North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called the country's nuclear weapons "a powerful deterrent" from US "nuclear threats" for itself and the whole world. The statement came as President Trump once again dismissed the idea of talks with Pyongyang.

"The nuclear weapons of the DPRK are a precious fruition borne by its people's bloody struggle for defending the destiny and sovereignty of the country from the protracted nuclear threats of the U.S. imperialists. And they are a powerful deterrent firmly safeguarding the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia," Kim Jong-un said at a Central Committee session on Saturday, as cited by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Addressing what he called a "complicated international situation," Kim said that nuclear weapons guarantee North Korea's sovereignty and "rights to existence," calling them "a treasured sword of justice to remove the nuclear clouds of tyranny bringing a horrible disaster to mankind and make it possible for the people to lead an independent and happy life under the clear and blue sky."

US President Donald Trump said he would halt moving the US embassy to Jerusalem until he sees the result of the Washington's latest peace proposal for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is expected to be laid out in the coming months.

Trump made his remark as he was being interviewed by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in the inaugural episode of his "Huckabee" show, broadcast by TBN Network on Saturday evening.

Speaking about his campaign promise to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which has somewhat stalled since he came to power, Trump said the move could wait until what he called the "ultimate" peace deal is tried out.

"I want to give that a shot before I even think about moving the embassy to Jerusalem," Trump said.

With 59 people dead and over 500 injured, last Sunday's mass shooting in Las Vegas was the 'worst-ever' for the US, beating the previous record death toll set at an Orlando gay nightclub all the way back in June 2016. Just as folks had been remarking how long it had been since a (major) mass shooting in the US of A...

The official story is that this brazen massacre on October 1st was solely the work of a wealthy 64-year-old white American retiree, Stephen C. Paddock, resident of Mesquite, Nevada, with numerous other properties around the country, and frequent-visitor to 'Sin City'. With no apparent motive, Paddock single-handedly acquired an arsenal of heavy guns and thousands of rounds of ammo and shot up a country music festival at The Village open-air concert venue on the southern end of the Las Vegas 'strip', all from two broken windows in suite 135 of the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel and Casino.

Despite an early claim by 'ISIS', courtesy of Rita Katz's dodgy SITE Intelligence outfit, that Paddock 'saw the light' a few weeks back, turned his back on the finer delights Vegas has to offer, and became "a soldier of the Caliphate", investigators have since reported that there are no credible links between him and international terrorism. Sadly, no one will ever get the chance to ask Paddock about his motives or if he had any accomplices because by the time Las Vegas PD broke down the doorway to suite 135 at 11:20pm, Paddock had already eaten a bullet. Why he would kill himself after setting up an elaborate camera system to warn him of security personnel approaching his suite is left unexplained. Why would he kill himself after wiring $100,000 to the Philippines, where his girlfriend was waiting for him? Today, Las Vegas Sheriff Lombardo gave another press conference where he stated that there was evidence that Paddock planned to escape, but could not publicly provide the evidence.

Paddock had no criminal record, no history of violence, no military experience, was "not an avid gun nut", had no particular religious or political views, and was not previously known to law enforcement. Nevertheless, authorities say, this is the man responsible for planning and conducting - at great personal expense, and requiring significant technical training and expertise - an operation in which he could fire off 1,000s of rounds from 23 "modified semi-automatic weapons", spraying the crowd below and, over the course of some 11-12 minutes, becoming America's Most Insane (Yet Disciplined) Mass Shooter. Ever.

Case closed? It is for the authorities, but many in the general public are not buying it, and for good reason.

In an explosive new allegation, a renowned architect has accused Google of racketeering, saying in a lawsuit the company has a pattern of stealing trade secrets from people it first invites to collaborate.

Architect Eli Attia spent 50 years developing what his lawsuit calls "game-changing new technology" for building construction. Google in 2010 struck a deal to work with him on commercializing it as software, and Attia moved with his family from New York to Palo Alto to focus on the initiative, code-named "Project Genie."

The project was undertaken in Google's secretive "Google X" unit for experimental "moonshots."

While the world weeps for the Las Vegas victims, America's lack of empathy for its own victims abroad is staggering

Whenever mass shootings or other incidents of terrorism (domestic or otherwise) hit the United States, the outpouring of sympathy from Russia and indeed from the wider world is always palpable, in spite of the current state of political relations. Russian culture in particular, is one where expressing sympathy at a time of objective tragedy and pain, is highly emphasized, both on a humanitarian and spiritual level.

But there is another element of the aforementioned reactions to uniquely American tragedies, among people outside of the United States that is less straightforward. As a country of immense wealth and one which exercises an exceptionalist foreign policy, one which still confounds some geo-political adversaries of the United States, many find it shocking that so many American citizens decide to kill one another in large numbers, in a land that is promoted as supremely idyllic by Washington's propaganda machine.

Just 24 days into his tenure as Donald Trump's national-security adviser, Michael Flynn was forced to resign, having reportedly misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. When Flynn departed, the men and women he'd appointed to the National Security Council grew nervous about their own jobs, and with good reason. The new national-security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, promptly began clearing out Flynn's people, among them Dave Cattler, the deputy assistant to the president for regional affairs, Adam Lovinger, a strategic affairs analyst on loan from the Pentagon, and KT McFarland, Flynn's deputy, who was eased out with the ambassadorship to Singapore. Even Steve Bannon, among the most powerful people in the White House, was removed from the meetings of the NSC Principal's Committee, where he had been installed early on in the administration.

