According to a lawsuit against the company, a Psy-Group operative registered outlawbds.com, a website that reportedly named and shamed supporters of the anti-Israel boycott effort.

Psy-Group, a mysterious Israeli company that is reportedly being investigated by the FBI in connection with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into alleged illegal interference in the 2016 US presidential election, was also involved in covert anti-BDS efforts, according to a lawsuit against the company and multiple sources who spoke to The Times of Israel.

BDS is a campaign by some pro-Palestinian activists encouraging people to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel over what they call its ill-treatment of the Palestinians.

Psy-Group, which operates in Israel under the name Invop Ltd, is a self-styled leader in "intelligence and influence" which boasts in its marketing material of its covert techniques and capabilities. Its founder and co-owner Joel Zamel was reported by the New York Times last month to have met with Donald Trump Jr. three months before the November 2016 US presidential elections, offering to assist his father's campaign, and the company was reported to have drawn up "a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump."

While a lawyer for Zamel denied that he or any his companies had any involvement in the US election campaign, Bloomberg News has reported that Special Counsel Mueller's team is investigating flows of money into Psy-Group's Cyprus bank account, and also that Psy-Group formed an alliance with Cambridge Analytica, a (now collapsed) company that the Trump campaign consulted on social media issues, following Trump's election.

Trump's statement on the Khashoggi murder shows that when US values, such as defending human rights and the rule of law, collide with American interests, he opts for the latter.

US President Donald Trump's latest statement on Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder is an extraordinary example of political sincerity - although backed by a completely wrong analysis.

Trump departed from the usual empty and generic rhetoric made by former American presidents about Saudi Arabia. He made it very clear that the US will condone what Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did, i.e ordering the killing of Khashoggi, because the kingdom is containing Iran, purchasing American weapons and is helping to control oil prices in line with American interests.

In other words, when American values, such as defending human rights and the rule of law, collide with American interests, Trump will opt for the latter. In fact, Trump statement confirms indirectly Middle East Eye's report on the US intention to offer a way out to the Saudi crown prince from the Khashoggi quagmire.

Angela Merkel has suggested countries should be willing to give up control over their own affairs and let organisations such as the European Union have more power in a veiled swipe at Brexit, as the German Chancellor threatens to derail Britain's exit from the bloc.

Speaking at an event organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin today, the outgoing leader of the Christian Democratic Union argued that countries should be prepared to make concessions in an "orderly procedure". She said parliaments should make the decision to sign such contracts, reports German news channel Welt.

Mrs Merkel, who last month announced she was controversially stepping down as leader of her party but not as Chancellor of Germany despite previously saying the two roles go hand in glove, said ceding power to a superstate is a better form of patriotism.

She told the event, titled 'Parliamentarianism Between Globalisation and National Sovereignty': "In this day nation states must today - should today, I say - be ready to give up sovereignty. But of course in an orderly procedure."

NSO, a secretive spyware firm, has been the target of accusations from Canada and Edward Snowden, who say that it helped the Saudi government spy on dissidents using a cutting-edge espionage tool.

The Israeli cyber intelligence firm NSO Group Technologies was in talks with the Saudis to sell super-stealth spyware, according to a Haaretz report.

The newspaper cites a complaint filed with the Israeli police by a European businessman, who claims that NSO representatives in 2017 offered their Pegasus 3 technology to high-profile Saudi officials. The mobile phone spyware needs only a phone number to ensnare a device. The Saudis included former intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal and Nasser al-Qahtani, a man who "presented himself as the deputy of the current intelligence chief".

The European businessman insists that the Pegasus 3 affair began when he was contacted by "W.", an Israeli dealing in cyber-defense technologies. W. asked him to use his connections in the Persian Gulf states to help do business in the region.

During a series of meetings, he claims, the Saudi officials presented a list of software they sought to obtain to hack into the phones of dissidents in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. In the summer of 2017, W. negotiated a deal to sell NSO's Pegasus 3 system to the Saudis for $55 million.

Israeli forces attempted to raid a high school, on Saturday afternoon, in the Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem.

Muhammad Abu al-Hummus, member of a local follow-up committee, said that Israeli forces stormed the Issawiya neighborhood and surrounded a local all boys high school, in attempt to raid it.

