Washington and Ankara are making an effort to mend relations, strained over the former's support of Kurdish forces in Syria. During a visit to Ankara, the US secretary of state said the ties were "too important."

Rex Tillerson tried to reassure Ankara over US's involvement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), much of which is comprised of Kurdish YPG, outlawed in Turkey as a terrorist organization.

"We take it seriously when our NATO ally says it has security concerns," Tillerson said at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday. "We have always been clear with Turkey that the weapons provided to the Syrian Democratic Forces would be limited, mission specific, and provided on the incremental basis to achieve military objectives only."

Both Tillerson and Cavusoglu that the countries have found themselves at "a crisis point," and have agreed to address "critical issues" in the bilateral relations. "We've decided, and President Erdogan decided last night, we needed to talk about how do we go forward? The relationship is too important," Tillerson said.

Six years after Muammar Gaddafi's death, his regime's frozen funds in Brussels are generating tens of millions of euros in interest for mystery beneficiaries, despite international sanctions.

A POLITICO investigation into €16 billion of the Libyan dictator's assets held in Belgium discovered big, regular outflows of stock dividends, bond income and interest payments. Legal documents, bank statements, emails and dozens of interviews point to a loophole in the sanctions regime.

While Gaddafi's wealth is meant to be held in trust for the Libyan people until the war-shattered country stabilizes, interest payments flowed from frozen accounts in Brussels to bank accounts in Luxembourg and Bahrain over recent years, documents reviewed by POLITICO show. Belgium's finance ministry says such payments are legal.

The interest goes to accounts belonging to the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), the country's sovereign fund, which was founded in 2006 to invest Gaddafi's oil wealth. LIA now lies at the heart of a turf war between rival claimants in Libya, and it's not clear who runs the agency or gets any of the funds sent to its accounts.

Following a NATO-led intervention that toppled Gaddafi, who died in October 2011, civil war has reduced Libya to a hydra-headed set of competing administrations governed by rival strongmen, in an environment still destabilized by Islamist militants.

Although the Syrian war is almost over, many Americans still don't understand what transpired over the last seven years, because the mainstream narrative has been an embarrassing mix of propaganda, half-truths and lies. Three versions of the conflict are presented here and the reader can choose the one that makes the most sense to them.

Lavrov is pithy, as usual.

Full transcript follows below the video:


Hello.

- Hello, Nailya, nice to meet you.

Don't miss in today's program:

- Remember your joke about the coat of Boris Johnson, who had nothing in his pockets. What do you usually have in your pockets?

Events in Syria have recently clearly taken a turn for the worse and there is an increasing amount of evidence that the Russian task force in Syria is being targeted by a systematic campaign of "harassing attacks".

First, there was the (relatively successful) drone and mortar attack on the Russian Aerospace base in Khmeimin. Then there was the shooting down of a Russian SU-25 over the city of Maasran in the Idlib province. Now we hear of Russian casualties in the US raid on a Syrian column (along with widely exaggerated claims of "hundreds" of killed Russians). In the first case, Russian officials did openly voice their strong suspicion that the attack was if not planned and executed by the US, then at least coordinated with the US forces in the vicinity. In the case of the downing of the SU-25, no overt accusations have been made, but many experts have stated that the altitude at which the SU-25 was hit strongly suggests a rather modern MANPAD of a type not typically seen in Syria (the not so subtle hint being here that these were US Stingers sent to the Kurds by the US). As for the latest attack on the Syrian column, what is under discussion is not who did it but rather what kind of Russian personnel was involved, Russian military or private contractors (the latter is a much more likely explanation since the Syrian column had no air-cover whatsoever). Taken separately, none of these incidents mean very much but taken together they might be indicative of a new US strategy in Syria: to punish the Russians as much as possible short of an overt US attack on Russian forces. To me this hypothesis seems plausible for the following reasons:

First, the US and Israel are still reeling in humiliation and impotent rage over their defeat in Syria: Assad is still in power, Daesh is more or less defeated, the Russians were successful not only their military operations against Daesh but also in their campaign to bring as many "good terrorists" to the negotiating table as possible. With the completion of a successful conference on Syria in Russia and the general agreement of all parties to begin working on a new constitution, there was a real danger of peace breaking out, something the AngloZionist are absolutely determined to oppose (check out this apparently hacked document which, if genuine, clearly states the US policy not to allow the Russian to get anything done).

Second, both Trump and Netanyahu have promised to bring in lots of "victories" to prove how manly and strong they are (as compared to the sissies which preceded them). Starting an overt war against Russian would definitely be a "proof of manhood", but a much too dangerous one. Killing Russians "on the margins", so to speak, either with plausible deniability or, alternatively, killing Russians private contractors is much safer and thus far more tempting option.

The Syrian government reportedly rejected a request by the Kurdish self-government in Afrin to deploy troops to the area against an ongoing Turkish military operation, after the Kurds refused to lay down their weapons.

The proposed deal between Syrian authorities and Kurdish militias, who asked Damascus for military support against the Turkish invasion, derailed after Kurdish forces refused to comply with a precondition set by Damascus, an RT Arabic correspondent in Syria reported, citing a military source.

After the People's Protection Units (YPG) refused a request to hand over arms to the Syrian state, the negotiations were cut short before any deal could be reached, the source said.

Lebanese Al-Masdar News also stated that "according to reports from Aleppo," the deal, which could potentially become a tipping point in the conflict, was called off because the Kurds refused to part with weapons they use to fend off the Turkish offensive.

New twists in the Mike Flynn case.

In a stunning revelation, former FBI Director James Comey reportedly told lawmakers last March that FBI agents did not think former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn lied to them.

This new twist raises many more questions about Flynn's role in Mueller's Russiagate witch-hunt.

The top US regulator of the financial markets has blocked the sale of the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX) to a Chinese-led investor group due to concerns over the would-be buyers' ability to supervise the bourse after the deal.

"The review process has also raised questions about whether the proposed ownership structure will allow the commission to exercise sufficient oversight of the exchange," the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Thursday.

The decision by the SEC has put an end to a two-year battle for an approval of the sale and emphasizes once again zero tolerance by Donald Trump' s administration toward Chinese buyers. During the election campaign the 45th US president pointed to the CHX deal as an example of how American jobs and wealth were leaving the country.

As elections near in some Latin American nations, Washington has been busy preaching its mantra about Moscow's alleged attempts to meddle in others' internal affairs, says a Russian Foreign Ministry department chief.

The US is trying to spread its staunch belief about Russia's intervention in the 2016 presidential vote to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump, warning its southern neighbors to watch out, says Aleksandr Shchetinin, head of the ministry's Latin American Department. "Indeed, we see these bogus stories, spreading as if by command in those countries, set to hold elections this year - Mexico, Brazil and Colombia," Shchetinin told TASS. "This idea has been actively imposed on Latin Americans."

"There is no need to say it's a complete disinformation," he noted. The US doesn't even bother to cover it, with mostly 'representatives of the US administration saying it.'

The US and some Western media eagerly claimed that Iranians who took to the streets in December 2017 were 'fed up' with their 'oppressive' government - but a new poll suggests that their theory may be half-baked.

In a recent survey conducted by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland and IranPoll, only 0.3 percent of Iranians selected "lack of civil liberties" as the most important problem or challenge currently facing Iran. "Injustice" was also at the bottom of the list of grievances, at just 1.4 percent.

Respondents overwhelmingly selected unemployment (40.1 percent) as the largest problem facing the country, followed by inflation and high costs of living (12.5 percent), youth unemployment (9.4 percent), low incomes (6.9 percent) and financial corruption/embezzlement (6 percent).