The death of Igor Korobov, who led Russia's top military intelligence agency, has sent conspiracy mongers into overdrive. Unwilling to believe the 62 year-old died of cancer, they are filling in the gaps with their own theories.

Korobov died "after a long and serious illness," the Defense Ministry announced on Thursday. Various sources have informed media outlets that this illness was cancer. There had also been rumors of illness circulating in Russian media in recent months.

As the news broke, however, Western media, journalists and pundits wasted no time in deciding that this explanation for Korobov's death simply could not be true. Generously, many began to offer up their own suspicions as alternative possibilities - and they pulled no punches.

While most headlines in Western media included some form of implication that not all was as it seems, true to form, the UK tabloids took things up a notch. The Sun's headline screamed "SPYMASTER DEAD" amid "suspicion he was assassinated for botching Skripal poisoning enraging Putin."

Denmark has suspended future approvals of weapons and military equipment exports to Saudi Arabia in response to the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist and the kingdom's role in the conflict in Yemen, the Danish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

Germany has already suspended issuing future weapons export licences and has moved to halt all arms sales, while France said on Monday said it will decide soon on sanctions over Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month.

Saudi Arabia is one of the world's biggest weapons importers. It heads a military coalition fighting in a civil war in Yemen in which tens of thousands of people have died and caused a major humanitarian catastrophe.

Facebook's outgoing policy chief took the blame Wednesday night for hiring a consulting firm to investigate and peddle negative stories about the company's critics, including by linking them to liberal philanthropist George Soros.

The blog post by the executive, Elliot Schrage, landed on the eve of the Thanksgiving weekend, and appeared aimed at absolving CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg of responsibility for a lobbying campaign that sparked accusations that Facebook was fueling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

"I believe it would be irresponsible and unprofessional for us not to understand the backgrounds and potential conflicts of interest of our critics," wrote Schrage, Facebook's outgoing head of communications and policy. "This work is also useful to help respond to unfair claims where Facebook has been singled out for criticism, and to positively distinguish us from competitors."

Israel is planning to build a settlement belt around the occupied city of Jerusalem to increase the Jewish population density at the expense of Jerusalemites within the "Holy Basin" project, experts on Jerusalem affairs said.

In the second and third legislative readings, the Israeli Knesset approved a bill allowing the construction of houses and residential units in areas that had recently been deemed national parks in Jerusalem.


This law, according to Jerusalemites, allows the Elad settlement association to build within public parks near Al Aqsa Mosque, which is called the "City of David" National Park, in the Silwan neighborhood.

MI6 is locked in a secret battle with US President Donald Trump to persuade him not to disclose documents linked to the Russian election-meddling probe - it has been revealed.

Intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic told the Telegraph that spy bosses in London were frantically appealing to Trump not to make the classified documents public.

The President's aides have reportedly hit back with questions over why Britain wants the documents to be kept secret.

But authorities in the UK say they have 'genuine concern' about sources being exposed if classified parts of the wiretap request were made public.

Other sources also said MI6 was concerned the publication of the documents would set a 'dangerous precedent' for the release of top secret information, and may dissuade future sources from coming forward.

Calling a federal appeals circuit a "terrible, costly and dangerous disgrace," US president Donald Trump speculated about breaking it up, just hours after sparring with Chief Justice John Roberts about judicial independence.

Tweeting from Florida on Wednesday afternoon, the president repeated a claim he made before, that almost 80 percent of 9th Circuit rulings have been overturned at the Supreme Court, and argued the appeals body had become a "dumping ground for certain lawyers looking for easy wins and delays."

On Monday, a federal district judge in San Francisco blocked the Trump administration's rules about refusing asylum to applicants who do not enter the US legally, after the American Civil Liberties Union and several migrant activist groups sued on behalf of the "caravan" of Central Americans currently at the US-Mexican border.

