India will respond against aggressors who challenge its sovereignty with "double the force," Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stated, noting that his government is not shy of taking "bold" steps to defend the country's interests.

"The strength of our Army has always been for self-protection, and it will remain so in the future too," the Prime Minister said during his speech at Police Commemoration Day, stressing that "the best technology is being made available to the Indian Army."

Noting that while his government is committed to taking "big and bold" decisions, India has "never been greedy" to take someone else's land, Modi stressed. But "whosoever poses a threat to Indian sovereignty will be answered with double the force," the PM declared.

Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is considering running for president in 2020, a source with direct knowledge of her deliberations told POLITICO.

Rania Batrice, an adviser to the progressive congresswoman and deputy campaign manager on Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, has been putting out feelers for digital and speechwriting staff for Gabbard. One person approached about the positions say that 2020 wasn't mentioned explicitly, but it was heavily implied.

Batrice denied that the staffers are being hired for a presidential campaign. She did not dispute, however, that Gabbard is considering joining what's expected to be a crowded field of Democratic presidential contenders.

The Trump administration has decided to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the most comprehensive disarmament treaty ever negotiated between Washington and Moscow. National Security Adviser John Bolton, a long-time opponent of arms control, reportedly will inform Russian President Vladimir Putin this week that the United States will do so. The Trump administration will also be briefing our key European allies on the decision, which will complicate relations with Germany and France who favor maintaining the treaty. This is the latest in a series of U.S. steps over the past 20 years that have put the Russians on the defensive, and led Russian President Vladimir Putin to be more assertive in protecting Moscow's interests in East Europe.

The INF treaty actually eliminated an entire class of intermediate-range missiles from the U.S. and Soviet arsenals in 1987. The Pentagon opposed the treaty, and Secretary of Defense Weinberger and his deputy for arms control and disarmament, Richard Perle, resigned in protest over President Ronald Reagan's decision to go forward. The Pentagon has opposed all presidential decisions to pursue disarmament, although-in the case of INF-the Soviets destroyed more than twice as many missiles as the United States, and the European theatre became safer for U.S. forces stationed there. The treaty and the improved bilateral relations actually led to a slowdown in military spending in both the United States and Russia.

In 2002, President George W. Bush created the worst of all possible strategic worlds when he abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the cornerstone of strategic deterrence and one of the pearls of Soviet-American arms control policy. Bush inflicted the diplomatic wound of abrogating a treaty without cause in order to incur the expense of moving into the world of National Missile Defense (NMD) without any guarantee that even rogue missiles could be stopped. There is no better example of the creation of national insecurity than the Bush administration's foolish belief that we could create an impenetrable nuclear umbrella.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) says that it's fine to kill civilians in Syria while these civilians are trapped in the ISIS-held area.

On October 21, Commander of CENTCOM Army Gen. Joseph Votel commented on a series of airstrikes on the mosque in the village of al-Susah in the southeastern Deir Ezzor countryside, which took place last week and reportedly resulted in the killing of at least 46 civilians. According to AP, he said that he's very satisfied by the actions of the US-led coalition.

"The determination that was made by the leadership on the ground that this was this mosque was not being used as a mosque," Votel told reporters traveling with him in Qatar, according to AP. "These aren't hastily made decisions."

Additionally, the US-led coalition said that the targeted building was not used as a mosque. The coalition even claimed monitoring of the building "made us aware" of when only ISIS members were present. But this version does not explain dozens of killed civilians there, which are confirmed by both pro-Damascus and pro-opposition sources: the Syrian state news agency SANA and the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The blame and deny approach demonstrated by Army Gen. Votel and the coalition is common for the US military. On October 15, Amnesty International released a report slamming the coalition for its denials of civlian deaths during its operations in the city of Raqqah.

"Disturbingly, the Pentagon does not even seem willing to offer an apology for the hundreds of civilians killed in its 'war of annihilation' on Raqqa. This is an insult to families who - after suffering the brutality of IS rule - lost loved ones to the Coalition's cataclysmic barrage of firepower," Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty International's new Secretary General, said, according to the report.

In light of the recent remarks by the coalition and Army Gen. Votel show that the Washington establishment is still not interested in the truth and will not move to admit the real civilian death toll caused by its forces.

