Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, met the delegation to the second DPRK-U.S. high-level talks that had visited Washington D.C. of the United States.

On January 23, Supreme Leader of the Party, state and army Kim Jong Un met the members of the delegation led by Kim Yong Chol, vice-chairman of the WPK Central Committee, and listened to the results of the visit.

He was reported about the details of the visit during which the delegation visited the White House, met the U.S. president and discussed the issue for the second DPRK-U.S. summit and also had negotiations with the U.S. working group on a series of issues to be settled between the two countries. He was presented by Kim Yong Chol a personal letter sent to him by President of the United States of America Donald Trump. Upon receiving the good personal letter sent by President Trump, the Supreme Leader expressed great satisfaction.

He spoke highly of President Trump for expressing his unusual determination and will for the settlement of the issue with a great interest in the second DPRK-U.S. summit. Kim Jong Un said that we will believe in the positive way of thinking of President Trump, wait with patience and in good faith and, together with the U.S., advance step by step toward the goal to be reached by the two countries of the DPRK and the U.S.

U.S. officials have held talks with Taliban envoys in Qatar for a fourth day, the militants said, as the two sides pursue a potential deal to bring an end to Afghanistan's 17-year conflict.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the media on January 24 that "discussions are still ongoing," although they had initially been scheduled to last for two days. "We will talk in detail later when we reach agreement," Zabihullah said.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry also confirmed that talks were under way, although there was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy or NATO in Kabul.

The United States said on January 22 that it had resumed talks with the militants in Qatar, where special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was meeting Taliban representatives.

Washington wants the insurgents to enter talks with the Afghan government, but they have long refused, saying it is a U.S. puppet.

New details have emerged related to a phone call between President Trump and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday over the US planned Syria troop pullout, which Turkish presidential office sources say Trump reaffirmed his commitment to carrying out. Unknown up to this point was a segment of the conversation reportedly focused on the devastating ISIS suicide attack on an American patrol deep inside Manbij in northern Syria last Wednesday, which killed four Americans and 15 others.

Turkish sources say President Trump agreed with Erdogan's assessment that the rare Jan. 16 attack was a "provocation" carried out in order to influence Trump's Syria pullout decision.

Emmanuel Macron has praised the "courage" of Venezuelan protesters but fell short of recognizing self-declared "acting president" Juan Guaido. His desire to exert influence on Latin America could back him into a corner in Paris.

"After the illegal election of Nicolas Maduro in 2018, Europe supports the restoration of democracy. I salute the courage of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marching for their freedom," Emmanuel Macron tweeted in French on his official account.

The United States has targeted with sanctions two Iran-backed foreign militias fighting in Syria, an Iranian airline, and an Armenian general sales agent providing services to an already sanctioned Iranian carrier.

The Treasury Department said on January 24 that all four targeted entities are tied to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) elite Quds Force and Mahan Air, both of which are already blacklisted.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced that it was taking action against the Fatemiyoun Division and the Zaynabiyoun Brigade, saying their fighters were recruited by the IRGC mostly from Afghan and Pakistani refugees as well as migrants residing in Iran.

"The brutal Iranian regime exploits refugee communities in Iran, deprives them of access to basic services such as education, and uses them as human shields for the Syrian conflict," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.


The Treasury also designated for sanctions Iran-based Qeshm Fars Air, saying it is owned or controlled by Mahan Air and provides material support to the Quds Force.

The Wiltshire county coroner David Ridley admitted this week that he held a 14-minute hearing into the death of Dawn Sturgess, alleged victim of a Russian Novichok attack last July, but after six months of further investigations by police, military, intelligence and toxicology experts, he still cannot hold a formal inquest and decide what caused her death.

This admission by the coroner, the scheduling of a new coroner's court hearing on April 15, and the likelihood that this too will be adjourned, now threaten the British Government's narrative that a Russian-produced nerve agent, sprayed on to a door handle last March, was an attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, and that four months later, a bottle containing the same poison killed Sturgess.

The admissions from Coroner Ridley on Monday were made as the European Union, prodded by the British Government, has announced new travel bans against the Russian military intelligence agency accused of the nerve agent attacks. "Today's new sanctions," British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Monday, "deliver on our vow to take tough action against the reckless and irresponsible activities of the Russian military intelligence organisation, the GRU, which put innocent British citizens in serious danger in Salisbury last year."

Coroner Ridley acknowledges there is no substantiation for Hunt's allegations in a court of law. Not now, not yet.