Abu al-Hummus pointed out that Israeli forces fired sound bombs towards the high school, which led to several injuries among the students and teachers.

Abu al-Hummus added that clashes broke out among Palestinian youths and Israeli forces, in order to prevent the raid into the high school.
The Palestinian Ministry of Education released its annual report for 2017 documenting the Israeli government's violations against Palestinian education, saying that 80,279 Palestinian children and 4,929 teachers and staff were "attacked" by Israeli settlers or soldiers.

So it turns out it's really really important for powerful people to be able to lie to us with impunity, you guys. I know this because an actual, literal spy told me that that's what I'm meant to believe in an article published by Newsweek yesterday.

If you were wondering how long it would take the imperial propagandists to ramp up their efforts to explain to us why it is good for the Trump administration to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after we learned that sealed charges have been brought against him by the United States government, the answer is eight days. If you were wondering which of those propagandists would step forward and aggressively attempt to do so, the answer is Naveed Jamali.

Rivers and ponds near a US airbase in Germany are increasingly polluted by a toxic chemical believed to cause cancer, RT Deutsch reveals. Some locals were reluctant to speak out as they feared losing their jobs at the site.

Located in an idyllic German countryside, this US Air Force base in Spangdahlem is steadily becoming the main source of trouble for local residents, RT Deutsch reveals in an investigative report. It says that water and soil around the base is contaminated with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), a kind of substance thought to cause cancer.

PFCs are usually found in firefighting foam which has been used during live fire exercises around Spangdahlem base, and its concentration in rivers and ponds is far higher than allowable standards, according to the investigation.

For those who have been following Venezuela closely in recent years there is a distinct sense of déjà vu regarding US foreign policy towards that South American nation. This is because Washington's strategy of regime change in Venezuela is almost identical to the approach it has taken in Latin America on numerous occasions since World War Two. This strategy involves applying economic sanctions, extensive support for the opposition, and destabilization measures that create a sufficient degree of human suffering and chaos to justify a military coup or direct US military intervention. Because this strategy has worked so well for the United States for more than half a century, our elected leaders see no reason not to use it regarding Venezuela. In other words, from Washington's perspective, its regime change policies towards Venezuela constitute business as usual in Latin America.

Despite US rhetoric, this regime change strategy does not take into account whether or not a government is democratically elected or the human rights consequences of such interventions. In fact, virtually all of the Latin American governments that the United States has successfully overthrown over the past 65 years were democratically elected. Among the democratically-elected leaders that have been ousted were Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), Salvador Allende in Chile (1973), Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti (2004) and Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2009). Washington targeted all these leaders with economic sanctions and destabilization campaigns that created the economic chaos and humanitarian crises required to justify a military solution.

The common denominator in all those cases had nothing to do with democracy or human rights, it was the fact that those elected governments had the audacity to challenge US interests in the region. The fact that a Latin American government might prioritize the interests of its own people over US needs is unacceptable in Washington. This attitude was exhibited by CIA director George Tenet during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in February 2002 when he arrogantly declared that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez "probably doesn't have the interests of the United States at heart." Two months later, Washington supported a military coup that attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan leader.

Slovakia will not support the United Nations pact on the treatment of migrants worldwide, Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said on Sunday after the European Union summit.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved in July by all 193 member U.N. nations except the United States, which backed out last year, and is due to be ratified formally in December.

The pact was conceived after the biggest influx of migrants into Europe since World War Two, many fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and beyond.

The militant shelling of Aleppo was the result of some countries' attempts to "facilitate" delivery of chemicals to terrorist groups, Damascus said. Syria now calls for the UN to act against states supporting terrorism.

At least 46 people, including 8 children have been hospitalized in Aleppo with symptoms of gas poisoning from chlorine, according to the Russian military who sent special units to assist with treating patients after the attack. Syrian media say over 100 people were injured. The shelling that targeted residential areas of Aleppo on Saturday night is believed to have been launched from within the Idlib de-escalation zone, from an area controlled by the former Al-Nusra front.

Damascus said the attack aimed to further frame the Syrian government, according to Sana news agency. The Syrian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to immediately condemn the "terrorist crimes," and take "deterrent and punitive measures against the states and regimes backing terrorism."