Authorities in Japan are considering starting a digital currency to be called the J-Coin. By doing so, Tokyo will reduce cash circulation in the country.

"The project is in the early stages, and we have just held study meetings with other institutions," a spokesperson for Japanese bank Mizuho Financial Group told CNBC on Wednesday.

"This will be pegged with Japanese Yen, and hopefully used to make payments and transfers through a mobile phone app," the bank said.

According to a report by the Financial Times, a consortium of Japanese banks are working on the project, and they are interested in launching the J-Coin before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

The project has the support of the central bank and regulators. The J-Coin will allow Japanese consumers to pay for goods and services with their smartphones.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reversed course Tuesday and told Wisconsin officials that the Russian government did not scan the state's voter registration system, then later reiterated that it still believed it was one of 21 targeted states.

Homeland Security first told state elections officials on Friday that Wisconsin was one of 21 states targeted by the Russians, raising concerns about the safety and security of the state's election systems even though no data had been compromised. But on Tuesday, Homeland Security gave apparently conflicting information about whether the state's election system was a target and if it was, how it was threatened.

In an email to the state's deputy elections administrator that was provided to reporters at the Wisconsin Elections Commission meeting on Tuesday, Homeland Security said an agency that doesn't deal with elections was the target of scans by Russian IP addresses.

Syria has confirmed that the US led coalition whose very presence in Syria is illegal according to international law, has recently dropped white phosphorus munitions over a village in Deir ez-Zor.

Similar to the infamous napalm munitions the US used in the war on Vietnam, white phosphorus melts the skin off human bones, resulting in an excruciatingly torturous death.

SANA reports that thus far three civilians have been killed while another five have been seriously injured.

Sputnik further reports,

"The news comes a day after a report that coalition airstrikes left nine civilians dead in the northeastern province Hasaka. Those killed included an Iraqi family of six that had escaped Daesh violence in Mosul, according to SANA. Citing sources, the agency added that the coalition had also launched airstrikes on the villages Hadaj, Huneidis and Hassan Ali near the Iraqi border, which has resulted in "huge material damage".

The coalitions airstrikes have resulted in death of hundreds of people in Syria. On August 4, the coalition admitted that "at least 624 civilians have been unintentionally killed by Coalition strikes since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve" against Daesh in Iraq and Syria in 2014″.

The forensic and field images shown below, demonstrate what happens to human bodies after they are hit by white phosphorus

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has urged the national armed forces "be at ready" to defend the country's sovereignty and people amid threats by US.

"We have been blatantly threatened by the most criminal empire in the history of mankind," Maduro said, referring to the US.

The Venezuelan leader delivered a speech at the military parade held at the El Libertador air base in Aragua state in commemoration of the establishment of the Operational Strategic Command of the Venezuelan armed forces.

Okay, here's the review: Strange will vote any way Trump wants him to, Moore will go his own way. Simple as that. Worse, Moore may go his own way on things that Trump doesn't care about, like gay marriage. Imagine Moore trying to block a Trump SCOTUS nomination because the nominee hasn't committed to overturning Obergefell. Not in a million years would Strange cross POTUS that way.

If you're a populist, as Bannon is, it makes sense that you'd prefer Moore to Strange. If you're a Trumpist, as Trump is, all you really want is loyalty for whatever your agenda happens to be at a particular moment. There seems to be some vague sense on the right that because Trump is a loose cannon, naturally he'd prefer a loose cannon to fill Sessions's seat in the Senate. But why? Trump craves obedience more than anything, especially in a fickle, restive Senate. And if he's going to roll the dice on a populist who won't be easy to control, why would he do it for one whose bread and butter is social conservatism?

