In November, during a meeting with President of the European Council Donald Tusk and European Commission Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded from Brussels €30 billion to resolve the European migrant crisis, a leaked document revealed.

The talks took place in Antalya on November 14, 2015. The confidential document has been published by Greek website Euro2Day.

According to it, Erdogan threatened to send migrants to Europe. By that time, the EU and Turkey had agreed a plan on providing €3 billion to Ankara in exchange for assistance in resolving the migrant issue.

However, Erdogan threatened that he would take measures if the EU delayed Turkey's admission to the bloc. Particularly, he said Turkey would put refugees on buses to Europe and the consequences for Europe will be "more than a dead boy" on the Turkish shores.

TV Channel France 2 showed footage of Russian airstrikes in Syria as the work of the US-led international coalition in a fight against Daesh (Islamic State).

While covering news from Syria and reporting about airstrikes against Daesh militants, France 2 showed footage first released by the Russian Defense Ministry.

According to Russian blogger Timofei Vasiliev, the news story said that Russian airstrikes hit civilian targets, as the Russians allegedly don't use precision bombs, instead indiscriminately bombing everything in the area. Unlike the Russians, the French Air Force, which works as part of the US-led coalition, "successfully" bombed Daesh targets, France 2 said.

The French TV channel, however, couldn't find any footage to prove their point, so it just used footage of Russian airstrikes to demonstrate the precision of Western missiles. No big deal, right?

I first heard Ray McGovern speak on a country road in the New England hills. This was courtesy of the admirably dedicated David Barsamian, who broadcast one of McGovern's talks on Alternative Radio in late-2013. Reception up here being spotty, I pulled over and sat watching the autumn clouds drift by for the full hour McGovern stood at the podium of a Methodist church in Seattle. I was rapt.

What a lost pleasure it is in our indispensable nation to be in the presence of someone who thinks, acts and speaks out of conscience and conviction. Even better, these were precisely McGovern's topics that day three years back: The necessity of careful thought, of honoring one's inner voice, of acting out of an idea of what is right without regard to success or failure, the win-or-lose of life. One way or another, these themes run through everything he has to say, I have since discovered. At an inner-city church in Washington, McGovern teaches a course he calls "The Morality of Whistleblowing."

Born in the Bronx in 1939 and educated at Fordham (and later Georgetown and Harvard), McGovern joined the Central Intelligence Agency during the Kennedy administration, when it was still possible to think sound, disinterested analysis out there in Langley, Virginia, could be a force for good. Long story short, as McGovern likes to say, he left 27 years later, by which time the scales had fallen, and founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence—Adams being a former colleague and one of the whistle-blowers who paid his price. Not long before that AR speech, McGovern went to Moscow to give the recently exiled Edward Snowden one of his Sam Adams Awards. This is the ex-spook's milieu: At 76, he dwells among the truth-tellers.

Israel has accused UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of promoting "terror" after he defended the Palestinian uprising as a natural response to the Tel Aviv regime's occupation of their lands. In a letter to Ban on Monday, Israel's Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon urged Ban to withdraw the comments he made in last month's address to the UN Security Council.

Ban had urged Israel to freeze the construction of settler units in the occupied territories, describing settlement expansion "an affront to the Palestinian people and to the international community." Commenting on continued Palestinians protests, Ban had also said that "as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation."

In the letter, the Israeli official claimed that the UN chief's statements can put Israel and the rest of the world in jeopardy.The statement have created "two categories of terror: terror directed at Israelis and terror directed at the rest of the world," he wrote. Danon said the world body must punish the perpetrators of attacks against Israelis instead of criticizing the Tel Aviv regime for the ongoing unrest in the occupied Palestinian lands.

Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN chief will "stand by every word he has used." In an opinion piece published last week by The New York Times, Ban wrote, "The time has come for Israelis, Palestinians and the international community to read the writing on the wall: The status quo is untenable. Keeping another people under indefinite occupation undermines the security and the future of both Israelis and Palestinians," he said.

