After the first ever cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights, Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech on April 17, 2016 that the territory "will remain under Israel's sovereignty permanently." This elicited admonitions from some of Israel's greatest allies, the United States and Germany, and renewed attention on the issue.

The Golan Heights were opportunistically occupied by Israel after its victory in the 1967 six-day-war. A United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has monitored the region since 1974, when Israel and Syria signed a ceasefire agreement, and it has been considered an occupied territory of the UN and the international community. In violation of this ceasefire, Israel effectively annexed the territory in 1981 by extending its laws and governmental apparatus over it. Most of the native population has been displaced and over 30 settlements have been constructed to house Jewish settlers. These settlements, like those in the West Bank, are illegal under international law.

The current escalation is really about oil. Since 2013, the Netanyahu government has granted exclusive oil and gas exploration rights to the oil company Afek Energy in a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights. Afek Energy is an Israeli subsidiary of the US firm, Genie Energy. Afek's director is former Israeli Housing Minister Effie Eitam, who is an illegal settler in the Golan Heights himself and is responsible for the fatal beatings of numerous Palestinians. Genie Energy's strategy-advisory board includes former US Vice President Dick Cheney, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, and former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers. Other prominent names include Jacob Lord Rothschild, former CIA director and neocon James Woolsey, and former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

Given the clout that these figures wield in US politics, it is unlikely that the US is serious about its admonishments to Israel. Germany's Foreign Ministry has also criticized Israel´s move as being against international law, but both the US and Germany have declined to call for the Golan Heights to be returned to Syria, citing Syria's internal situation as a justification. If the US is indeed frustrated with Israel's behavior, as Vice President Biden recently said, it has a funny way of showing it: the Obama administration recently agreed to grant a $3.2 to $5 billion military-aid package to Israel, its largest ever. Germany is Israel's next largest donor and military trading partner, which suggest that the indignation is mostly symbolic.

The State Department says it cannot find emails to or from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's senior information technology staffer, Bryan Pagliano, dating from her tenure.

Pagliano, who set up and maintained Clinton's private server, is a key witness in the FBI inquiry into Clinton's handling of sensitive material on that server.

He was granted immunity by the Justice Department in exchange for his cooperation.

State Department spokesman Elizabeth Trudeau said in a press briefing Monday that "the Department has searched for Mr. Pagliano's email pst file and has not located one that covers the time period of Secretary Clinton's tenure."

"To be clear, the Department does have records related to Mr. Pagliano and we are working with Congress and FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requesters to provide relevant material. The Department has located a pst from Mr. Pagliano's recent work at the Department as a contractor, but the files are from after Secretary Clinton left the Department," Trudeau added.

Israel has officially refused to renew the travel document of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement co-founder Omar Barghouti in a move that amounts to a travel ban and is an escalation of its attacks on Palestinian human rights defenders who nonviolently advocate for Palestinian rights under international law.

Barghouti, who lives with his family in Acre, has Israeli permanent residency and requires an Israeli travel document to be able to travel in and out of Palestine/Israel. His immediate reaction was: "I am unnerved but certainly undeterred by these threats. Nothing will stop me from struggling for my people's freedom, justice and peace".

Israel's decision not to grant a renewal of the travel document on baseless bureaucratic pretenses is being viewed by human rights experts as the first step towards revoking Barghouti's permanent residency.

Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri had threatened as much at a recent anti-BDS conference held in Jerusalem when he disclosed that he was "inclined to fulfill" a request he had received from a far-right Israeli member of parliament to revoke Barghouti's permanent residency.

"Improved race relations" in the United States under President Barack Obama is a "distraction from the progression of the global psychopathic agenda," according to an American writer and researcher who is based in Washington, DC.

During his commencement speech at Howard University in Washington on Saturday, Obama said that, "race relations are better" since he graduated from the university in 1983, but noted "the country is still suffering from inequality and racism." The United States is in "a better place today," Obama added, citing his historic election as "one indicator of how attitudes have changed."

"While it appears that the United States as a society is becoming more tolerant and more equal with less obstacles for minorities, the society as a whole is on a slippery slope when it comes to basic human rights like privacy and freedom of speech," Walt Peretto told Press TV on Monday.

"The 9/11 false flag attacks and other events since 2000s, like the wars in the Middle East, mass migrations into Europe from Syria due to the supporting of violent mercenaries and drone strikes has turned much of the Middle East into chaos," the analyst stated.

"Here at home police brutality has been rampant under Obama's watch. This certainly does not help race relations. We still have a stop and frisk policy in New York and numerous other problems that effect most people across the board which is part of a larger agenda that wants to transform the United States and the world into a greatly depopulated planet with a single global government."

