With November's midterm elections drawing nearer, the Gray Lady has reassured Americans that US Cyber Command has contacted individual "Russian operatives," to personally warn them against any meddling attempts.

The Russian trolls who allegedly used insincere tweets to influence the multi-billion dollar 2016 presidential election have apparently been put on notice, with Cyber Command contacting "individual Russian operatives" to inform them that Uncle Sam has "identified them" and is "tracking their work," the New York Times reported, citing anonymous officials who say they were briefed on the operation.

The Russians in question were "not directly threatened" by Cyber Command, the Times' anonymous sources stressed, adding that the possibility of being targeted by US sanctions would likely act as an effective deterrent.

US President Donald Trump is taking California to task for the management of its forests and dams, blaming red tape for the devastating forest fires and drought plaguing the bluest of blue states, and threatening to withhold aid.

Speaking at a White House address on Tuesday, Trump was shocked that Californians weren't using the water contained by their dams to put out the fires and irrigate their fields. "We have so much water they could actually water some of it," he said in disbelief.

About half (48 percent) of California's land is currently experiencing drought conditions, which - combined with high temperatures and strong winds - are largely to blame for the record-setting rash of fires in the state, according to state fire chiefs.

Trump, a proud climate change skeptic, attributes the fires to "lousy management." He has repeatedly said the forests are too dense and need to be thinned - a problem the logging industry would be happy to help with.

The West's human rights racket has once again mobilized - this time supposedly in support of China's Uyghur minority centered primarily in the nation's northwestern region of Xinjiang, China.

Headlines and reports have been published claiming that up to a million mostly Uyghurs have been detained in what the West is claiming are "internment camps." As others have pointed out, it is impossible to independently verify these claims as no evidence is provided and organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Uyghur-specific organizations like the World Uyghur Congress lack all credibility and have been repeatedly exposed leveraging rights advocacy to advance the agenda of Western special interests.

Russian society isn't ready for large-scale possession of firearms, as people tend to use guns "without justification" in stressful situations, Russian National Guard Commander Viktor Zolotov said.

The National Guard is "opposed to the wide distribution of guns. Our society isn't yet ready for this - both economically and psychologically," Zolotov said as cited by RIA Novosti.

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Wednesday noon seized a Palestinian house south of Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem and handed it to the settlers after forcing its inhabitants to leave at gunpoint.

Local sources said that the crews of the occupation authorities, guarded by a military force, began unloading the contents of a house in the neighborhood of Batn Al-Hawa in the central district of the town of Silwan south of the Aqsa Mosque, before being handed over to a settlement association.

Israel has no other option but to launch a "war" against Hamas, the Israeli defense minister has recently claimed, calling it the last resort. Modern history shows, however, that Israel has resorted to force quite frequently.

"Wars are only conducted when there is no choice, and now there is no choice," Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Israeli Parliament on Tuesday. But it looks like Israel believed many times that it severely lacked options throughout the last two decades, as it has launched more than half a dozen major military operations since the beginning of the 21st century.

Totally under the radar of a news cycle consumed by the Pulp Fiction in Istanbul saga and the ever-mutating US-China trade war, leaders from no less than 51 Asian and European nations met in Brussels on Friday to talk about developing some measure of global stability.The day before in Brussels had been lost on yet another unresolved soap opera - Brexit, with no credible deal in sight.

The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), established in 1996, lists 53 partners - 30 European nations, 21 Asian nations, the EU and the ASEAN Secretariat. Members, apart from the whole EU, include three BRICS nations (China, Russia, India), Japan, Australia and New Zealand - attesting to its importance.

Even though ASEM's decisions are not binding, the 12th summit could not have happened at a more crucial juncture, according to diplomats, in terms of the pressing need for some sanity in international law and relations.

Even with the EU focused on Brexit, the fallout of migration and Italy's open defiance of Brussels in raising its budget deficit; and Asia worried about inter-Korean dialogue, US bombers flying over the South China Sea ahead of an ASEAN summit, and the Rohingya crisis, they still managed to conduct meaningful discussions.

After all, Eurasia-wide trade already tops trans-Pacific trade, and the gap will continue to grow.

They discussed connectivity and trade and investment, but also sustainable development policies, climate change, terrorism, nuclear non-proliferation, cyber-security and, last but not least, the theme that galvanizes right-wing populism: migration.

Arguably the key consensus point of the Asia-Europe entente cordiale is the need to preserve the WTO - for all its faults still hailed as the only rules-based mechanism capable of arbitrating the proliferation of trade wars.

In parallel, the EU is advancing business as usual, signing a free-trade agreement with Singapore and another one with Vietnam and finalizing the terms of a trade deal with Japan.

Earlier, the Syrian Foreign Ministry accused the US-Led coalition of violating international law and killing civilians in a letter to the UN following airstrikes in Deir Ez-Zor province.

The international coalition led by the United States launched another airstrike on the village of al-Sousse in the Syrian province of Deir Ez-Zor, which resulted casualties and injuries among civilians, the Syrian news agency SANA reported, citing local sources.

"The coalition announcing the fight against the terrorist group Daesh conducted a series of bombings of residential areas in the village of al-Sousse and its environs in the southeast of the province of Deir Ez-Zor," the agency reported.

Having killed more than 200 Palestinians since March, the IDF has apparently decided to show its more humane side, alerting advocacy groups to the plight of a lowly tortoise nearly murdered by Hamas "arson balloons."

The official Twitter account of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Wednesday bemoaned the near-death of a tortoise allegedly rescued in the aftermath of a Hamas "arson balloon" attack - which has become more frequent in recent weeks.

"Look at what this Israeli firefighter found among the devastation caused by the arson balloons that Hamas launches from Gaza into Israel. 8,000+ acres burnt, 1000s of animals killed - Hamas must be held accountable," the tweet read, tagging Greenpeace and animal rights group PETA. An accompanying video shows a small tortoise walking through a patch of charred soil, before being scooped up by an Israeli firefighter.

An employee of a leading Washington DC think tank has reportedly taken credit for the resent purge of alternative media by Facebook and Twitter, claiming it to be necessary to fight against 'fake news' from Russia and China.

In the latest act of apparent censorship of political speech online, US-based tech giants this month shut down hundreds of user accounts. Some belonged to well-established alternative media outlets with hundreds of thousands of followers, like The Free Thought Project or The Anti Media. A senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a leading think tank advocating US global supremacy, seems to have at least partially taken credit for this.

"Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system," Jamie Fly said.

"They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning."