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.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has attacked the country's largest news channels as "propaganda," claiming they are conspiring to "brainwash" the public into deposing him on Election Day as he braces for a possible indictment.

"Channels 12 and 13 will try to brainwash you every night with unending false and distorted leaks" from the ongoing criminal probes that have dogged his reelection campaign, Netanyahu warned in a tweet in Hebrew, warning that "Leaks from investigations are a criminal offense with a maximum three-year sentence!"

Even while dismissing Channel 13 as propaganda, Netanyahu sent his associates to the station to accuse State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan of "subverting democracy" by pushing Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to indict the PM on bribery charges before the election. Nitzan, they said, wanted to "be remembered" for taking down their boss.


Netanyahu's lawyers demanded Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit investigate leaks from the probes, which they claim are splashing "new and sensational revelations" across the headlines on a daily basis. With elections just three months away, Netanyahu is apparently worried he may be indicted on bribery charges as early as next month.

One of Russia's major energy projects in Turkey, the Akkuyu nuclear power plant (NPP), will soon become operational. It is expected to provide 17 percent of the country's electricity needs.

"The implementation of a large-scale project for the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Turkey, Akkuyu, is under way and complies with the schedule. They are building its first power unit, which we plan to launch in 2023," Russian President Vladimir Putin announced.

Putin specified that the date was chosen by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, because the republic of Turkey will celebrate its centenary in 2023.

The $20-billion project will be the first NPP in Turkey. It should enable Ankara to reduce the cost of power generation and result in lower prices for consumers.

The agreement for constructing and operating the NPP was signed by the countries in 2010. The power plant's first reactor is expected to begin working in 2023. The plant will have four reactors with a capacity of 4,800 MW, and a service life of 60 years.

Russia's main energy projects with Turkey involve natural gas. In November, the two countries officially completed construction on the offshore section of the Turkish Stream pipeline. The section, which is 930km (578 miles) long and runs along the bottom of the Black Sea, is designed to deliver Russian gas to the Turkish market.

China could completely cut investment into the Silicon Valley, according to the former deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, following intense scrutiny of the world's largest telecom equipment maker.

Chinese tech giant Huawei is facing restrictions by several Western governments, amid heightened concerns that its products could be used for spying.

It comes at a time when the United States and China are locked in a long-running trade dispute, with market participants increasingly concerned the conflict could spill over into a so-called "tech war."

"The psychology has really changed, because technical war is a most interconnected war, (with) U.S. capital moving everywhere and Chinese capital moving everywhere," Zhu Min told CNBC on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump ended the week-long skirmish over the timing of his State of the Union address Wednesday night by agreeing to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to delay the speech until the government shutdown is resolved.

The move is a reversal from his position from earlier in the day, when the White House said it would proceed with plans for an address - either in the House chamber or at an alternative location - and it capped a day of public gamesmanship between the two leaders in which each sought to use the event to pressure the other to give ground on the shutdown, which has extended more than a month with no end in sight.

Pelosi last week had turned the largely symbolic gesture of scheduling a State of the Union into a partisan battle by rescinding her initial offer of hosting the prime time speech, citing security concerns given the Homeland Security Department and the Secret Service are both affected by the 33-day long shutdown.

Recognizing that the House chamber was no longer an option, the White House was left with either foregoing a live bipartisan audience in favor of an Oval Office address or further departing from protocol and recent history by delivering the speech from a location outside of Washington. A third option - delivering the speech from the other side of the Capitol, the Republican-controlled Senate - was deemed undesirable.

The shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, has told a court there is no justification for linking his decision to record a track with a heavy metal band that allegedly used Nazi-influenced fonts and claims of antisemitism in the Labour party.

The Labour MP, who would become lord chancellor and be placed in charge of the legal system if the party came to power, is suing the Sun newspaper for libel after it published an article entitled "Reich and Roll: Labour's justice boss ridiculed after he joins a heavy metal band that delights in Nazi symbols".

Burgon launched the libel action against the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper and its political editor, Tom Newton Dunn, after it reported on his guest appearance with the Leeds band Dream Tröll.

The article, published in April 2017, claimed the typeface used for the letter "S" in a Dream Tröll social media post entitled "We Sold Our Soul For Rock N Tröll" paid homage to the logo of Adolf Hitler's SS paramilitary organisation, which played a key role in the Nazi Holocaust.