The Department of Justice called the ruling "absurd" and vowed to appeal it before the 9th Circuit. This would set up a repeat of the "travel ban" case, initially blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii and upheld by the 9th Circuit before the Supreme Court ruled in Trump's favor some 16 months later.

In February 2016, as Christopher Steele's Russia-related contacts with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI were ramping up, the former British spy emailed some intelligence reports from his Orbis security company to a potential private-sector client.

The documents were labeled "Orbis Russian Leadership Reporting," and the cover email made a most provocative claim: Russian leader Vladimir Putin might be losing his grip on power.

"I also don't believe any Russian client or associate will admit to a Western business contact that PUTIN has been weakened or is on the way out, as the intel suggests, out of fear of being branded an oppositionist," Steele cautioned the recipient. "We shall see but I hope you find them informative/useful anyway."

The murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October prompted much debate about the writer's past affiliations and ideological inclinations.

Responding to President Donald Trump's Tuesday statement on the killing, Katy Tur of MSNBC falsely claimed Khashoggi was never a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he indisputably was a member and a lifelong proponent of its Islamist ideals. Acknowledging this truth does not in any way condone his death at the hands of Saudi agents.

In a piece back in August, I drew attention to the fact that Yulia Skripal's understanding of what had happened to her - at least at that time and as far as her statement to Reuters was concerned - did not actually fit very well with the narrative of poisoning via the door handle. Here's what she said:

"I still find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that both of us were attacked. We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination [my emphasis]."

I went on to point out that according to the official narrative, which posits that Mr Skripal was attacked because he was a traitor, Yulia Skripal was not actually the target of the attack or attempted assassination. Only Mr Skripal was, and even Theresa May, in her statements to the House of Commons, in which she attempted to set out the intent and motive behind the poisoning, had nothing to say about any intent to kill Yulia. Nor, to my knowledge, has The Metropolitan Police ever suggested that she was a target for assassination. According to the official explanation, she was simply an unfortunate victim who happened to get poisoned because her father was targeted.

The policy of the US establishment towards Lebanon is evidently changing and unstable, with a President who lacks general knowledge about the Middle East and above all of Hezbollah's role in the region. It seems President Donald Trump is willing to reduce military support to the Lebanese Army and to impose further sanctions on Lebanon, unaware that he is thereby strengthening the Axis of Resistance and throwing the country of the Cedars into the arms of Russia and Iran. While the US is imposing further sanctions on Hezbollah, in the last few months its European partners have held secret meetings with that Organisation's leaders during the visits of their official delegations to Beirut.

The US is gradually losing its hegemony in the Middle East. In Iraq, the "Islamic State" (ISIS) grew under the watchful and complaisant eyes of the US establishment in the first months of its occupation of Mosul in June 2014. Washington considered ISIS a strategic asset, oblivious to how this unscrupulous policy would backfire against its interests in the Middle East. The policy alienated Europe but above all the people of the Middle East, especially those minorities who suffered grievously under ISIS tyranny. This ruthless US policy triggered the creation of Hashd al-Shaa'bi (the Popular Mobilisation Forces). This force has now become an essential member of the "Axis of the Resistance" which rejects US hegemony and espouses an ideology of independence with objectives similar to those of Iran and Hezbollah. These national forces are generally unfriendly towards Israel and the presence of US forces in Mesopotamia.

Furthermore, the new Iraqi leaders (Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, Speaker Mohamad al-Halbusi and President Barham Salih) have been chosen in perfect harmony with the will of Iran. If it becomes necessary to choose between Tehran and Washington, Iraq will not stand for sanctions against the Iranian people, regardless of the consequences. And if the US forces Iraq's hand on Iran sanctions, it will lose Mesopotamia to the advantage of Iran and Russia. Indeed, Moscow is sitting today, along with high ranking Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian military advisors, in one single operational room in Baghdad, waiting to pick up the slack if the US moves away from or slows down military support to Iraq, but also to ensure that ISIS doesn't return to occupy any city in Mesopotamia.