Under pressure to delete President Donald Trump's account, Twitter has clarified why his "Nuclear Button" tweet against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un does not violate its standards against threatening violence.

Twitter released a statement Friday after a number of Twitter users said the January 2 tweet threatening nuclear war violated Twitter's revised Terms of Service, launching a campaign to stomp out violent threats on their platform, often by shutting down offending accounts.

There are two ways out of the ongoing confrontation with the ruling majority and the government, the Moldovan president stressed

Destabilization of the situation in Moldova is in the interests of those who are against the president's course towards resumption of strategic partnership with Russia, Moldovan President Igor Dodon said in an interview with TASS on Thursday, commenting on the ongoing confrontation with the parliamentary majority and the government formed by the ruling Democratic Party.

"The parliament and the government know it only too well that I will never sign any laws or decrees geared to worsen relations with Russia. At the general presidential elections, the Moldovan people gave me a mandate to restore partner relations with Russia, and I will never drop this course. They also understand that I will never agree to approve those ministers who have disgraced themselves by, for instance, participation in schemes of embezzling one billion US dollars from the country's banks," Dodon said, commenting on this week's ruling of the Constitutional Court authorizing the prime minister and the parliament speaker to sign laws bypassing the president.

A new Department of Justice probe of the email and charity fraud scandals won't end well for Bill or Hillary

Until recently, the Clinton Foundation has been monitored by the IRS, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, and multiple state government authorities that are seeded with persons loyal to either the Clintons or the Obamas.

Every time, the Clinton Foundation got a free pass.

But now it appears key authorities may finally be turning strict attention toward answering tough questions about public filings of Clinton "charities" inside and outside the United States. When these powerful organizations engage motivated minds, they will wish to concentrate on a few areas that have long gone begging for attention.

The first time the Clinton Foundation was investigated, between 2001 and 2005, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey, and others could not seem to find obvious and escalating frauds as a supposed presidential library complex in Little Rock, Arkansas, also "fought HIV/AIDS internationally" from unregistered offices in New York and Massachusetts without ever obtaining required audits of worldwide activities.

It's signature time for Vladimir Putin, who needs 300,000 endorsements to run as an independent in the March 18, 2018, presidential election. Five collection points opened this Friday in Moscow, where the "Victory Volunteers" movement is organizing the effort to get Putin the signatures he needs.

The movement's press secretary, Egor Lukyanchikov, told the news agency Interfax that volunteers are simply standing outside with banners and taking signatures from anyone who wants to support the president's re-election candidacy, without using megaphones or any sound-amplification equipment. Each station is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

"Victory Volunteers" is opening signature-collection points in more than a dozen cities across Russia. The movement opened its first stations in Simferopol and Sevastopol (in Crimea).

Vladimir Putin filed his candidacy application with Russia's Central Election Commission on December 27. The commission approved his application the next day, allowing him to begin campaign fundraising and start collecting the needed 300,000 signatures endorsing his candidacy. On December 25, election officials refused to register Alexey Navalny's presidential candidacy nomination on the grounds that he is still serving a felony probation sentence. According to election laws, Navalny is ineligible for elected office until at least 2028. Navalny is appealing the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the commission's rejection. If the court rules against him again, his lawyers say he will take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.

On December 21, 2017, 128-member states of the United Nations General Assembly voted against the United States in condemning the Donald Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Moreover, the General Assembly called on member states not to move their embassies in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, warned the members of the UN that she would be "taking names" of countries voting against the United States on Jerusalem. Not content with acting like some snippety schoolmarm, Haley took the pollyannaish course of inviting countries voting against, abstaining, or absenting themselves from the General Assembly Jerusalem resolution to a "friendship party" in New York in January 2018.

The General Assembly vote followed a resolution sponsored by Egypt in the UN Security Council that also opposed the US decision on Jerusalem. Haley cast a US veto, dooming the resolution, even though the other 14 Security Council members all voted yes.

Every time Hillary Clinton thinks she's out, they pull her back in.

At least that's what she must be feeling after even further revelations regarding her private email server have come to light in recent days.

First, her top aide, Huma Abedin, reportedly gave out passwords to government systems over an insecure Yahoo email account that was subsequently hacked by a Russian agent.


Now, Republicans working on key congressional committees have found new 'irregularities and contradictions' surrounding the FBI's probe into Clinton's private server.

The Hill reported that investigators have found "written evidence" that the FBI believed laws had been broken when Clinton and her aides transmitted sensitive material over the server.

