United Nations UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has expressed concerns about a spike in contacts between Israeli armed forces and Syria militants in recent months. In a report released recently, Guterres warned that the growing interactions between the two sides could lead to escalation and cause harm to members of the UN Disengagement Observer Force deployed to the Golan Heights.

According to the report, UN observers listed 16 meetings between the Israel forces and the Syria militants in the border area, including on Mount Hermon, in proximity to UN outposts in Syria's Quneitra Province and the Golan Heights, from March 2 to May 16.

"Relative to the previous reporting period, there has been a significant increase in interaction" between Israeli soldiers and individuals from the Syrian side of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, "occurring on four occasions in February, three in March, eight in April and on one occasion in May," the report said. In its previous report released in March, the UN listed at least 17 interactions between the two sides between November 18, 2016, and March 1, 2017.

The figures show a significant increase when compared with only two such meetings recorded between August 30 and November 16, 2016.

It is only too evident that the US' plan for Syria is to break it down, partition it. On Tuesday The Duran reported that tensions in Syria had hit an all time high when the US military shot down a Syrian SU-22 that was attacking Al Qaeda jihadist forces on the ground.

Syria was flying its jets over Syrian sovereign territory, moving to attack Al Qaeda jihadists (aka "moderate rebels") operating illegally in Syrian territory, and backed up by US forces, which have set up operations illegally within Syrian sovereign territory.

We pointed out that...

The US has not been invited by the internationally recognized government of Syria to fight ISIS on Syrian land, and as such the United States has de-facto invaded and occupied Eastern Syria.

To make matters worse, the US is supporting Al Qaeda terrorists as a foot soldier proxy army, in order to secure as much of Eastern Syria as possible, and create a rump state Syria, effectively dividing the once united country.

Russia responded to the US aggression by saying its surface-to-air missile systems in Syria would begin to track manned and unmanned aircraft from the US coalition if they move west of the Euphrates River.

America's plan to divide Syria into an Eastern Sunni/Jihadist state and a Western secular nation is taking hold, as American forces have vowed to protect "coalition" partners (aka Kurdish forces and Al Qaeda proxy armies) occupying large swaths of lands in a sovereign Syria. It is nothing more than an illegal occupation under the protection of the United States military.

National Security Council members want a US ground offensive against the Syrian Army and allied militias

We think the US posture in Southern Syria (carving out an occupation zone, killing Syrian army troops) is plenty bellicose enough, but for some it's still not quite self-righteous and aggressive enough.

Two National Security Council members are pushing for the US to go on an offensive against the Syrian army and allied Shia militias:

A pair of top White House officials is pushing to broaden the war in Syria, viewing it as an opportunity to confront Iran and its proxy forces on the ground there, according to two sources familiar with the debate inside the Donald Trump administration. Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, and Derek Harvey, the NSC's top Middle East advisor, want the United States to start going on the offensive in southern Syria, where, in recent weeks, the U.S. military has taken a handful of defensive actions against Iranian-backed forces fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi whistle-blower Mujtahid, who is believed to be a member of or have a well-connected source in the royal family, revealed an unprecedented plot by Saudi Arabia and the UAE for carrying out a coup in Qatar.

Mujtahid on his Twitter page wrote that UAE's Mohammad bin Zayyed and Saudi Arabia's Mohammad bin Salman had been plotting to wage a coup in Qatar.

According to the scenario, the Saudi and UAE forces were planning to stage a coup in Qatar by occupying that country in cooperation with Blackwater security forces and give control of the country to a sheikh from Al Thani family who would support Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

He noted that they cancelled their plot in the last moment after the US interference.

18 Israeli fighter jets along with two Gulfstream aircraft landed in Saudi Arabia on Thursday to prevent any hostile or military moves by former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz who was replaced with Saudi King Salman's son.

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz announced on Wednesday his decision to replace Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz with his own son, Mohammed bin Salman.

After the decision was announced, the Israeli air force sent 18 of its fighter jets, including F16I, F15CD and F16CD, along with two Gulfstream aircraft, two tanker airplanes and two C130 planes, special for electronic warfare, to Saudi Arabia at the demand of the new crown prince bin Salman to block his cousin (bin Nayef)'s possible measures.