A railroad connecting Oslo and Trondheim was obstructed by some unspecified NATO cargo, which blocked the passage of passenger trains and forced travelers to seek alternative routes.

The upcoming NATO military maneuvers in Norway have apparently already taken their toll on the country's infrastructure; railway traffic between the country's capital and its third-largest city was disrupted due to some military cargo blocking the way.

According to a Sputnik correspondent, passenger train service "from Trondheim to Oslo via Hamar" ended up being suspended due to NATO cargo carriages blocking the railway, with passengers being forced to take a bus to bypass this hurdle.

Facebook on Wednesday briefed journalists on its latest attempt to stop fake news during the election season, offering an exclusive tour of a windowless conference room at its California headquarters, packed with millennials monitoring Facebook user behavior trends around the clock, said The Verge.

This is Facebook's first ever "war room," designed to bring leaders from 20 teams, representing 20,000 global employees working on safety and security, in one room to lead a crusade against conservatives misinformation on the platform as political campaigning shifts into hyperdrive in the final weeks leading up to November's US midterm elections. The team includes threat intelligence, data science engineering, research, legal, operations, policy, communications, and representatives from Facebook and Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram.

"We know when it comes to an election, every moment counts," said Samidh Chakrabarti, head of civic engagement at Facebook, who oversees operations in the war room.

"So if there are late-breaking issues we see on the platform, we need to be able to detect and respond to them in real time, as quickly as possible."

U.S. President Trump criticized Saudi Arabia's explanation for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying that "obviously there's been deception, and there's been lies."

Trump's comments on October 21 came as Britain, Germany, and France issued a joint statement condemning the Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, saying there is an "urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened."

On the same day, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would make public on October 23 the "naked truth" about the killing of the dissident, who was last seen entering the consulate on October 2.

Riyadh's explanation that Khashoggi was killed involuntarily in a "fistfight" was met with international skepticism. Saudi Arabia said 18 Saudis were arrested and several top intelligence officials were fired.

In an interview with The Washington Post published on October 21, Trump said "their stories are all over the place," in his strongest comments to date.

Yesterday the news broke that Swamp Monster-In-Chief John Bolton has been pushing President Trump to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1988 arms control agreement between the US and the Soviet Union eliminating all missiles of a specified range from the arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers. Today, Trump has announced that he will be doing exactly as Bolton instructed.

This would be the second missile treaty between the US and Russia that America has withdrawn from since it abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. John Bolton, an actual psychopath who Trump hired as his National Security Advisor in April, ran point on that move as well back when he was part of the increasingly indistinguishable Bush administration.

Ahead of Great March of Return protests slated to continue at the fenced border of the Gaza Strip on Friday, Amnesty International condemned Israel's reported "zero tolerance" policy toward such demonstrations, warning it likely will lead to more bloodshed after more than six months of confrontations during which Israeli forces have killed more than 150 Palestinians and injured thousands more.

"Given Israeli forces' horrific track record of using deadly force against Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza, as well as journalists, medics, and others, the announcement of a 'zero tolerance' policy is deeply alarming," declared Saleh Higazi, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

Noting that "Israel has repeatedly used lethal force unnecessarily and excessively against unarmed protesters in shameless violation of international law," Higazi emphasized that "there are serious fears that this policy will further sanction the use of deadly force against unarmed protesters during today's demonstrations, and that Israeli forces will be given carte blanche authorization to carry out large-scale, unlawful killings escalating the bloodshed."

German AfD MP Markus Frohnmaier says he is most disconcerted by the latest developments. Piled up on his desk, is a mountain of papers with the headers showing the logo of the United Nations.

"Every MP of Europe, every MEP and even every mayor should be forced to read this", says 27-year-old Frohnmaier, one of the youngest deputies in the Bundestag.

In September 2017, he was elected to parliament on the list of the Eurosceptic party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). "If there had not been the AfD in the German parliament, no other political force would dare to criticise this monstrous document."

The document in question, is the draft text for the so-called Global Compact for Migration for UN member states. It is more or less a globalist project where all signatory states declare their will to abolish the current different categories of migrants in order to declare migration a blanket "human right".