fi scent of fears over "China planting back-doors" during program construction to control the critical infrastructure," Xinhua wrote, recalling Britain's vaunted business openness and free trade economy.

Khizr Khan is a fine American and the father of a true American patriot. But now he is also everything that is wrong with American politics today. It is not entirely his fault, though he has only himself to blame for allowing his dead son to be used for the most hideous of purposes and dragged through the gutter of nasty and dishonest partisan politics.

Khan and his wife took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week to deliver an impassioned rebuke of Donald J.Trump that was universally celebrated by the media. Even Republican politicos swooned at the gambit. The Clinton campaign trotted out the Muslim couple because their son, Captain Humayun Khan, was killed by a car bomb in 2004 while guarding a base in Iraq.

"If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America," said Khan, sliding easily into the political tradition of lying and distorting the position of one's opponent. "Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims," he went on. "He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country."

Despite all efforts by the media to distort Trump's position about "banning" Muslims, he has made perfectly clear time and again that he does not want to ban all Muslims. He wants to simply perform thorough and complete background checks on all immigrants coming from countries presently in the grips of violent Islamic terrorism.

Aleppo: During military offensives it is quite hard to find balance in news reports regarding what is really happening on the ground. The fact is that this latest terrorist offensive to retake strategic routes into Aleppo has a very large media-multi-grouping involved. It has been planned and widely promoted for at least one week. A cautionary warning to our readers is that terrorist supporters are disseminating easy, meaningless gains, as part of their disinformation campaign.

There were several reports of terrorist troops being pulled back from Hama, Homs and Lattakia to mass near Aleppo. It is an estimated 5,000-8,000, but this is completely unconfirmed and nearly impossible to double check; but, due to the initial intensity of the attack, the number 5,000, at a minimum, is very likely.

The main Terrorist's groups involved so far with a roughly mixed bag of 50/50% Syrians and foreigners, are:

• Nusra/Jabhat Fateh Al-Shaam/Alqaeda
• Suqoor Al-Jabal
• Ahraar Al-Shaam
• Faylaq Al-Shaam
• Ajnaad Al-Shaam
• Liwaa' Al-Haq
• Jaysh Al-Sunna
• Turkistan Islamic Party (Uighur jihadists from China)

The main target area the terrorists struck yesterday is by far the narrowest part of West Aleppo, with possible flanks to be protected due to the loss of Khaan Toumaan and its environs 2 months ago.

Russia has proposed to NATO a "positive program" for developing relations, aimed at decreasing tensions between Moscow and the US-led military bloc, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said. "NATO's military experts have been invited to Moscow in September for consultations concerning military and political situation in Europe," Antonov said in a statement to the media. Russia is ready for a constructive dialogue with NATO despite differences in approach to the reasons and consequences of the decisions made at the bloc's summit in Warsaw in July, Antonov stressed.

During the gathering in the Polish capital, NATO member states labeled Moscow "a source of instability" and ordered an increased military presence near Russian borders. The decisions made at the summit have been thoroughly analyzed by Russian experts, Antonov said.

One of the issues to be discussed in September is military flights over the Baltic Sea. According to Antonov, Russia is "considering the option of performing military flights over the Baltic only with ID transponders on," but only if NATO does the same.

NATO's military attaches have been informed of Moscow's offer to review the earlier existing military programs in the format of Russia-NATO Council, Antonov said. He noted that the renewal of the Cooperative Airspace initiative between NATO and Russia would be especially useful in the current situation. Antonov said NATO states' military attaches will also be invited as observers to Russian Army's Kavkaz-2016 drills, which are planned for September. "Russia's Defense Ministry proposed to start exchanging assessments at a military level regarding the terrorist threat, primarily to counter the spread of IS [Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL] and other terrorist organizations," he said.

"Russia is also ready for cooperation to avoid incidents at sea and in the air, based on bilateral agreements and consultations with the defense ministries of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Sweden and Finland to address mutual concerns over military activities in the border areas," Antonov said.

According to Hillary Clinton's foreign policy advisor, Jeremy Bash, if Clinton is elected she will order a "re-set" of US policy toward Syria to emphasize the "murderous" nature of the Assad regime. As the Telegraph reports, Hillary Clinton will breathe new life into the "Assad must go" camp. She will likely launch a full-scale US invasion of Syria. Said Bash:

A Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is. It is a murderous regime that violates human rights; that has violated international law; used chemical weapons against his own people; has killed hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children.

Of course claims that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people is the long since disproven neocon cri de guerre to push Obama into an attack on the Syrian government. The 2013 gas attack near Ghouta was likely a provocation by the rebels hoping to draw the US directly into their fight. This "he gassed his own people" line is the Syrian version of Saddam's "WMDs," a lie repeated ad infinitum to make the case for war.

As far as violating international law, the entire two year US intervention in Syria is in clear violation of international law. The US has no legal right to bomb Syria.

Clinton's advisor informs us that as president his boss would involve the US in everyone else's affairs: "Mrs Clinton believes that problems around the world can more easily be solved when America is involved and in each of those problems or crisis," he told the Telegraph

If Hillary becomes president and gets her way with a Syria "re-set" the prime beneficiary will be radical Islamists. There literally is no secular, moderate opposition to the Assad government.

Fresh on the heals of her shameful UN security council performance, US ambassador Samantha Power is embarrassing herself and the United States with her comments on Syria yet again.

The Syrian delegation to the UN sent a letter to the president of the security council, informing him of their plans to create safe zones so the population of Aleppo, which is currently under siege, could withdraw safely.

You would think no nation could find fault with this development. But no...Samantha Power finds it "chilling".