US President Donald Trump has revealed why China has so much "respect" for him - drumroll, please - it's because of his "very, very large brain."

Trump made the audacious claim while discussing fraught US-China relations at a press conference in New York on Wednesday. The president declared that he likes China and believes the feeling is mutual before going on to explain why the nation's president, Xi Jinping, respects him.

"If you look at Mr Pillsbury, the leading authority on China... he was saying that China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very, very large brain," Trump said, speaking of himself in the third person.

If Israel continues to attack the Syrian Army and its allies "who are confronting terrorism" in the war-ravaged country, it will ultimately regret it, a high-ranking Iranian official has warned.

"The Zionist regime has been trying to establish a crisis in Syria," Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said on Thursday.

Ali Shamkhani slammed Israel, saying it has taken steps "to directly support terrorist groups and target the Syrian army and forces who are confronting terrorism."

Should Israel continue with these actions, "it will face reactions that will cause regret."

Trump's threats of war, sanctions and promises to make America great again could be dismissed as the ranting of an eccentric politician. But this isn't all about Trump. What he advocates is representative of much of the US elite.

The president and his generation of Americans grew up in a world where the USA was the greatest superpower in human history. It was not just their vast arsenal of nuclear weapons and their war machine but, in 1945, around 50 percent of the entire world's economy was in the United States of America, with Britain and the USSR hobbling along with around 10 percent each. America dwarfed the power that the British empire had in the 19th century.

In the years that followed, America would intervene all over the world, not to spread democracy, but to overthrow governments that were not working in America's commercial interests. Whether it was the coup that removed the government of Iran in 1953 and brought back the dictatorship of the Shah; or the military coup in Brazil in 1964 that overthrew a socialist, democratically elected government; or the dozens of other coups around the world, America crushed any opposition to its economic interests.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa warned the UN General Assembly that his government is planning to implement controversial reforms to correct racially skewed land-ownership patterns.

According to the President, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is currently holding consultations on the reform that had previously evoked widespread outrage across the international community.

"Nelson Mandela's vision continues to guide us as we seek to improve the lives of our people in many ways," Ramaphosa said. "We have started a comprehensive dialogue on the question of land reforms, as we seek ways to guarantee the land is shared by all."

Earlier this year, the ANC proposed a constitutional amendment that would give the government a legal right to seize and redistribute farmlands without any compensation for owners. The draft reform triggered heated international debate along with multiple media reports of alleged violence against South African white farmers, including murders.

US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley's assertion that Iran is the "biggest issue" for the US today is ridiculous and Washington has much bigger foreign and domestic issues to be worried about, experts told RT.

In an interview with the Fox & Friends morning show, Haley said that Americans "do need to be worried about Iran" because the country is "constantly in the middle of trouble".

But former US diplomat Jim Jatras believes any claims that Iran was the US's biggest problem are "ridiculous" and that Iran has "no real relationship to US national interests at all".

In the last year, Israel's supporters in the U.S. have made frank appeals to Jewish wealth and power as weapons to fight Israel's delegitimization from the left. The Israel lobby used to be more veiled when flexing its monetary muscles. But these calls have gotten pretty explicit, as Josh Block's program for Jews to use the "billions... at rest in our community" to buy up media properties and turn those publications into tribunes for Israel shows.

Here's a list of four statements by Israel supporters citing Jewish influence.

A leading funder of neoconservative causes, Roger Hertog spoke of Jewish wealth and influence, and "billionaires," in the context of the battle over Israel, at the conservative Jewish Leadership Conference last year.

All of us are aware that this has been a remarkable era for American Jews. Our forefathers who came to this country generations ago could never have conceived of what their children, their grandchildren, great grandchildren would accomplish. Not just unparalleled material success, but recognition and influence in the larger society beyond most of what we could ever have thought was possible. Jews today make up ten percent of the Senate and a third of the Supreme Court, 25 percent of the billionaires, not to mention science, medicine, culture, religion, arts, the academy, and yes philanthropy. But this is no ordinary time. Serious struggles do confront us, especially as it relates to what is happening with assimilation, intermarriage, open anti-semitism disguised as anti-Zionism on college campuses and elsewhere. And as the Pew studies show, young American Jews have increasingly become indifferent to Israel.