That evidence includes passages in FBI documents stating the "sheer volume" of classified information that flowed through Clinton's insecure emails was proof of criminality as well as an admission of false statements by one key witness in the case, the investigators said.

As hundreds of thousands of Iranians take to the streets in support of their government and against recent violent demonstrations in the country, the chief commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) reports that the rioting seen in several Iranian cities over the last week is now under control. Claiming that "the Iranian nation has been targeted due to its resistance against the US and its lackeys and for its support for oppressed nations worldwide," Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari also reported that "a large number of the arrested trouble-makers at the center of the sedition had received training from counter-revolutionaries and the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization [MKO/MEK - People's Mujahedin of Iran, aka National Council of Resistance of Iran]."

When President Rouhani spoke with French President Macron yesterday, he urged France to stop hosting the MEK, which has been based in Paris since its leaders fled Iran after the 1979 revolution. Macron didn't acknowledge his country's support for the MEK, but he did call on the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel to cool their aggressive rhetoric. Much as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights spoon-feeds Western media with fake intel about what is going on there, and just as Turkey has to worry about the US-based fifth columnist Gulen network, Iran has to contend with a dodgy expatriate organization that Hillary Clinton got de-listed from the US List of Terror Organizations in 2012.

Undeterred by the sheer fantasy that a 'democratic revolution' could occur in a country that holds regular elections, it's all-systems go for the US media in its effort to 'catapult the propaganda' against the Iranian 'Islamic regime'. Fox News yesterday gave a platform to Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the MEK, in which he urged the Trump government to impose crippling sanctions (additional, presumably, to the existing ones) and to recognize his organization as the new government of Iran.

The heroic story of a righteous underdog fighting for noble ideals against a tyrannical regime has galvanized the US polity - right and left, including some among the ostensibly anti-globalist 'alt-media' - to proclaim their impassioned support for 'the Iranian opposition', whom they portray as democratic white knights against the theocratic despots ruling Iran. But a closer look at the 'better option' certain Westerners have deigned the 'saviors' of Iran reveals quite a different tale.

The US State Department has officially cut security funding for Pakistan, saying it will only be restored if Islamabad takes action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network. The aid suspension may amount to $900 million.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said she could not yet reveal the exact figure, but said the cut was "significant,"and would remain unallocated pending progress. She added that "there may be some exceptions" to the freeze "that are made on a case-by-case basis if determined to be critical to national security interests."

Users of social media have been increasingly reporting that their accounts have been either censored, blocked or suspended during the past year. Initially, some believed that the incidents might be technical in nature, with overloaded servers struggling to keep up with the large and growing number of accounts, but it eventually emerged that the interference was deliberate and was focused on individuals and groups that were involved in political or social activities considered to be controversial.

At the end of last year a number of Russian accounts on Facebook and elsewhere were suspended over the allegations that social media had been used to spread so-called false news that had possibly materially affected the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Even though it proved impossible to demonstrate that the relatively innocuous Russian efforts had any impact in comparison to the huge investment in advertising and propaganda engaged in by the two major parties, social media quickly responded to the negative publicity.

A major security fiasco involving a major China state company and a Hong Kong-based corporate security company is emerging. It could potentially open up the massive Eurasian project of China, its Belt, Road Initiative (BRI), to major covert sabotage directed out of Langley Virginia CIA headquarters and carried out by a "Trojan Horse" the Chinese have hired to train their personnel to protect the high-speed Eurasian rail and deep water ports infrastructure from sabotage and terror attacks. The Hong Kong company is owned by Erik Prince, notorious founder of Blackwater Security.

At the same time Prince is being paid by the Chinese to protect their BRI, he is reportedly plotting with Trump and CIA chief Mike Pompeo to form a "private CIA, completely off the books" that would do black operations in many of the Eurasian countries linked to the BRI. This is shaping up as a major security fiasco for China's BRI if left uncorrected.

Private CIA

In early December a new element of Erik Prince's dubious role as a "private" security consultant came to light. Media reports indicated that Prince is quietly proposing to President Trump personally and to Trump CIA head Mike Pompeo, to create a top secret global private CIA, "off-the-books" that would carry out dirty tricks, assassinations and other black operations independent of the official CIA. According to the reports, Prince is proposing the project together with his longtime associate, CIA veteran John R. Maguire, who also has worked as a consultant to Prince's Hong Kong Frontier Services Group, about which more below.

They would reportedly create the "off-the-books" parallel CIA together with convicted Iran-Contra operative, Col. Oliver North, and would get US government funding to create a private mercenary force in both Pakistan, Afghanistan and send covert "private" destabilization agents into Iran and even North Korea among other proposed operations.