There was one person, however, who McMaster couldn't get rid of: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence programs. McMaster tried to remove him in March, but President Trump, at the urging of Bannon and Jared Kushner, told McMaster that Cohen-Watnick was staying, as first reported by Politico. According to a senior White House official, the two men had a sit-down meeting the following week in which McMaster acknowledged that he hadn't been able to do what he wanted to do, and that they would keep things as they are and "see how they go for a while." That was over four months ago. That Cohen-Watnick, 31 years old and largely unknown before entering the administration, has become unfireable reveals how important he has become to the Trump White House, where loyalty is prized.

In a White House briefing on Thursday, President Donald Trump said that he will not recertify the the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, according to The Washington Post. The story is couched in caveats, but if Trump does, indeed announce on October 12 that he will not recertify the deal because he doesn't view it as being in U.S. national security interests, then there are two clear takeaways from that decision. First, Trump is upping the ante in his rhetoric against Iran, and second, he is committed to publicly undermining his top advisers, undoing U.S. diplomatic protocols and progress.

It was only on Monday that Defense Secretary James Mattis told a Senate hearing that it was "in our best interest" to stick with the Iran deal. He added that if there's no proof that Iran is violating the terms of the agreement (there is none) then the deal "is something that the president should consider staying with."

Since his candidacy and certainly throughout the his first nine months as president, Trump has threatened to pull out of of the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, and Russia). The certification process is the first wrung on the ladder of escalation - in action, not just words - that Trump could take. Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), the U.S. president must evaluate the agreement every 90 days to see if Iran is still in compliance and if the deal still serves U.S. interests. Decertifying the deal would not necessarily mean that the United States is pulling out of it. It would mean that Trump would be punting the Iran problem - a key campaign promise of his - to a reluctant Congress to deal with and decide if sanctions should be snapped back.

After 9/11, the United States government preyed on the fear felt by many Americans to justify the passage of the USA Patriot Act-a law that was supposed to prevent future terrorist attacks. Now, after the Las Vegas shooting, the government has another proposed law ready to go, and just as with the Patriot Act, it also infringes on Americans' liberties, and does very little for their security.

The USA Liberty Act is the latest trendy name for a law that would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2017. According to the House Judiciary Committee, the act would preserve "the core purpose of Section 702: the collection of electronic communications by non-U.S. persons for use in our nation's defense."

However, it should be noted that while the purpose of FISA was reportedly only to allow surveillance on the communications of foreign targets who were suspected terrorists, it has been used to spy on the communications of innocent Americans-despite the practice being ruled illegal-and any reauthorization of the law will only allow the practice to continue under the guise of "preventing terrorism."

Claims by President Donald Trump that media organizations primarily report negatively on him were proven true by new research by Pew Research Center. An analysis of 3,000 stories during the first 100 days of his presidency across 24 different media organizations found that reporting on Trump has been the most negative compared to other presidents over the past 25 years.

The research shows that only 5 percent of media reporting during the period was positive. Sixty-two percent of the stories were negative, and 33 percent were neither positive nor negative.

By comparison, coverage of President Barack Obama during the same time period was 42 percent positive, and 20 percent negative. For President George W. Bush the number was 22 percent positive, and 28 percent negative. And for President Bill Clinton it was 27 percent positive, and 28 percent negative.

The study also revealed that most media coverage of Trump focused on his character traits rather than policy. Only 31 percent of all stories published on Trump focused on policy issues, compared to 50 percent for Obama, 65 percent for Bush, and 58 percent for Clinton. "The evaluations of President Trump were far more negative and less positive than those of his predecessors," wrote the Pew Research Center.

Over the last two months, Russia has been using increasingly direct language to state the following:

• The US spares terrorists in Syria including al-Nusra
• The biggest attacks on Syrian and Russian troops in Deir ez-Zor come from US-proxy SDF held positions
• The US and its proxies collude on the battle field with ISIS
• ISIS moves freely around US controlled areas in Syria and attacks Syrian and Russian forces from those positions

These are incredibly serious allegations, although they are little different than what the Syrian government has been saying for many years. The allegations amount to backing up Damascus, Wikileaks and some of things said by candidate Trump, implying that the US is seriously in cahoots with ISIS, that the known US proxy SDF is a also in cahoots with ISIS and is de-facto a militant group working to undermine Syria's security and territorial unity and that the US is not actually fighting terrorism in Syria, contrary to boasts from Washington.

In this sense, Russia has seemingly given up on trying to coax the US into cooperation and is instead telling blunt truths about the negative role the US plays in Syrian conflict, truths that Russia had previously been less reticent to spell out so overtly. While Russia has more or less given up on Washington, Moscow remains highly eager to work with traditional US allies throughout the Middle East and Eurasia, many of whom are now equally eager to work with Russia and take advantages of the many benefits of good relations with the Eurasian super-power.