The real identity of one of the two Russians blamed by Britain for the Salisbury nerve-agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal is Anatoly Chepiga, the investigative website Bellingcat says, adding that he was a decorated Russian colonel.

Earlier this month, British prosecutors charged two Russians -- identified as Ruslan Boshirov and Aleksandr Petrov -- with attempted murder for carrying out the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, with the Novichok nerve toxin in the southern English city of Salisbury earlier this year. The prosecutors said the two were undercover officers for Russian military intelligence, the GRU.

Bellingcat, a website that covers intelligence matters, said on September 26 that together with its investigative partner, the Insider, it had established that the man who was named as Ruslan Boshirov is actually GRU Colonel Anatoly Chepiga.

British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, meanwhile, said in a tweet on September 26 that "the true identify of one of the Salisbury suspects has been revealed to be a Russian colonel," without mentioning the name.

Chepiga served in Chechnya and was awarded the highest state medal -- Hero of the Russian Federation -- usually bestowed personally by President Vladimir Putin, Bellingcat said, adding that after its own identification of Chepiga, "multiple sources familiar with the person and/or the investigation have confirmed the suspect's identity."

China said it is opposed to US jets taking "provocative actions" in the disputed South China Sea, a day after Washington confirmed that its B-52 long-range bombers flew near the contested territories.

On Tuesday, a group of B-52 bombers "participated in a regularly scheduled, combined operation in the East China Sea,"Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Dave Eastburn revealed on Wednesday. The maneuvers by the US, which were accompanied by Japanese fighter jets, reaffirmed the US' "continuous bomber presence" in the region.

Also on Tuesday, B-52s flew over the South China Sea, another highly-contested waterway. According to Eastburn, the bombers conducted routine maneuvers in "international airspace."

Previously, both Daesh* and the Patriotic Arab Democratic Movement in Ahvaz claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in Iran, carried out by four gunmen during a military parade.

According to the AFP, the Daesh terrorist group has threatened to carry out attacks in Iran following the recent assault on a military parade in Tehran.

The threats come following the attack on a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz that claimed the lives of 25 people, including one journalist and up to twelve servicemen of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and left 53 wounded. Both Daesh and local militants have claimed responsibility for the incident.

Almost from the very start of his presidency, Vladimir Putin has been relentlessly vilified in the western media. If their portrayal of Mr. Putin reflected the objective truth, we should believe that the man has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. As I noted in the first in this series of excerpts from Grand Deception, systematic demonization of a nation's leader predisposes many people to consent to war or regime change as means to help a stricken nation rid itself of a rotten, tyrannical leader. If we detest Vladimir Putin, we might approve of our intelligence communities orchestrating a coup to throw him out of power, even if the blood of some Russians is spilled in the process. It should be an honorable deed done for a greater good. Indeed, those who are desperate to have a regime change in Russia should be very keen for us to detest Mr. Putin. Hence the nonstop, un-nuanced negative coverage. Here I offer a different perspective: what if Putin isn't an arch-villain? What if he does in fact have redeeming qualities? Should we not try to get to know the man a bit better before we shrug off another regime change or war to rid the world of tyrants?

According to his chief of security, Alexander Korzhakov, Boris Yeltsin worked about two hours per day. The rest he spent eating, drinking, playing tennis, hunting or enjoying some other pastime. Vladimir Putin reportedly works exceptionally long hours and several of his advisers and ministers have testified to working with him until very late into the night and then receiving a call from him early in the morning the next day. Exiled banker and former oligarch Sergei Pugachev described his experience:

"...we hardly parted company, we met on a daily basis - from early morning to late evening until 3, until 4 AM, every day, every day. We naturally discussed matters of state business development, the state of the economy and so on. Putin needed someone who understood and knew those matters well." (Harding, Smith and Maynard 2015)