On the annual list ranking the "goodest" countries in the world by their contribution to humanity, the US has slid to the 40th place, barely ahead Russia and behind much of Europe.

"Because we live in a massively interconnected, interdependent age, an age of advanced globalization, it made a lot of sense to look at how countries affect each other and affect the whole system," said Simon Anholt, the project's co-founder.

Finland led the list, with Ireland, Sweden, Germany and Denmark rounding out the top five. The US slid down to 40 - down from 25th place two years ago - while Russia ranked just one spot below, rising by 54 ranks from a previous survey.

With the near weekly revelations that the British Foreign Office, MI6, and GCHQ have been behind the long standing agenda to undermine the Presidency of Donald Trump and undo the peaceful alliance between nationalist leaders in America, Russia, China and elsewhere, a new focus on the British hand in undermining the United States has become a serious thought for many citizens. In the first week of the new year, fuel was added to this fire when internal memos were leaked from the British-run Integrity Initiative featuring a startling account of the techniques deployed by the anti-Russian British operation to infiltrate American intelligence institutions, think tanks and media.

For those who may not know, the Integrity Initiative is an anti-Russian propaganda outfit funded to the tune of $140 million by the British Foreign office. The January 2019 leak, featuring documents dated to the early period of Trump's election, demonstrate that this organization, already active across Europe promoting anti-Russian PR and smearing nationalist leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn, was intent on spreading deeply into the State Department and setting up "clusters" of anti-Trump operatives. The documents reveal high level meetings that Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly had with former Trump Advisor Sebastien Gorka, McCain Foundation director Kurt Volker, Pentagon PR guru John Rendon among many others.

Scour the history books and you will struggle to find an act of imperialism more brazen than US President Donald Trump's de-recognition of Nicolas Maduro as Venezuela's president.

In a scathing denouncement of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, famed US Civil War General (and later president) Ulysses S Grant told a reporter,

"We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion."

The Mexican-American War was a war of plunder and conquest on the part of a US ruling class for whom every country south of the Rio Grande was then, as if by divine right, deemed subservient to Washington. From then to now the US has regarded Latin America as a wholly owned subsidiary, its primary function to serve Washington's economic interests.

Venezuela has elections. Juan Guaido has never even been a Presidential candidate. Despite massive CIA opposition funding and interference over years as Big Oil tries to regain control of the World's largest oil reserves, Nicolas Maduro was democratically re-elected in 2018 as President of Venezuela.

The coup now under way is illegitimate. I opposed Maduro's move to replace the elected National Assembly. Sometimes I read back things I wrote in the past and decide I was wrong. Sometimes I think the article was right, but a bit of a potboiler. Occasionally I am proud, and I am proud of my analysis on Venezuela written on 3 August 2017. I believe it is still valid.

Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, met the delegation to the second DPRK-U.S. high-level talks that had visited Washington D.C. of the United States.

On January 23, Supreme Leader of the Party, state and army Kim Jong Un met the members of the delegation led by Kim Yong Chol, vice-chairman of the WPK Central Committee, and listened to the results of the visit.

He was reported about the details of the visit during which the delegation visited the White House, met the U.S. president and discussed the issue for the second DPRK-U.S. summit and also had negotiations with the U.S. working group on a series of issues to be settled between the two countries. He was presented by Kim Yong Chol a personal letter sent to him by President of the United States of America Donald Trump. Upon receiving the good personal letter sent by President Trump, the Supreme Leader expressed great satisfaction.

He spoke highly of President Trump for expressing his unusual determination and will for the settlement of the issue with a great interest in the second DPRK-U.S. summit. Kim Jong Un said that we will believe in the positive way of thinking of President Trump, wait with patience and in good faith and, together with the U.S., advance step by step toward the goal to be reached by the two countries of the DPRK and the U.S.

U.S. officials have held talks with Taliban envoys in Qatar for a fourth day, the militants said, as the two sides pursue a potential deal to bring an end to Afghanistan's 17-year conflict.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the media on January 24 that "discussions are still ongoing," although they had initially been scheduled to last for two days. "We will talk in detail later when we reach agreement," Zabihullah said.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry also confirmed that talks were under way, although there was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy or NATO in Kabul.

The United States said on January 22 that it had resumed talks with the militants in Qatar, where special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was meeting Taliban representatives.

Washington wants the insurgents to enter talks with the Afghan government, but they have long refused, saying it is a U.S. puppet.

New details have emerged related to a phone call between President Trump and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday over the US planned Syria troop pullout, which Turkish presidential office sources say Trump reaffirmed his commitment to carrying out. Unknown up to this point was a segment of the conversation reportedly focused on the devastating ISIS suicide attack on an American patrol deep inside Manbij in northern Syria last Wednesday, which killed four Americans and 15 others.

Turkish sources say President Trump agreed with Erdogan's assessment that the rare Jan. 16 attack was a "provocation" carried out in order to influence Trump's Syria pullout decision.

Emmanuel Macron has praised the "courage" of Venezuelan protesters but fell short of recognizing self-declared "acting president" Juan Guaido. His desire to exert influence on Latin America could back him into a corner in Paris.

"After the illegal election of Nicolas Maduro in 2018, Europe supports the restoration of democracy. I salute the courage of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marching for their freedom," Emmanuel Macron tweeted in French on his official account.

The United States has targeted with sanctions two Iran-backed foreign militias fighting in Syria, an Iranian airline, and an Armenian general sales agent providing services to an already sanctioned Iranian carrier.

The Treasury Department said on January 24 that all four targeted entities are tied to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) elite Quds Force and Mahan Air, both of which are already blacklisted.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced that it was taking action against the Fatemiyoun Division and the Zaynabiyoun Brigade, saying their fighters were recruited by the IRGC mostly from Afghan and Pakistani refugees as well as migrants residing in Iran.

"The brutal Iranian regime exploits refugee communities in Iran, deprives them of access to basic services such as education, and uses them as human shields for the Syrian conflict," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.


The Treasury also designated for sanctions Iran-based Qeshm Fars Air, saying it is owned or controlled by Mahan Air and provides material support to the Quds Force.

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."