According to a royal decree, Mohammed bin Salman, 31, was also named deputy prime minister, and shall maintain his post as defense minister, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Wednesday.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel had no intention to start a military campaign in Syria, however, Tel Aviv would continue responding to shelling from Syrian territory.

The creation of de-escalation zones in Syria will not limit Israel's capabilities to act in the war-torn country in case of threats to the security of the Jewish state, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday.

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe has issued a warning to leakers of classified information - that the government will find and prosecute them.

"Leaking of classified information is a federal crime and it is one that we have the jurisdiction to investigate, and I assure you that we will do so in every single case," McCabe told Representative John Culberson (R-Texas), while testifying at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing about the FBI's budget on Wednesday.

Culberson had asked the acting FBI director about Reality Winner, the 25-year-old federal contractor who was charged this month with leaking a top-secret National Security Agency memo accusing Russia of carrying out a cyberattack on a US voting software supplier. The document does not provide the underlying "raw" intelligence for the assessment.

During a hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, cybersecurity officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI said that although they believed that Russia had targeted election-related systems in 21 US states, there was no evidence that any vote tallies were affected.

The US-led coalition's downing of a Syrian Army plane near Raqqa province shows that the group is not fighting Islamic State terrorists but is instead protecting them, the family of the pilot told Ruptly.

A Syrian Su-22 jet was shot down by a US aircraft in the vicinity of Raqqa, northern Syria, on June 18. Damascus said that at the time of the attack that the pilot, later identified as Ali Fahd, was carrying out a mission "to destroy IS [Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL] terrorists." The pilot reportedly ejected from the plane above IS-controlled territory and is still missing.

"Before he was targeted by the coalition, he was executing a mission of destroying operations headquarters of the IS terrorist organization in Raqqa," Mohyyddin Fahd, the pilot's cousin, told Ruptly in the city of Salamiyah, Hama province, on Wednesday.

"The coalition targeting of the pilot proves that the [coalition] and IS are the same. We thought otherwise about the coalition, that it aimed to liberate the land and purify it from the dirt of terrorism altogether, but it turned out the opposite," Mohyyddin concluded bitterly.

People accuse me of imagining that everything President Trump does is brilliant (persuasion-wise) no matter what he does. But I expect the next version of the Republican healthcare bill to be a complete failure. That's because Republicans seem deeply committed to a losing path, thanks to what might be called the Contrast Problem.

Contrast is the driving principle behind all decisions. You have to know how your options differ, and by how much, or else you have no basis for a decision. President Obama solved for the contrast problem by designing Obamacare to cover more people than before. The rest of the details - especially the costs - were hard to predict, so our brains flushed that noise and focused on the greater number of people covered.

Everyone knew Obamacare would need future tuning to get it right. That gave us mental permission to focus on the good parts we understood - the greater coverage - and hope the other details would get worked out later. President Obama nailed the Contrast Problem like the Master Persuader he is.

That was then.

Now, President Trump and the Republicans have the "going second" problem. The public will compare their proposed bill with Obamacare and conclude that the one metric they understand - the number of people covered - does not compare favorably with Obamacare. The contrast is fatal.

In recent weeks, a series of man-made tragedies have struck Britain. From terror attacks to the Grenfell Tower inferno. UK citizens have been grieving for the victims, and fighting to prevent future tragedies. Meanwhile, Theresa May was busy elsewhere - trying to seal a deal for the wholesale takeover of UK media by Rupert Murdoch.

The Sky deal

Rupert Murdoch tried to take full control of Sky in 2011. But the phone hacking scandal and revelations from the Leveson inquiry forced the government to withdraw support. And the deal fell through.

Just a few years later, Murdoch is at it again. This time, 21st Century Fox is putting up £11.7bn to buy out the 61% of Sky that the Murdochs don't already own. The deal would give Murdoch an unprecedented ownership of UK media. Labour MP David Winnick expressed serious concern about the near-monopoly this would create for Murdoch, saying "it would be simply unacceptable that the amount of media ownership he already controls should be increased".

The Murdochs have expressed confidence that, this time, the deal will go though. So have industry insiders. They're pleased this time that other events are keeping the deal well away from the front pages.