A bill allowing the South African government to seize private land without compensation has been withdrawn by the Portfolio Committee on Public Works pending further study, according to the ruling African National Congress.

In 2015, the ANC proposed a constitutional amendment allowing the government to seize and redistribute land without any compensation to its owners. The draft, which has not been adopted so far, evoked widespread international outrage and multiple media reports of alleged violence against white South African farmers, including murders.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the first wave of financial assistance for the country's farmers affected by the escalating trade war.

The emergency plan, which consists of a "three-pronged approach," will initially include about $6 billion in aid. According to the Trump administration, the initial aid will consist of about $4.7 billion in payments to agricultural producers of seven commodities. The federal government will also buy up to $1.2 billion in certain "commodities unfairly targeted by unjustified retaliation."

A third part of the aid will consist of up to $200 million in spending to help develop foreign markets for US agricultural products.

Since taking office in 2017, President Trump has been pressuring US trading partners to agree new terms on trade deals more favorable to the US by imposing tariffs on foreign imports. Countries have retaliated with levies on American goods, particularly agriculture, because they target Trump's political support base in the US.

Trump, who has described US tariffs on foreign goods as "the greatest," said farmers would be the "biggest beneficiary" of the disputes after the US and its partners strike new trade deals.

Moscow doubts that Washington will be ready to counter the scenario of a provocation with chemical weapons in Syria

Russia is doing the best it can to prevent a provocation involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters on Tuesday.

"We believe the Jabhat al-Nusra (terror group, now called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, outlawed in Russia - TASS), which has changed its name, is now close to carrying out a very serious provocation in the Idlib area with the use of a chemical agent. All that will be filmed [by representatives of] the White Helmets [non-governmental organization]. After that, a smear campaign will begin about the use of chemical weapons by the regime [of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] against its people, and that will be used as a pretext for a massive military strike against Syria. This scenario is so obvious that we are doing our utmost to prevent it from being implemented," he said.

On 8 July 2018 a lady named Kirsty Eccles asked what, in its enormous ramifications, historians may one day see as the most important Freedom of Information request ever made. The rest of this post requires extremely close and careful reading, and some thought, for you to understand that claim.

Dear British Broadcasting Corporation,

1: Why did BBC Newsnight correspondent Mark Urban keep secret from the licence payers that he had been having meetings with Sergei Skripal only last summer.

2: When did the BBC know this?

3: Please provide me with copies of all correspondence between yourselves and Mark Urban on the subject of Sergei Skripal.

Yours faithfully,

Kirsty Eccles

Israel lobby financier Adam Milstein has been identified as the funder of Canary Mission, the anonymous website that aims to tarnish the reputations of US supporters of Palestinian rights.

Milstein is named as the financier of Canary Mission by Eric Gallagher, a former employee of The Israel Project, in Al Jazeera's censored investigative film, The Lobby - USA.

The Electronic Intifada is releasing segments it has obtained of the film: one shows Gallagher telling an undercover Al Jazeera reporter about Milstein's role and the other shows Milstein talking about the need to "investigate" and "expose" critics of Israel, who Milstein believes are not only anti-Semites, but also "anti-Christian" and "anti-freedom" activists who "terrorize us."

The film also reveals that Israel lobby operatives who rely on information provided by Canary Mission "coordinate" their activities with the Israeli government.

In the previous piece, I began to focus on the official timeline of events on March 4th, as stated by The Metropolitan Police on 17th March, noting that there is a missing 4 hours in the morning, which investigators were very anxious to receive information on at the time, but which they have been conspicuously silent on since. Not only have they failed to update the timeline with information about the Skripals' movements on the morning of 4th March, but they have failed to do so despite now having that information. How can I be sure they have it? Because both Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and talking for months now.

But in this piece, I want to focus on something even more important. Something that is crucial for two reasons:

1. Firstly, the Metropolitan Police do not mention it in their timeline, even though it absolutely did happen and is vital.
2. Secondly, it completely demolishes the theory that the Skripals were poisoned by touching a nerve agent on the handle of Mr Skripal's front door.

