The European trio's accusation that Iran violates the key restrictions of the nuclear deal are unjustified, the Russian Foreign Ministry said urging the countries not to increase tensions that could endanger the pact.

Paris, Berlin and London officially reported Iran's non-compliance with the 2015 agreement to the Joint Commission under the Dispute Resolution Mechanism. This step could potentially lead to the UN Security Council being forced to decide on whether or not to bring back sanctions against Tehran.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement:

"We can't rule out that the ill-considered actions of the European trio will lead to a new escalation around the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and make the return to the implementation of the 'nuclear deal' in its initially agreed format unachievable."

The federal government budget deficit surpassed $1 trillion in 2019, marking the first time the country has crossed that threshold in a calendar year since 2012.

The budget deficit reached $1.02 trillion for the 12-month calendar year ending in December, according to data released by the Treasury Department on Monday. And the gap appears to be widening.

For the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, which began on October 1, the deficit grew 12% over last year.

The deficit -- the gap between how much the government spends versus how much it takes in -- increased to $357 billion in the first three months of the fiscal year as military spending and health care costs continued to eclipse federal tax receipts.

The shortfall stood at $319 billion for the same period in fiscal 2019.

According to a document circulating in cyberspace, James Hogan (a Pentagon official), during his correspondence with Bennie Thompson (Chairman of the US House Committee on Homeland Security), officially announced the damage to the Ain al-Assad air base. The statistics published in his letter show that the United States, contrary to what the media has reported, suffered heavy losses. The information provided in the document is as follows:

• 285 casualties (139 deaths plus 146 injuries)
• Extensive damage to 15 helicopters, including 1 Blackhawk, two cargo aircraft and 3 MQ-1 Predator drones
• Extensive damage to the Base Command Center, 3 hangars, 3 barracks, and 10 military tents.
• Relative damage to the Air Traffic Control Tower and the base's runway

According to James Hogan, based on preliminary estimates, activities at this base have experienced a major breakdown, and may have to stop entirely for at least three weeks.

A report by a research unit of the German Bundestag, just released in Berlin, has defied the narrative of the European Union, NATO and the US, with the conclusion that since the Ukraine civil war began in early 2014, there has been no reliable evidence of Russian troop invasion or intervention by regular Russian military forces in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

After a review of the press, official public releases and reports, as well as European court rulings, the Bundestag's experts have described the outcome with the German phrase, ohne belastbares Faktenmaterial - "without reliable fact material."

The Bundestag report, which runs to 17 pages and was completed on December 9, has been noted in the German-language media. To date, however, it has been ignored by the Anglo-American press, including the alt-media.

The Soleimani assassination was an outright, aggressive and unbridled Act of War committed by the US against Iran on January 3rd, 2020. US President Donald Trump chose to order the murder of the Iranian general, who was the head of the elite Quds Force, part of the IRGC (the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps). Sometimes Trump is a blabbermouth who is a bit too honest for the swamp-dwellers surrounding him, while other times he is a compulsive liar. We saw both sides of Trump in the Soleimani assassination incident; firstly by claiming and boasting that he had ordered the assassination, and conversely by falsely claiming that Soleimani was about to order attacks on US embassies and US forces. Meanwhile, now that a little time has passed since the event, the truth is coming out - namely that the hit on Soleimani was pre-planned months or years in advance, that Israel was involved in the planning and execution and that there was no evidence the US was about to be attacked by Soleimani or Iranian forces.

The Trump administration can't give state and local governments the "veto power" to reject refugees from resettling within their borders, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte agreed to block the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order requiring resettlement agencies to get written consent from state and local officials in any jurisdiction where they want to help resettle refugees beyond June 2020.

In his 31-page ruling, Messitte said the agencies are likely to succeed in showing that November's executive order is unlawful because it gives state and local governments veto power over the resettlement of refugees. The judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by three national agencies that sued to challenge the executive order.

President Donald Trump's administration didn't immediately say whether it will appeal Messitte's decision.

This latest back-peddling move by the US President demonstrates why Washington and the media have been so insistent with their bevy of war propaganda narratives around Iran.

Ever since Washington's double assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader, General Qasem Soleimani, and senior Iraqi PMU commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, on January 3rd, the White House and its mainstream media adjuncts have run an incessant propaganda campaign to try and demonize the Iranian military commander, calling him "an evil man" who had "the blood of Americans and Iranians on his hands," as well as being "the world's leading terrorist."

For good measure, Trump even compared him to Osama bin Laden. The propaganda seemed over-the-top at the time, but now we can see why.