The Iraqi army is sending thousands of soldiers to a northern base for operational training to retake Daesh's hub city of Mosul, officials said on Monday.

Daesh captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city in June 2014 and except for airstrikes it has held the city largely unopposed for over 18 months as the country's security forces fought the militants in other areas.

"Units from the Iraqi army have begun arriving to a military base near the Makhmur district to start launching initial military operations toward Mosul," a staff brigadier general told AFP on condition of anonymity.

In a series of fierce clashes with terrorists, the Syrian army backed by aerial support managed to take control over a strategic town and a key height in the province of Aleppo.

Syrian government forces and their allies continued their offensive in Aleppo province, regaining full control of the strategic town of Taana in the eastern part of the region. The town came under full control of the Syrian Army on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Air Force attacked terrorists' position in the towns of Hayan and Hraytan.

Before every phone call that Fatuma Hashi has with her brother Mahdi, FBI agents come on the line to tell her what she is not permitted to talk about. "You're not allowed to speak about political issues. Or whatever's happening in the outside world. Or his case," she told The Intercept.

Mahdi Hashi, a young man of Somali origin who grew up in London, had never been to the United States before he was imprisoned in the 10-South wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan in November 2012, when he was 23. For over three years, he has been confined to a small cell 23 hours a day without natural light, with an hour alone in a slightly larger indoor cage. He has had no physical contact with anyone. Apart from occasional visits by his lawyer, his human interaction has been limited to brief, transactional exchanges with guards and a monthly 30-minute phone call with his family.

Yet most of Hashi's time in solitary confinement occurred before he had been deemed guilty by the justice system. Prolonged isolation prior to or in the absence of trial, sensory deprivation, and a lack of independent monitoring are normally associated with the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and CIA black sites overseas. But the MCC's 10-South wing, which houses terrorism suspects, is no different in these respects. A former MCC prisoner and a psychologist specializing in trauma told The Intercept that the kind of extreme isolation imposed on defendants there can pressure them to accept a guilty plea, irrespective of actual guilt.

For Hashi, who worked at a community youth organization in London, everything changed when he was approached by MI5, the U.K.'s domestic intelligence agency. He was pressured to become an informant, according to accounts he gave to rights groups and local authorities, but refused, despite being warned that doing so would make his life difficult.

Hillary Clinton likes to extol her foreign policy credentials, particularly her experience as Secretary of State. She attaches herself to Barack Obama's coattails, pledging to continue his policies. But she is even more hawkish than the President.

Like Obama, Clinton touts American exceptionalism, the notion that the United States is better than any other country. In his State of the Union addresses, Obama has proclaimed America "exceptional" and said the U.S. must "lead the world." Clinton wrote in her book Hard Choicesthat "America remains the 'indispensable nation.'"

It is this view that animates U.S. invasions, interventions, bombings and occupations of other countries. Under the pretense of protecting our national interest, the United States maintains some 800 military bases in other countries, costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars annually. Often referred to as "enduring bases," they enable us to mount attacks whenever and wherever our leaders see fit, whether with drones or manned aircraft.

Top Russian pollster explains Putin's high popularity

The slump in the ruble, the decline in the price for oil and Western sanctions have raised Russian prices, lowering the county's satisfaction with life index. Yet the head of state remains as popular as ever, with a 74% electoral rating. In an interview with Izvestiya correspondent Anastasiya Kashevarova, "Public Opinion"polling company head Alexander Oslon explained this not only by the "Crimean factor" but also by the fact that the president is perceived as society's savior.

A recent US intelligence report said that Daesh (also known as ISIL/Islamic State) is degrading. Two coalitions - one led by the US and the other by Russia - have been involved in fighting the terrorists. It is high time to figure out some differences between the two approaches.

The Common Goal

Russia, the United States, and Syria have one common enemy - the terrorist group Daesh. In September 2014, US President Barack Obama pledged to destroy Daesh with massive airstrikes.

"Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy. We will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists," he said in a statement.