Israeli authorities on Friday rescinded 250,000 Israel entry permits from Palestinians hours after a deadly attack in Jerusalem left four dead and several injured, a spokesperson for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told Mondoweiss.

Three Palestinians were shot dead after killing an Israeli police officer and injuring several others in an attack outside of the Damascus Gate on Friday evening. Following the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior members of his cabinet, as well as top security officials met in a conference call and decided that Israeli authorities would be instructed to rescind all weekday holiday permits from Palestinians to enter Israel.

The COGAT spokesperson said that permits granted to Palestinians for Friday visits to Al Aqsa mosque were not included in the 250,000 permits that were canceled.

With the latest spate of terror attacks we are beginning to witness supposedly democratic countries take increasingly tyrannical positions in the name of security.

Yesterday, Germany made it clear that they were willing to eradicate basic civil liberties by forcing the surveillance of smartphone apps and communications as well as absurdly permitting children as young as 6-years-old to be fingerprinted.

England, of course having been the direct target of terrorism over the course of weeks, has taken so far the most draconian position of moving to completely curtail Internet freedom, despite legal experts voicing their concerns about eradicating free speech as well as the limited effectiveness of such measures.

Japan is the latest to join the move toward a new level of government control over every aspect of their citizens' lives in the Orwellian vision to protect freedom by removing it.

Russian Foreign Ministry said it regrets the new anti-Cuban rhetoric, expressed by the Trump administration and assured Moscow's solidarity with Havana.

Alexander Schetinin, Director of the Latin America Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Sputnik News Agency that Trump's current stance on Cuba brings out many memories from the Cold War era, including some already forgotten ones, noting despite the traditional anti-Cuban approach used by the US for decades, the sudden change of tone is nonetheless something different from what was seen from the US side in recent time.

"The new policy, announced by the US president in relation to Cuba, brings us back to the already forgotten rhetoric in the Cold War style. Such policy characterized the US approach to Cuba for decades. It was believed that this was not a certain 'deal,' but a thoughtful political decision, in which there were no losers, except marginal "anti-Castrists." Now it turns out that the anti-Cuban discourse is still in high demand. This cannot but cause regret", Schetinin was heard saying.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi said Iraq is slowly returning to its previous position of playing an important role in the Middle East, stressing that Iraq seeks friendly relations with its neighbors and will, in case of any dispute, aim to resolve it in a friendly way, rather than involving itself in conflicts.

"We will not allow anyone to use our sovereign land to attack Iran or any other country, no matter what", Al Abadi was heard saying while delivering a a speech on Sunday.

Speaking to the media in his latest tour to the US, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister insisted that there was no blockade of Qatar, yet he insisted that the latter was not allowed to use their, as also of their allies', air space and territorial waters. Standing next to the rather reticent US secretary of the state, Rex Tillerson, he said that "Qatar was free to go" and yet the Qatar airways was not allowed to use Saudi air space. Whereas the delicate difference the Saudis seem to be making between their policy and those of other countries, who the former would have wanted to impose identical restrictions on Qatar, is a reflection of Saudia's limits, it also shows that the House of Saud has rather shot itself in the foot by opening a solo-front against Qatar, a country that nevertheless has a big American military base and has on its side a powerful Arab ally, Turkey. What the whole episode has brought unmistakably to the forefront is that there exist a number of countries within the "Sunni coalition" who do not see eye to eye with Saudi policies and are more comfortable in following rather independent course of action.

Apart from Turkey, whose president Erdogan went to the extent of relating the Qatar-blockade to a "death sentence", a number of other countries both from Asia and Africa have refused to follow the House of Saud in its footsteps, marking yet another defeat for the king-to-be prince Muhammad bin Salman, who is not only known to have masterminded the Yemen war but also known particularly for injecting a new ideological framework to Saudi Arabia's regional ambitions, a framework premised upon surgical weakening of countries that have the potential to challenge Saudi hegemony. This is becoming evident from the way people in Turkey have started to point fingers to UAE for spending US$3 billion for funding coup attempt in Turkey, a possible scenario which certainly points to the increasing Saudi dissatisfaction with the way regional politics has tilted to its disadvantage.

Emmanuel Macron has been rejected by his own nation after a poll found voters don't want him to secure a majority in this weekend's parliamentary elections.
The poll for BFMTV showed 61 per cent of French voters did not want the 39-year-old's Republic on the Move (LREM) party to win a "crushing" majority in parliament, saying that they would vote for a rival party in the second round in a bid to "rectify" the predicted result.

Mr Macron founded the party just one year ago and it has never had a voice in France's 577-seat National Assembly.

More than half of French voters questioned, 53 per cent, said they were "worried" Mr Macron would have too much power if his party won more than 400 seats, compared with 20 per cent who said they were "indifferent".

A Kurdish source told Sputnik that Syrian militants conduct an offensive to the north of Afrin in the Aleppo province with the support of the Turkish army.

"I can say that the Turkish troops and militants they support have advanced for one kilometer toward Syrian territory in Afrin's north. The advance is supported by the Turkish army's artillery" the source told Sputnik on Saturday.

According to the source, the Turkish artillery has been shelling Kurdish settlements near Afrin for 6 days

The comedian debunks the lies and distortions spread about him in the New York Times.

On June 7, the New York Times vomited up a hit piece on little ol' me - a guy who has been doing stand-up comedy for nearly 20 years and thought maybe that comedy could be used to inform and inspire audiences, rather than just make fun of the differences between men and women.

At first when you're the center of a smear job, you're annoyed and frustrated. But as I read further through the piece, I realized it was a master class in how to write propaganda for one of the most "respected" news outlets in our country. I'm actually grateful it was written about me because now I can see with my own eyes exactly how the glorious chicanery is done. I count no less than 15 lies, manipulations, and false implications in this short article, a score that even our fearless prevaricator-in-chief Donald Trump would envy.

So here now is a "How To" for writing propaganda for the New York Times, using the smear piece against me as an example.

Iranian and Chinese Naval forces are participating in joint drills in the strategically important Strait of Hormuz. The naval maneuvers come amid growing tensions between the US and Iran, as Washington prepares a new round of sanctions against Tehran.

A total of four vessels and two helicopters displayed their military capabilities on Sunday during a day of joint exercises in the strait connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman.

An airstrike on a Yemeni market killed at least 25 people, media reports citing a local health official say. A number of paramedics trying to reach the scene were reportedly also killed in the bombardment.

A Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed at least 25 people and wounded at least one at al-Mashnaq market in the northeastern Yemeni province of Saada late on Saturday, Reuters has reported, citing a Houthi rebel-linked health official.