The incident in question is the duck feed. But before I come on to it, let's just remind ourselves of the official timeline once more, so that we can then see where this incident fits in:

Saturday 3rd March

• 14.40hrs on Saturday 3 March: Yulia arrives at Heathrow Airport on a flight from Russia.

Sunday 4th March

• 09.15hrs on Sunday, 4 March: Sergei's car is seen in the area of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road.
• 13.30hrs: Sergei's car is seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre.
• 13:40hrs: Sergei and Yulia arrive in Sainsbury's upper level car park at the Maltings. At some time after this, they go to the Bishops Mill Pub in the town centre.
• 14.20hrs: They dine at Zizzi Restaurant.
• 15:35hrs: They leave Zizzi Restaurant.
• 16.15hrs: Emergency services receive a report from a member of the public and police arrive at the scene within minutes, where they find Sergei and Yulia extremely ill on a park bench near the restaurant.

One of the things that is immediately obvious about this timeline is its astonishing vagueness in certain places. For instance, Mr Skripal's car was apparently seen in three different areas - London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road - at 9:15. Presumably it was seen on CCTV cameras in these locations, and presumably these cameras all have time and date stamps. In which case, why could the timeline not be more precise than suggesting that Mr Skripal's car was at three locations at the same time?

Earlier, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's navy chief Alireza Tangsiri said that Iran has full control of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia's energy adviser said that if Iran closes the Straight of Hurmuz, the UN Security Council is likely to authorize military action.

He added that Iran is unable to completely, or partially, close the Straits of Hormuz or Bab al-Mandab.


According to him, the current sanctions are unlikely to stop Iranian exports completely.

Iran has earlier threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off the main oil shipping route, in response to any hostile actions from the US.

US President Donald Trump appears to have caved in to bipartisan demands to pay respects to late Sen. John McCain until he is laid to rest and ordered flags to fly at half-staff and delegating senior officials to the funeral.

In a statement released late Monday, Trump announced he ordered the re-lowering of the flags that were up again on Monday after being lowered for Saturday, the day of McCain's death, and Sunday.

"Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain's service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment," the statement reads.

US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called for international efforts to prevent the humanitarian crisis in the Syrian northwestern province of Idlib, the White House said on Tuesday.

"The President spoke with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany this morning to discuss a range of issues of mutual interest, including crisis resolution in Syria... Both leaders called for international actions to prevent humanitarian crisis in Idlib province," the statement read.


Trump and Merkel also discussed the economic relations between the United States and the European Union, which have been recently troubled by the US tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, according to the statement.

The United States is currently waging economic warfare against one tenth of the world's countries with cumulative population of nearly 2 billion people and combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $15 trillion.

These include Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea and others on which Washington has imposed sanctions over the years, but also countries like China, Pakistan and Turkey which are not under full sanctions but rather targets of other punitive economic measures.

In addition, thousands of individuals from scores of countries are included in the Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals who are effectively blocked from the U.S.-dominated global financial system. Many of those designated are either part of or closely linked to their countries' leadership...

But in recent months it seems that America's unwavering commitment to fight all of the world's scourges has brought all those governments and the wealthy individuals who support them to a critical mass, joining forces to create a parallel financial system which would be out of reach of America's long arm. Should they succeed, the impact on America's global posture would be transformational.

- From the recent article: The Anti-Dollar Awakening Could Be Ruder and Sooner Than Most Economists Predict

The peak of American empire has already come and gone, a reality not yet widely appreciated due to the continued dominance of the global financial system by the U.S. dollar, still the world's preeminent reserve currency. U.S. leaders have always used the USD as a weapon, but it's only in recent years that geopolitical rivals and long-standing allies alike have started to come to an increasingly vocal understanding that the unipolar role played by the U.S. in the world's centralized financial system is well past its expiration date.