A sober review of the timeline of events over the past 18 months reveals exactly how the US were preparing for this latest round of provocations with Iran, including evidence that President Trump had already green-lit the assassination of Soleimani seven months earlier. Prior to Monday, the official Washington line on the double assassination was that the US had received intelligence of an "imminent threat" to US embassies and other asset stationed in the region. Because the threat was deemed 'imminent' and therefore urgent, the White House could just about justify its action under an executive authorization of military force, effectively bypassing any Congressional and Constitutional oversight. However, it quickly became clear during their media appearances that neither Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, nor Defense Secretary Mark Esper - where able to provide any specifics of the alleged threat which everyone was so cock-sure about only days earlier. In the end, it was Esper's own proverbial face-plant on Sunday's Face the Nation which finally caused the official narrative to collapse, with Esper visibly panicking on live national TV before letting slip that he actually hadn't seen any of the supposed 'intelligence' which the Administration had previously assured the American public it had.

Rockets have been fired in the direction of Camp Taji, a US-coalition base north of Baghdad in Iraq, local media report. At least one member of Iraqi security forces has reportedly been wounded.

A rocket has landed near the gates of the base, which houses soldiers from the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, and other countries whose personnel remain in Iraq after Parliament ordered foreign soldiers to leave earlier this month. At least two rockets are believed to have hit near the base, which is 17km north of Baghdad.

The situation has become markedly more tense since the Trump administration's assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, which provoked Iran to fire a barrage of missiles into the US' Ain al-Asad airbase and Erbil. The strikes resulted in zero casualties but gave evidence of precision strike capabilities and came with a warning that Tehran would strike Dubai or Haifa next should Washington attempt to retaliate.

Libyan National Army (LNA) Commander Khalifa Haftar and the head of the rival Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez Sarraj, took part in peace talks mediated by Russia and Turkey in Moscow. At the end of the talks, the GNA delegation signed a ceasefire agreement, while the LNA commander left the Russian capital without inking the deal.

According to multiple reports, Akile Salih, who is the president of the House of Representatives and is allied with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, announced that the ceasefire - announced by rival forces on Sunday - had ended and that war would continue.

After the Moscow talks mediated by Russia and Turkey failed to yield an official ceasefire agreement, GNA-LNA skirmishes near Tripoli have reportedly resumed. The east-based Libyan army reported that fighting was underway in the Libyan capital's southern suburbs. The LNA reaffirmed its readiness to continue its offensive to 'liberate' Tripoli.

There remain a lot of unanswered questions and implausible explanations in the story of the Ukrainian airliner shot down near Tehran on January 8th, 2020. And while the Iranians have publicly and officially taken responsibility, there may be other reasons for them taking responsibility besides their actually having done it. I can think of several, and I will propose a few. But one thing I am certain of, with good reason - the "accident" story is bullshit, no matter who is telling it, and no matter why. They may have a good reason for telling it, but it's a lie. There may be a good reason for telling it, but there's no good reason for believing it, at all.

The first thing to understand about the SA-15 system is that it DOES have an IFF interrogator built into its radar system. The interrogator sends out a pulse that detects and interprets the IFF civilian airliner transponder signal automatically, every few seconds. Boeing 737 aircraft are equipped with two IFF transponders, which are set and activated prior to take off. Planes can be allowed to take off with only one operational transponder, and it is possible that the single transponder can fail or a pilot (and co-pilot, and even ATC) can forget to make sure it's on before take off. My friend, a professional airline pilot, explains that if the plane is preparing for take off and the ATC does not see the transponder on his radar screen, he will remind the pilot, who will turn it on before take off. My friend has also told me that it does happen that the pilot, co-pilot and ATC can and sometimes do all forget and/or fail to notice the transponder is not on before take off. So, it could be possible for a plane to take off without an IFF transponder operating. On a flight across several international borders, into combat skies, where the IFF would be THE most important single safety system on the plane on this flight. Even flight PS-752.

Yes, it would be possible that they all overlooked it, except for one thing - we KNOW that they did not. That the flight was recorded on FLIGHTRADAR24.COM, proves that the transponder was on and working. The transponder was on and working, and the SA-15 radar, would have seen the unique flight info code for the regularly scheduled civilian flight on the radar screen, as would all ADA radars and all other civilian and military radars within range.

Even without an IFF transponder response, the SA-15/TOR M-1 radar provides the following data - location, bearing, speed and size (amplitude). That means, even if there was no IFF signal, (though, again, we KNOW there was) just from the radar blip on the screen, the operator gets the above info, location, bearing, speed and size, stating the object is going 180 degrees away from Aria military airbase, 90 degrees away from Tehran, (PS-752 did not turn right until after the first missile hit) going about half the speed of a Tomahawk cruise missile (275 knots vs 480 knots) and the amplitude of its return radar signal is exactly that of the profile of a Boeing 737, many times bigger and different from that of a cruise missile or enemy military aircraft of any kind.