Both Afghani and Russian officials have commented on allegations of Moscow supporting the Taliban.

"There have been certain rumors that the Russians are linked with the Taliban and help it, but we do not have any evidence at the moment," acting Afghan Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told reporters.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has also dismissed allegations of weapons being supplied to the Taliban as "absurd and baseless," while the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, told Sputnik that the claims are a lie aimed at justifying the failed US mission in Afghanistan.

Several US officials have spread such claims, with US State Secretary Rex Tillerson directly accusing Russia of supplying weapons to the Taliban.

Washington and Moscow are pushing closer to an agreement for a way forward in Syria as Daesh is routed in the war-torn nation.

A Syrian deal could be announced as soon as Friday, timed to follow a possible meeting by US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vietnam, AP reports.

According to published reports, the agreement would revolve around deconfliction between the substantial presence of US and Russian military assets in and around Syria, decreasing the overall level of violence between various militant groups in Syria, and reviving peace talks through the United Nations.

"The Russians have been nothing but professional, cordial and disciplined," Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, Iraq-based command of the US coalition against Daesh, said in August when asked about the deconfliction line between the two world powers.

"Very often the Russian contribution to the fight against Daesh goes unrecognized," Max Abrahms of the Council on Foreign Relations told Sputnik News in July. The US media frequently leaves out Russia's stabilizing role when it comes to reporting on Syria.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are in the same country for the first time since their meeting in Germany at the 2017 G20 summit. Both Presidents are currently in Da Nang, Vietnam for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

While many Americans from Donald Trump's generation dodged the draft to avoid places like Da Nang, today it would appear that the US powers that be are trying to convince Trump to dodge Vladimir Putin personally.

Putin has already held a positive meeting with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. He will also hold a meeting with his close ally President Xi Jinping of China.

But there has been much confusion over whether Trump and Putin will meet. While it was once received wisdom that they will meet, now chaos is the word of the day.

Turkish President Erdogan will visit Moscow next week for talks with his Russian counterpart, during which time it's very likely that the important topics of the planned S-400 missile deal and the Syrian Kurds will come up in the course of discussions with President Putin. Thus far, Russia has sought to leverage its "military diplomacy" in the Mideast by selling wayward NATO-member Turkey state-of-the-art S-400 anti-air systems in order to complement its multipolar reorientation (or some would more mildly argue, "rebalancing"), but the deal has reportedly been caught up in a snag over pricing arrangements and other issues.

One of the latter seems to be Russia's support for Kurdish "decentralization" in Syria, as suggested in the Russian-written "draft constitution" unveiled in January, which is intended to epitomize the "balancing act" that the "progressive" faction of Moscow's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is trying to strike between all Mideast actors. The challenge, however, is in convincing the four state-level parties, especially its two most directly affected ones in Syria and Turkey, that this is a necessary "compromise", seeing as how Baghdad was able to successfully coordinate with its neighbors in driving the separatist Kurds out of oil-rich Kirkuk in a lightning-fast and largely bloodless operation last month.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has set out the specific hour that the UK will leave the European Union, giving a clear warning to Tory rebels with any plans to block the Brexit bill: shape up or ship out.

"The government has this week published a cross-party backed amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill which puts on the face of the Bill the date of our departure from the European Union," May said in a letter penned to the Telegraph on Thursday.

"Let no-one doubt our determination or question our resolve, Brexit is happening."

May revealed the exact date and time that the UK will leave the EU - and it seems the UK is getting out early, opting out at midnight Brussels time, which is an hour ahead of the UK.

Libya is rarely mentioned in the mainstream Western media, which is not surprising because the place is a catastrophic shambles as a result of the US-NATO Operation Unified Protector in 2011 during which the military alliance carried out 9,658 airstrikes and several hundred cruise missile attacks in seven months of war against the Libyan government. They didn't lose a single aircraft and Human Rights Watch states that "NATO airstrikes killed at least 72 civilians, one-third of them children under age 18."

On October 30 this year there were yet more civilian deaths from airstrikes, and Al Jazeera reported that "at least 17 people have been killed and more than 30 wounded in an air attack in Libya's eastern city of Derna." Nobody admitted responsibility for the attacks and there are several countries with the means, motive and opportunity to blitz the place again, with, for example, the United States having carried out a series of "precision" drone strikes on September 22 which killed some savages of Islamic State, which has established bases in the country following the US-NATO war.