"Obama is part of this agenda and he is merely one link in this chain that will eventually reach a New World Order unless we all realize that the impetus behind this global agenda is a ruling class that are largely bred to be devoid of empathy, guilt, and remorse," Peretto said. "This way they are not impeded by these normal human emotions as they carry out their 'family businesses' in international finance, intelligence agencies, and politics," he added. "These clinically psychopathic elites are behind the funding and promotion of politicians like Barack Obama, David Cameron in the UK, Angela Merkel in Germany, etc. The elites want their own puppets in these positions to constantly make promises to the masses that they have little intention of keeping," the commentator noted.

The Israeli government has been accused of seizing land belonging to a Palestinian family and handing it over to be used for the new headquarters of a radical Zionist organisation.

According to an investigation by Israeli news source Haaretz, the land has been given to Amana, an NGO which builds illegal settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank.

The group was formed as an offshoot of the messianic Zionist movement Gush Emunim, and is run by Ze'ev Hever, a convicted terrorist.

The Israeli government has helped Amana set up new headquarters on the land, Haaretz reported, without informing the Abu Ta'ah family that their land was being expropriated.

Officials have been accused of redrawing existing property maps and hiding vital documents from the property's owners.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Wednesday NATO's insufficient military presence in the Black Sea and urged the Alliance to enhance cooperation in the area.

"We should enhance our coordination and cooperation in the Black Sea. We hope for concrete results from the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8, 9... The Black Sea should be turned into the sea of stability. I told the NATO secretary general that you are absent in the Black Sea and that is why it has nearly become a Russian lake. We should perform our duty as we are the countries with access to the Black Sea. If we do not take action, history will not forgive us," Erdogan said in Istanbul.

According to Erdogan, the admission of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia to NATO is important for security and stability in the region.

Turkey's president has refused to bring the country's anti-terror laws in line with EU standards, claiming Europe lecturing Ankara is a "black comedy", as it offers safe haven to terrorist groups' political wings and refuses to fix its own flawed laws.

"European countries continue to be safe havens for the political extensions of terrorist groups. When this is the case, it's a piece of black comedy that the EU criticizes our country over the definition of terrorism," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Ankara on Tuesday.

Turkey continues to hold the EU hostage over the migrant crisis, as the country ultimately aims to join the bloc. Meanwhile, it has been pursuing visa-free travel negotiations. Last week Brussels urged Ankara to amend its terrorism laws in line with EU standards. Erdogan refused.

A car bombing attack in Baghdad claimed by Islamic State killed at least 52 people and injured dozens of others, Reuters reports citing hospital and police sources. The car bomb set of in a Shiite Muslim district of the Iraqi capital.

An SUV rigged with explosives was parked near a beauty salon in a busy market in the Sadr City neighborhood, Iraqi police reported.

The bomb was detonated by a suicide bomber, a media outlet that sympathizes with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) reported.

The blast killed over 20 people on the spot while others succumbed to their wounds shortly after. At least 60 people were injured by the blast, and many remain in critical condition.

With the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish president is on a fast track to consolidate unchallenged power.

"Davutoglu didn't even give an honest reason why he's going. It was a surprise to all us," an official familiar with Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), told Deutsche Welle.

The Turkish prime minister announced that he would step down last week. The move wasn't entirely unexpected, as tensions between Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been building, but the impact of Davutoglu's decision could have major consequences for the future of Turkey.

"I want to be optimistic, but I have to say that Turkish political life is heading down a dead-end path," KONDA polling company director Tarhan Erdem told DW. "From this point forward, we will not be able to estimate what will happen in society. That is to say, Turkey has embarked on an unforeseeable process."

Erdem points to Erdogan's increasingly dictatorial tactics, including punishing journalists and academics who are critical of the Turkish government.

One day after the Brazilian people breathed a sigh of relief after the lower house impeachment vote was annulled, that decision was unheroically walked back, creating what may become a gory constitutional crisis.

On Monday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff saw the effort to oust her in a legal coup suddenly all but called off, when acting speaker of Brazil's lower house Waldir Maranhao moved to annul the April 17 impeachment vote, citing procedural improprieties.

But on Tuesday the mercurial Brazilian impeachment circus stunned the world again when Maranhao renounced his own move to annul the April 17 vote, increasing the likelihood that Rousseff will face a 180-day suspension from office when the country's Senate votes on Wednesday, paving the way for the unpopular conservative, Vice President Michel Temer, to assume the presidency.

Brazilians fear that Temer and his unelected Brazilian Democratic Movement Party will move quickly to privatize the country's natural resources and institute austerity measures in Latin America's most populous country.