Bannon knows all of that, though. This "we need a review" thing is part of the shtick he and other Moore supporters are using in Alabama to stay on the right side of Trump's cult of personality. Trump can't fail, they maintain, he can only be failed. Therefore his decision to endorse Strange can't be explained in terms of obvious self-interest but rather in terms of him being manipulated by "globalists" or RINOs or establishmentarians or Mitch McConnell or whoever. Someone has fooled our poor innocent president into backing a candidate who'll, uh, rubber-stamp anything he wants. The very idea of an internal "review" to figure out why POTUS endorsed a candidate who won't stop hugging him is ridiculous. But I think WaPo's right: For Bannon, the idea of a "review" is a way to turn up some populist heat on his old nemeses in the West Wing. He can't impugn Trump but he can certainly impugn John Kelly and Gary Cohn and Jared Kushner, etc, by wondering which sinister forces led Trump down the path of folly in endorsing Strange.

In the international order we have, we will never have clear answers on which international forces brought ISIS fighters to Syria, and are guiding them, Daoud Khairallah, professor of international law, told RT.

Russia's Ministry of Defense denied claims made by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that it is targeting its positions to the north of Deir ez-Zor.

Russia countered the allegations with extensive footage of its latest strikes. Earlier this week, the Reuters news agency published an article claiming that Russian strikes had hit US-backed rebels in Deir ez-Zor province. Opposition forces alleged one of its fighters had been killed and two others injured, calling it a "treacherous attack."

Roger Stone says that POTUS Trump is right, Russia probe is a witch-hunt.

Roger Stone Jr. appeared before the House Intelligence Committee in a secret testimony that we are sure will never see the light of day, and its a shame because what Stone says he stumbled upon during the closed door session is stunning.

Stone claims that an internal mixup occurred between Democrats lawmakers (and rapid Russia haters) Schiff and Speier from California.

According to The Gateway Pundit, the revelation revolves around the fact that Schiff and Speier both claim that the FBI was able to look at the DNC's servers, which of course contradicts what both former-FBI Director James Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Johnson both asserted under oath.

Stone appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight to explain what her heard during the closed door session....

Did U.S. President Barack Obama create the anti-Russia sanctions in order to weaken the EU in its competition against America? If so, the policy has been a huge success - it has enormously damaged the EU's economy. But, if Russia was the actual target - as Obama claimed - then it's been a total flop: It has produced $100 billion loss to the EU, thus far - almost twice as much as the $55 billion total hit to Russia, and the hit to Russia might be even less than that, maybe even zero, because the harms to Russia included the harms from the plunging oil-prices, which weren't at all due to the sanctions. Furthermore, the sanctions strongly helped Russia's economy, in ways that don't yet show up in the economic data but that constitute long-delayed reforms whose pay-offs will start only during the years to come. Washington's economic sanctions against Russia could thus end up producing a net plus for Russia, on a long-term basis.

The deal that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry culminated with King Saud on 11 September 2014 (after his having started those negotiations on 27 June 2014) to flood the market with oil to bring the oil price down and so harm Russia, which is a giant oil & gas exporter, has hit Russia very hard, costing the Russian economy perhaps all of the $55 billion hit to Russia's economy, measured thus far.

These figures come from the first-ever comprehensive study of the effects of the sanctions, a study which also estimates the negative effects upon human rights (this Special Reporteur's chief mandate), but the cost-figures cited here, are entirely economic, not about "rights" at all (which are separately dealt with in the same report).

Washington has asked Beijing to refrain from enforcing a new cybersecurity law that would require foreign and domestic companies to store user data in China and submit to security checks, saying such measures would damage global trade.

The Cybersecurity Law was passed by China in November 2016, and went into effect in June 2017. The law states that any "network operators" in China, including any local or international firms that gather data, must store all user data within mainland China.

In the two-page document submitted for debate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Council for Trade in Services on Tuesday, the US raised concerns over provisions requiring companies to submit to a "security assessment" and prove that the "purpose of the transfer meets standards of legitimacy, necessity, and justification" before they transfer data out of China.

The Kurdish issue will be high on the agenda.

Russia's Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has confirmed that President Vladimir Putin will arrive in Ankara on the 28th of September to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The two leaders already spoke over the phone in the aftermath of the Kurdish separatism referendum in northern Iraq, a vote which Kurdish separatists said attained a 91% yes vote. The vote was boycotted by Arabs and Turkomen and widely condemned by the international community.