The Palestinian Central Council (PCC) decided to suspend the recognition of Israel as well as to end the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) commitments toward the agreements signed with the Jewish state until it recognized the Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

"In view of Israel's continued denial of the signed agreements, the Palestinian Central Council... decided to suspend the commitments of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority toward the agreements with the occupying power [Israel] until Israel recognized the State of Palestine within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital," the PCC said in a press release.

According to the statement, the PCC also decided to stop security and economic coordination with Israel "on the basis that the transitional phase, including the Paris agreement, no longer exists."

The PCC authorized Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to implement these decisions.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the filming of the fake chemical weapons' attack has already begun.

The Russian Defense Ministry has stated that several dozens of 'White Helmets' members had arrived in the Syrian Aleppo province from Idlib to carry out a chemical weapons' provocation. The White Helmets have already started the filming, involving unknown local residents, the Russian military stated.

"Militants of illegal armed groups do not abandon their attempts to destabilize the situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone. The Russian center for reconciliation received information from residents of Aleppo that they [militants] are preparing another provocation with the use of toxic agents to accuse the government forces of using chemical weapons against the local population," Lt. Gen. Vladimir Savchenko said as quoted by Russia's Defense Ministry. "Members of the White Helmets organization are carrying out staged filming with participation of civilians unknown to local resident."

Savchenko specified that, according to information received by the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation, militants planned to provoke the Syrian Armed Forces to open return fire, adding that their plan also included the staging, in a territory controlled by illegal armed units, of an artillery shelling with projectiles containing toxic agents allegedly conducted by Syria's military.

Conservative commentators are outraged that former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made a racist joke, saying African-Americans "all look alike" while correcting her interviewer who mixed up two Democrat politicians.

Video of the exchange first began making the rounds on Monday. It shows Clinton getting interviewed on Friday on a stage in New York, by Kara Swisher of the tech news site Recode.

"What do you think of Cory Booker," Swisher asked, "saying 'kick them in the shins,' essentially?"

"Well that was Eric Holder," Clinton shot back, deadpanning a beat later, "Yeah, I know they all look alike."

There are few certainties in the Salisbury case, but one thing I am quite confident of is that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were not poisoned with a nerve agent of "high purity" on the door handle of 47 Christie Miller Road. I am also quite confident that Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was not poisoned in this way either, and furthermore that his actions, and the subsequent actions of investigators, are the Achilles Heel of the whole explanation. I shall come onto that in due course, but first the Skripals.

There are simply too many things which, when added together, make the door handle explanation at the very least incredibly implausible, if not downright impossible:

Firstly, they did not die immediately, or thereabouts, which is what you would expect to have happened had they been contaminated by coming into contact with what was said to be a nerve agent of "high purity".

Secondly, they were fine for hours afterwards, so much so that they were able to drive to town, feed ducks, go for a meal, and then have a drink.

Thirdly, eye witness accounts of the couple on the bench suggest that they became seriously ill pretty much simultaneously. Certainly, there were no reports of one of the pair calling for help, or contacting the emergency services, which is what you would expect to have happened in the event of one becoming ill before the other.

Fourthly, during the duck feed, which took place just after the Skripals parked their car in Sainsbury's car park, and prior to their visit to Zizzis, Mr Skripal handed bread to some local boys, one of whom apparently ate a piece. I cannot think of a plausible explanation why this boy did not become ill if, as claimed, Mr Skripal's hands were contaminated at that time with a "military grade nerve agent".

Fifthly, either Mr Skripal or his daughter must have touched the parking machine at Sainsbury's car park, which was then touched by literally hundreds of people over the following days. Yet not one of these people were contaminated.

Sixthly, neither the door handle at Zizzis nor the door handle at The Mill were contaminated, despite the fact that either Mr Skripal or Yulia, or perhaps both, would have handled them when going into those venues.

In other words, in order to accept the door handle explanation, you need to ignore every one of these extremely improbable things. If it were someone on a website suggesting it, rather than The Metropolitan Police, you all know what they would be called and what they would be assumed to be wearing on their heads, don't you?

We normally think of colonizers as large countries, and the colonized as smaller and weaker nations. But this is not always the case. Colonization does not require occupation. It merely requires the subjugation of the colonized. With ambition, superior information and calculation, and the right mindset, smaller nations can (and have in the past) colonized and dominated larger and nominally more powerful countries.

