With the ceasefire largely holding, the Syrian Army and its allies can now focus on destroying ISIS

With the fragile ceasefire largely holding, the Syrian army and its allies have driven eastward into ISIS-held territory. And they've made significant gains in the last week:

On Friday morning in the southeastern countryside of the Homs Governorate, the Syrian Arab Army's 120th Brigade of the 2nd Division - in close coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF), Liwaa Suqour Al-Sham (Desert Hawks Brigade), and Dara' Qalamoun (Qalamoun Shield) - continued their advance towards the strategic city of Quraytayn, striking the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham's (ISIS) positions at the important hilltop of Tal Quraytayn.

The latest government takeover of the Zaman media outlet in Istanbul is "not a surprise at all," a journalist who had been working in the country told RT, adding that "the press has never been free in Turkey."

"Everybody who opposes them [the government], every journalist who is against the government is being framed. I was framed as a terrorist supporter and Zaman is linked to the Gulen movement - which is a movement of a religious Turkish leader [Sunni cleric Fethullah Gulen] who is based in the US, and they say he is trying to stage a coup against the government. So now Zaman journalists and people who read Zaman are being framed as coup supporters, that's how the government is doing it," Frederike Geerdink, Dutch freelance journalist who was deported from Turkey last year, told RT.

Another strategic village in the central province of Homs has been retaken by the Syrian Army and the country's National Defense Force (NDF), in an offensive that came amid the ongoing ceasefire in the country, according to the Iranian news agency FARS. The Syrian troops managed to take full control over the village of al-Bayarat, hours after heavy fighting with Daesh terrorists, sources said.

The liberation of the village came after the Syrian Army and the NDF had seized back a strategic mountain and a number of oilfields from the terrorists in Homs. After securing the entire mountaintop of Jabal Jazal and the surrounding oil fields, the government troops advanced south towards the city of Palmyra, seizing part of the valley from the Daesh terrorists.

Earlier this week, Syrian warplanes conducted airstrikes against Daesh strongholds in different parts of Homs Province that left many militants dead and wounded and destroyed much of their military hardware, according to FARS.

Broadcasting from deep in the heart of the American Empire, join your hosts Elan Martin and Harrison Koehli, and fellow Sott.net editors as they discuss everything from current events and the latest machinations and manipulations of the global elite to history, science, and religion, and how it all fits together.

This week we'll be looking at methods used in the cognitive sciences for personal development and their application for seeing and understanding global events. SOTT is an interactive platform for discovery of both internal and external realities, and as such we'll be looking at some of the cognitive tools that can be used to deconstruct myths, lies, and unconscious beliefs and rebuild new pathways towards a new way of living.

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The US-Chinese standoff in the South China Sea is heating up, with Washington dispatching a small armada to the area following reports that Beijing had reinforced a key island with fighters and air defenses. Much has been said and written about the dispute, with Russian analysts left pondering: if push comes to shove, what will Russia's role be?

On Thursday, the Navy Times reported that the US had dispatched an aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, two destroyers and two cruisers from the US's 7th Fleet to the South China Sea, ostensibly in response to reports that China had sent fighter jets to Woody Island, the largest of the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

With the violent police seizure of Turkey's biggest independent newspaper this weekend, the country has finally crossed the line to become a fully-fledged dictatorship.

For many months now, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been cracking down on media as part of a wider move towards an increasingly authoritarian regime under his ruling Justice and Development Party.

Brutal, chaotic scenes at the offices of Zaman newspaper in Istanbul and its related publications this weekend prove beyond doubt that Erdogan's regime has now openly embraced dictatorship. This in a country which has a long history of military coups and genocidal authoritarianism.

Recent years of seeming parliamentary democracy are now shown to be a sham. Turkey is reverting to the form of strong-arm despotism under Erdogan and his flunkey prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

The media group which owns Zaman, Feza Media, has been accused of "consorting with terrorists" connected to Kurdish separatists. A Turkish court then ordered at the end of last week that the newspaper be taken into administration under editors appointed by the government.

The charges are flagrantly trumped-up, of course. Zaman and its English-language daily, Today's Zaman, are "guilty" of nothing other than providing critical reports and analysis of Erdogan's government, especially over its reprehensible role in Syria's conflict since 2011.

"Consorting with terrorists" is the blanket charge that Erdogan is throwing at other independent Turkish media. Dozens of journalists have been arrested on similar charges. While other media outlets have been likewise closed down by Erdogan's ruling party.

Can Dundar, the editor of Cumhuriyet newspaper, is facing prosecution on "espionage" and "subversion" charges — and a possible life sentence in jail — simply because he published photographs last year that purported to show how Turkish state intelligence (MIT) was running weapons across the Syrian border — to supply illegally armed groups trying to overthrow the Damascus government.

A court ruling last month ordered that Dundar be released pending his trial, however Erdogan and his supporters said that they don't respect the court order. Yet another disturbing example of corrosive lawlessness at the heart of the Turkish state.

This weekend witnessed perhaps the most brazen crackdown on democratic freedoms by Erdogan, with the full-scale invasion of riot police at the premises of Zaman.

General information on the application of measures for the reconciliation of opposing sides

In the course of last 24 hours, appeals of 8 commanders of armed groupings active in Daraa for joining ceasefire regime have been received. Therefore, the total number of "moderate" opposition detachments, which have joined the truce regime, has reached 30.

Negotiations with leaders of 6 armed formations located in the provinces of Damascus, Homs and Daraa are being held.

Consultations with representatives of 3 towns concerning ceasefire and humanitarian aid have been held.

Total number of reconciliation agreements has reached 42.

What are the positions of U.S. presidential candidates on NSA domestic spying, personal privacy and the Fourth Amendment?

Putting the debate in perspective, we begin with the Snowden affair.

In May 2013, explosive details about the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance programs were revealed in documents provided by Edward Snowden to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman, and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras.

Investigators claim Snowden began downloading government documents in 2012 while working with Dell, an NSA contractor. In March, 2013 - three days after what he later called his "breaking point" of "seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress" - Snowden quit his job at Dell and began work for Booz Allen Hamilton where his downloading resumed.

Initial Snowden documents published in June 2013 by the Washington Post and The Guardian revealed the extent and expansive reach of the agency's dragnet spy programs worldwide.

In the same month, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of US Government or foreign government property.

Documents estimated to range from 250 thousand to 1.7 million disclosed NSA's collection of domestic email, telephone metadata and revealed a top secret data mining and information sharing program named PRISM.

Russia will host a meeting on March 20 between OPEC and non-members to renew talks on capping global crude output, Bloomberg reports, quoting the Nigerian Oil Minister.

There will be a "dramatic price movement" when the meeting happens, said Nigeria's Oil Minister Emmanuel Kachikwu on Thursday.

"Both the Saudis and the Russians, everybody is coming back to the table," said Kachikwu, adding that producers hope to return crude prices to $50 per barrel.

Oil prices hit 12-year lows of $27 last month. This prompted talks between the world's two biggest oil producers - Russia and Saudi Arabia - who have agreed on an oil production freeze at January levels.

A new telephone hotline service, launched by the US for Syrians to report ceasefire violations in the war-ravaged country, faces a significant problem: personnel answering the phones are Americans not fluent in Arabic.

The improbable oversight at the State Department's 24-hour hotline, in operation for less than one week, was spotted by Syria Direct, a non-profit group of local journalists.

Syria Direct outlined that local residents, reporting artillery and air shelling in the area, discovered that State Department operators could not understand them.

Notably, Arabic-speaking journalist Orion Wilcox, reporting a truce violation in the Homs province, was surprised when he heard English spoken on the other end of the line.