There has been no physical evidence of Sergei Skripal since the afternoon of March 4, 2018, when he and his daughter Yulia Skripal, fell ill on a park bench in the centre of Salisbury, and were hospitalised with what the local police and medical personnel first suspected to be food, alcohol or drug poisoning. The British authorities then announced that the Skripals were suffering from nerve agent poisoning. Ten days after the incident, on March 14, Prime Minister Theresa May (above image) announced that "the Russian State was culpable for the attempted murder of Mr Skripal and his daughter." The murder weapon was, she said, "a Novichok, a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia."

In a surprisingly candid admission, two former Federal Reserve chairs have stated that the Federal Reserve alone is responsible for creating all recessions in the United States.

First, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said that "Expansions don't die of old age. They get murdered."

To clarify this statement, former Chair Janet Yellen placed the murder weapon in the Fed's hands: "Two things usually end them.... One is financial imbalances, and the other is the Fed."

Think that through, and you quickly realize that both of those things are the Fed. Is there anyone left standing who would not say the Fed's quantitative easing in the past decade was the biggest cause of financial imbalances all over the world in history? Moreover, whose profligate monetary policies led to the Great Financial Crisis that gave us the Great Recession?

So, the Fed loads the gun with financial causes and then pulls the trigger. In fact, I think it would be hard to find a major financial imbalance in the US that the Fed did not have a hand in creating or, at least, enabling. Therefore, if those are the only two causes, then it is always the Federal Reserve that causes recessions by its own admission.

A district court's ruling that Chechnya's $135 million gas debt should be written off because collecting it could lead to social unrest has left other Russian regions wondering why they shouldn't get the same deal, and has prompted the local Gazprom affiliate to fight back.

On January 22, the federal Prosecutor-General's Office weighed in on Mezhregiongaz's appeal, arguing that the Chechen court had overstepped its authority in the first place. This, in turn, prompted a regional minister to claim the North Caucasus republic was owed debt forgiveness because of the two wars Moscow had waged against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The back-and-forth continued, with an official from the Russian gas giant Gazprom noting that the debt in question was not accrued during either of the two conflicts, and slamming the Chechen district court for violating legal norms.

And as four Russian regions followed Chechnya's lead by seeking their own debt amnesties, the Kremlin officially straddled the fence on the issue as new polls revealed that public trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin is hovering at near-record lows.

Prime Minister Imad Khamis said on Sunday that the unjust economic sanctions against the Syrian people were the main reason behind the delay and difficulty of delivering oil and nutritional substances imported to the country.

Khamis, speaking at the People's Assembly's 1^st session of the 9^th ordinary round of the 2^nd legislative term headed by Speaker Hammouda Sabbagh, added that the government recognizes the volume of the citizens' suffering from those sanctions and their repercussions on the daily life and each citizen

He affirmed that the government seeks to improve the standard of living through a number of basic sectors, mainly to boost the stability of each citizen in the regions of his work and the liberated areas in addition to the return of all institutions and services including the schools, roads, electricity, water and health utilities.

The Prime Minister stressed that the government is doing its best and seeking, by all means, to secure the needs of the local market in cooperation with friendly and allied countries, which are also subjected to unjust international sanctions aimed at dissuading them from positions in support of the sovereignty and independence of countries.

Four months after Syria and Russia agreed to call off its joint attack on HTS/al-Qaeda-held Idlib province, opting amidst US threats to cut a ceasefire deal mediated with Turkey, Moscow now says Ankara has failed to live up to its end of the bargain, which included agreeing to clear Idlib of terrorists and extremist groups. This means a joint Syrian Army-Russia assault on Idlib could again be on the horizon, which was a major source of tension and threats with the United States previously in September.

The collapse of the prior 'deescalation' agreement comes at a time when the White House has vowed to stick to the planned US pullout, however, this could be yet a another major development to complicate or delay any possible withdrawal timeline. FT described current Turkish-Russian talks in Moscow as follows:

Russia has accused Turkey of failing to live up to a promise to clear Syria's Idlib of extremist militant groups and admitted that a landmark ceasefire agreement made last September had failed. Ahead of crunch talks between the leaders of the two countries in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia's foreign ministry said the Islamist extremist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had "full control" of Syria's last remaining major opposition stronghold. The damning assessment came four months after Moscow agreed to postpone a planned military assault on the city in exchange for a promise from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to clear it of militants.

HTS is of course the rebranded coalition dominated by former Nusra Front militants, which is Syrian al-Qaeda. Russia has called the situation "rapidly deteriorating" and this week pointed to growing numbers of ceasefire violations and incidents and threats against Russia's Hmeimim airbase in Syria. Russia's Foreign Ministry cited that "65 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in more than 1,000 recorded breaches of the agreement," according to FT. This despite Erdogan previously agreeing to keep militants away from a 15km to 20km deep buffer zone established between HTS and pro-Damascus forces.