Austria's incoming right-wing chancellor Sebastian Kurz joined eastern and central European countries on Friday in backing EU President Donald Tusk's rejection of mandatory refugee quotas.

Tusk called the troubled scheme "ineffective" and "highly divisive", in a letter to EU leaders before a summit in Brussels that entered its second day Friday.

Eastern European states like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which have refused to take part, agree with Tusk but other including Germany and Greece do not.

"Tusk is right when he says that mandatory migrant quotas in the EU haven't worked," said Kurz, 31, who is expected to replace centre-left Chancellor Christian Kern next week.

Muslims may lose Mecca and other holy sites if the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli capital isn't reversed, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned

"If we lose Jerusalem then we won't be able to protect Medina. If we lose Medina - we will lose Mecca and Kaaba," Erdogan said in a speech at an award ceremony in Istanbul.

Erdogan has been one of the most vocal critics of President Trump's controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Turkish president has slammed other nations for their "weak" response to the US move.


On Saturday, Erdogan urged the UN Security Council to annul Trump's decision. If the UNSC fails to act on the issue, Turkey will do everything necessary within legal frameworks to fight the US recognition, he promised.

Insurance companies receive steep rebates from pharmaceutical companies that are pushing up the price of prescription drugs. However, insurers are not passing the savings down to their customers in the form of lower premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

At least, that's what the drug manufacturing industry claims. If you ask the insurance industry, it's drug manufacturers that are to blame for the sky-high drug prices that have enraged the public - and forced insurers to raise premiums and deductibles in recent years.

The United States no longer has reason to be in Syria and the US public is being misinformed by its military, claimed Russia's Ministry of Defense in a press conference.

"It turns out that the Pentagon is deliberately deceiving the international and US public, including the supreme commander-in-chief, or there are no more grounds and even formal pretexts for the US troops' presence in Syria," Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday, a state news agency reported.

Moscow maintained that recent US statements by President Donald Trump of having "won" in Syria and Iraq means the United States and its 70-nation coalition to defeat ISIS should leave Syria.

"We've won in Syria, we've won in Iraq, but they spread to other areas and we're getting them as fast as they spread," Trump said Tuesday during a ceremony to sign defense policy legislation.

Almost exactly a year ago, just as the "Russia hacked the election!" delirium was taking shape, I pooh-poohed the idea that "Russiagate" (as it has come to be known) would persist for very long. Once the Trump administration started plowing ahead with its agenda, I argued, the Dems would toss Hillary aside and move on with politics as usual.

Russiagate fading away as Democrats come to terms with the 2016 election? Really, James?

Now I've made some inaccurate predictions before (OK, a lot of inaccurate predictions), but that one takes the cake in terms of how wrong I ended up being.

If you want a demonstration of this point, just type "russia collusion" or "russia interference" into your search engine of choice and feast on the millions and millions of nothingburgers that have been produced this past year chasing this non-story. It would almost be comical how stupid these stories were if it wasn't for the fact that they have real world consequences.

Remember when the evil Russkies hacked the Vermont electrical grid?! Of course you do. But do you remember when the MSM presstitutes immediately amended their fear porn story to admit that the grid had not, in fact, been hacked at all? Of course you don't, because the headlines are reported breathlessly and the "corrections" are issued quietly.

And do you remember when the dastardly Russians hacked into the voting systems of 39 states before the 2016 presidential election? Yeah, that didn't actually happen, either.

And remember when the Russians went international and took their well-known operation to control people's minds through Facebook ads across the pond to England, where they successfully pulled off "Operation Brexit?" Well the results are in, and the latest headlines tell of the startling breadth and scope of this mass mind-control experiment: "Facebook says Russian-linked accounts spent just 97 cents on ads over Brexit."

And remember when ABC's Brian Ross reported that candidate Trump directed Flynn to make contact with Moscow? Well one stock market crash later the suspended Brian Ross would like you to know that he meant president-elect Trump. (Meh, close enough!)

And remember when CNN dropped its bombshell story about how Wikileaks, those known Russian collaborators (*citation needed), were caught sharing their leaks in advance with Team Trump last year (BOOM!)? Well, guess what? More fake news.