Hopes of a bilateral Putin-Trump meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit have waned with the White House citing "scheduling conflicts," but at least the two were all smiles while shaking hands during the photo call.

Preparing for the traditional leaders' photo at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit - held this year in Da Nang, Vietnam - Putin had already taken his spot when Trump approached him, extending his hand. In the manner which has become famous, the US president then held onto Putin's hand for several seconds, patting his counterpart on the back.

The leaders were dressed in Vietnamese national attire, in accordance with the informal APEC tradition. Both Putin and Trump put on blue shirts, while some of the other participants chose to wear white ones.

In a colonial country as wealthy in raw materials as Canada is... awakening can take decades, if not centuries. If Canada had taken control and major ownership of Canadian fossil fuels (just for instance), it might have no national or provincial debt. And, like Norway (with fewer fossil fuel resources than Canada has) it could be sporting something like Norway's One Trillion Dollar Heritage Fund for use in (future) troubled times. Instead, Canadian governments have HUGE debt and Canadians live in troubled times ... now.

If Canada had only retained the right of the Bank of Canada to make interest-free loans to Canadian governments for infrastructure and related needs (Pierre Trudeau handed the right away in 1974 on behalf of Canadian and global private banks), then the Canadian Heritage Fund for use on a rainy day might easily be pushing far above the One Trillion Dollar mark ... instead of being virtually a minus quantity ... as it is now ....

The picture is depressing, especially since those are only two examples among a great many Canadian (colonial) failures to grasp opportunity. It is especially depressing because Canadians are brainwashed to see none of it, and they are trained to believe that (1) the Canadian wealthy and political leadership are, usually, honest; (2) that bad, bad things happen where it really matters, in the USA. But not here; (3) that fake news and fake newsmakers are in the USA ... not in Canada; (4) that the CBC, for instance, "covers Canada well"; (5) that bad people happen in Canada, but not often, and we (deeply colonial in fact, and deeply a part of the worst U.S. savagery engaged in around the world - actively refusing to take over our own government for our own people) are - somehow ... admirable and principled people with admirable and principled leaders.

We think all of those things because the majority of Canadian journalists and political commentators are earnest, focused, even intense ... shams. Where they are not (mostly) out-and-out liars ... they are (mostly) lies. The first group misleads on purpose. The second is taken in and tells lies because it believes them.

For nearly a year, Hillary Clinton failed to admit that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee had provided funding for the notorious dossier that alleged Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. Then, two weeks ago, the Washington Post published a blockbuster article that proved that Clinton had been misleading the public about her Campaign's role in producing the report. Here's a snippet from the article in the Post:

"The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump's connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said."

Following the article's publication, Clinton went into hiding for more than a week during which time she huddled with her political advisors to settle on a strategy for dealing with the crisis. On Wednesday, she resurfaced on the Daily Show where she was treated with kid gloves; no hardball questions were asked and she was given plenty of time to recite her prepared remarks without challenge. Naturally, she downplayed her role in contributing to the year-long "hacking-collusion" investigation that has tied up both Houses of Congress, implicated the nation's main law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and deepened divisions between Washington and Moscow. Here's part of what Hillary said in the interview:

"When Trump got the nomination of the Republican Party, the people 'doing it' (gathering raw intelligence for the dossier) came to my campaign lawyer, and said, would you like us to continue it. He said 'Yes'. He is an experienced lawyer and knows what the law is. He knows what opposition research is. It's part of what happens in a campaign where you get information that may or may not be useful and you try make sure anything you put out in public arena is accurate. So this thing didn't come out until after the election and its' still being evaluated."

The European Union's foreign policy chief has stressed that the Iran nuclear deal was a 'major achievement of European and international multilateral diplomacy that is delivering'.

Speaking at a conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, EU's foreign policy Federica Mogherini has stated that the deal "will continue to be fully implemented by all, in all its parts", the European Union's foreign policy chief said on Friday.

The statement echoes her previous stance, urging all sides to abide by the agreement.