India was successfully colonized by tiny Britain in the 18th century. The vehicle for colonization was the East India Company. It was only after the Indian mutiny that Britain acted directly and sent in troops to establish the British Raj. For the next 200 years India was drained of its wealth, its economy was restructured to support England's needs and global ambitions, and its people militarized to fight and die on behalf of the British crown. The Indian leaders who remained were willing participants in this venture; those who felt otherwise were destroyed or marginalized.

No. Obviously Russia does not benefit from the scrapping of yet another treaty designed to prevent a nuclear exchange amid a war with the United States.

Yet, as an attempt to frame blatant US provocations as somehow "Russia's fault," a narrative has begun circulating - claiming that not only does the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty somehow benefit Russia - it was via Russia's "puppet" - US President Donald Trump - that saw the treaty scrapped.

Spreading this scurrilous narrative are political provocateurs like former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul who has re-branded himself recently as a prominent anti-Trump voice - feeding into and feeding off of America's false left-right political paradigm.

The People's Bank of China has reportedly let the renminbi slip to a 10-year low against the dollar on Tuesday. A cheaper yuan helps Chinese products mitigate the losses from US import tariffs imposed by President Trump.

The official yuan exchange rate was fixed at 6.9574 per dollar on Tuesday, 0.28 percent weaker than the previous level of 6.9377. This is the weakest yuan fix since 2008.

The last time the Chinese yuan fell to the level of 7 to 1 against the dollar was during the last financial crisis. "If the authorities are mindful of the potential impact on sentiment and capital flows, they have to gauge the potential negative impact on sentiment and overshooting beyond 7 if the level is broken," said Frances Cheung, head of Asia macro strategy at Westpac in Singapore, as quoted by Reuters.

Tokyo is planning to conduct a logistics test using the Russian Trans-Siberian Railway and a ferry line to join four countries, including Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea, a Japanese official said Tuesday.

The major goal of the project is to create a new transportation corridor by including the Chinese province of Jilin to a ferry line that currently connects the Russian city of Vladivostok, South Korean Donghae, and Japan's Sakaiminato, according to Nogava Satoshi, vice governor of Japan's smallest prefecture, Tottori.

The official stressed that the logistic corridor may potentially include other territories.

In April, the ferry, dubbed DBS, called at the Russian port of Zarubino, and transported cargo freighted there to China, Satoshi said, adding that the delivery was significantly faster. However, he said the parties still have to solve some problems identified during the testing delivery.

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos lost a record-breaking $19.2 billion of his personal wealth over the past two trading days, the greatest such loss ever in that timeframe.

Bezos became, and remains, the richest person in modern history this year, however the strength of his position at the top of the global billionaires leaderboard has dipped. Just four months ago the wealth gap between him and Bill Gates, the world's second wealthiest person, stood at $49 billion.

The colossal loss comes amid a global market selloff, which is being further fueled by fears of continuing trade tensions. Amazon shares fell 7.8 percent on Friday and a further 6.3 percent on Saturday, bringing Bezos' fortune to $128.1 billion - much less than the $167.7 billion he peaked at in September.

Try not to feel too bad for the Blue Origin and Washington Post owner, though, even with this loss his personal net worth is still $29 million higher than it was on the first day of 2018, and his current net worth of $128 billion is still significantly higher than Bill Gates' mere $98.2 billion.

The record for greatest decline in personal wealth was previously held by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who lost a staggering $16.5 billion following a string of privacy breaches for the social network.

Prosecutors are investigating whether Belgian banks paid out interest and dividends on accounts frozen under UN sanctions in 2011 after the ouster of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Up to €5 billion ($5.7 billion) could have been disbursed to people controlling Libyan accounts, including militia groups in the country which stand accused of human rights abuses, according to a report by public broadcaster RTBF which cited an unidentified source.

RTBF said that when the UN agreed to freeze deposits held by Gaddafi's administration abroad, Belgium had done so but had not halted payments of interest and dividends.

With NATO's intervention in 2011, the UN introduced sanctions against the Libyan government's assets, effectively seizing roughly $67 billion from the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), held across Europe and North America. In the EU, national governments froze only the original amounts, while the interest and dividends earned after 2011 remained a liquid asset.