Yesterday the U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley went to the Defense Intelligence Agency for a little show. She claimed to expose Iran as an illegal source of weapons used by Yemeni forces in their fight against Saudi aggressors.

It reminded of the times when Vice President Dick Cheney visited the CIA to tell its analysts what they were supposed to write about "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction".

Haley covered the advice she was giving to the DIA at a press conference. Her props were alleged missile parts recovered somewhere at some unknown time. She claimed that these were provided by the Saudis and the UAE and showed debris of missiles fired from Yemen. Haley further claimed that Iran had delivered such missiles to Yemen in breach of UN resolution 2231 that restricts such transfers.

There are several possible explanations of where the Houthi and their then allied Yemeni army might have acquired such missiles. But even if one accepts that Iran delivered these, it is unknown when such deliveries might have taken place. It could have happened years before the UN resolution restricted such deliveries. Haley's show proved nothing with regards to any breach.

At 11.30pm, 10 nautical miles off Yemen's western Red Sea coast, seven fishermen were near the end of the four hours it had taken to haul their nets bulging with the day's catch into their fibreglass boat. Suddenly, away from the illumination of the vessel's large spotlight, one of the men spotted a black silhouette coming towards them.

Moments later a helicopter began circling overhead. The fishermen were well within the 30 nautical mile boundary they had been warned not to cross by leaflets airdropped on land by the Saudi-led coalition. But, without warning, gunfire erupted from the helicopter.

Osam Mouafa grabbed his friend, Abdullah, dragging him into a corner, curling himself into a protective ball as bullets flew through the boat. Shot in both knees, with a third bullet having grazed his thigh, Osam began to feel water rising around him. "The boat became like a sieve," he said, sitting next to the wooden stick he now needs to walk.

The US Army is preparing to embed "cyber warriors" within regular infantry units, Pentagon officials said. Claiming that the US has been shackled by laws, military officials vowed to enhance their offensive cyber-warfare capabilities.

Under the new protocol, the army's cyber soldiers will serve six-month rotations while integrated in infantry units. But unlike their rifle-toting comrades, the keyboard warriors will seek control over the battlefield by "non-kinetic" means.

"Not everything is attack and destroy. How can I influence by non-kinetic means? How can I reach up and create confusion and gain control?" Colonel Robert Ryan, who commands a Hawaii-based combat team, said on Wednesday.

The cyber warriors will tailor operations according to their commanders' needs, but a standard operation would likely involve dragnet information gathering and intercepting enemy transmissions, according to Colonel William Hartman of the army's Cyber Command.

As is well known, international terrorism is a threat to the whole world. But this problem is particularly acute today in Asia, and China is no exception. In spite of being one of the most successful Asian States, PRC also has internal conflicts which are a breeding ground for terrorism.

China consists of many regions inhabited by peoples of different cultures and traditions, and separatist sentiment periodically intensifies in some of these regions. Currently first of all it is the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in Northwest China, or East Turkistan as it is also called by local advocates for separation from China. It is the largest Chinese region by area with a relatively small (by Chinese standards) population of about 22 million people. About 50% of the population in Xinjiang are Uygurs, a Turkic nation who practice Sunni Islam. Many of them dislike the Chinese, who are actively settling in the region as the result of a Beijing initiative.

Xinjiang has an ancient and complex history. At various times, independent states came into being in the region, and these states later joined larger entities, including the Chinese Empire at various periods of its history. Throughout the XVIII-XX centuries, the Uygurs revolted against Chinese rule about four hundred times. The current Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China was formed in 1955.

Of the many astonishing revelations now emerging from the Russia investigation, not enough has been made of the fact that Peter Strzok -- that Zelig of the FBI who mysteriously appeared at every controversial moment -- was second in command for counterintelligence.

That's right, counterintelligence -- that activity "designed to prevent or thwart spying, intelligence gathering, and sabotage by an enemy or other foreign entity."

And yet that same Mr. Strzok was conducting a clandestine extra-marital affair with an FBI colleague over thousands of text messages that could be and likely were (more of that in a moment) intercepted by those same foreign intelligence agencies -- or were, at the very least, recklessly exposed to them.

Now you don't have to be James Jesus Angleton or even have read a novel by John le Carré to know one of the most important vulnerabilities in the intel world is just such dangerous liaisons, frequently used for blackmail of all sorts.