The State Department was in touch with Hillary Clinton's team mere hours before releasing one of the first revelations of her Benghazi emails. That media report puzzled Clinton's staff, coming just before she launched her campaign, newly leaked emails show.

"You may have already heard from other channels, but NYT will have a story tomorrow on HRC's Benghazi emails. Unclear to me how NYT got, assume from Gowdy. Better now than April," Clinton's communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a March 2015 email to campaign chairman John Podesta.

The premature results appeared on NBC affiliate WRCB in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but were stored on the servers of a widely used news content management platform.

A NBC affiliate in Chattanooga, Tennessee inadvertently published what appear to be election night results. The results are published in the typical format used by mainstream news networks and display Presidential and Congressional results, the popular vote count, electoral votes, and percentage of precincts reporting in. The page was taken down soon after but is available via the internet archive. The results of the Presidential contest name Hillary Clinton the winner with 41.7 million votes or 42% of the total. Trump, on the other hand, received 40.1 million votes or 40%. The results also gave Gary Johnson 8% while Jill Stein received 5%.

Faced with an unending scandal about her use of a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton decided last September to "reset" her presidential campaign. As Amy Chozick wrote in the New York Times, the new Hillary would display her "humor" and her "heart," the qualities that her friends say rarely come across in public appearances.

The reset reached its zenith on October 3 when Hillary appeared on Saturday Night Live as "Val," a bartender to whom Kate McKinnon, as Hillary Clinton, pours her heart out. The six-minute segment ends with "Hillary" and "Val" bonding as they sing "Stand by Me," the Ben E. King classic. "Hillary" gets so carried away with her manic crooning that she doesn't realize "Val" has disappeared and been replaced by cast member Cecily Strong, playing a character known as "Huma." "I was just hanging out with my best friend Val," Hillary says. Huma tells Hillary there is no one there. "I think you've had one too many, Hillary, let's go," Huma says.

Huma, as anyone who follows politics knows, is 40-year-old Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's "shadow," as Politico once described her. She began working for Hillary in 1996, when she was a 19-year-old intern fresh from George Washington University assigned to the First Lady's office. Abedin had wanted to be a journalist like her hero Christiane Amanpour and was hoping to work in the White House press office. "Take a chance," her mother told her. "Don't fall in love with Plan A." Huma took the advice. "Sixteen years later, I wouldn't change a thing," she told a dinner audience in 2012, at a Fortune conference. "And I got to meet Christiane Amanpour."

Over the years Huma has served in several positions, with increasingly important-sounding titles. She has been Hillary's "body woman," her traveling chief of staff, a senior adviser, and a deputy chief of staff when Hillary was secretary of state. Now, based in Brooklyn, she is the vice-chair of Hillary's 2016 presidential campaign. But whatever the title, the job she performs for Hillary has always been essentially the same: confessor, confidante, and constant companion. It's safe to say that over the years Abedin and Hillary have spent more time together than either has with her husband.

Interviewed by the Cuban journalist Roberto Garcia on behalf of the agency Prensa Latina, the President of the Syrian Arab Republic highlights the cohesion between the different groups within Syrian society and popular participation in defense of the Nation. After noting that preserving national independence was a fundamental factor in the struggle that today is liberating the Syrian state, Bashar al-Assad recognizes the historical similarity between this battle and the recent struggles between Latin American nations.

Prensa Latina: Mr President, thank you very much for granting Prensa Latina this historic opportunity to communicate to the world your perspective on the situation in Syria given that, as you know, much information has been manipulated on the foreign aggression your country faces.

How do you assess the current military situation in Syria and what are the main challenges that the Syrian armed forces on the ground face in their struggle against the anti-governmental groups? If possible, we would like your opinion on the current situation on the combat fronts in Aleppo and Homs.

Bashar al-Assad:Obviously, the terrorists have received massive support from different corners of the world. There are more than 100 nationalities participating in the aggression against Syria, relying on the support of countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, that fund them and Turkey that undoubtedly offers them logistical support, as well as the approval and supervision of Western States led by the United States, France, the United Kingdom and other allies.

But since the Russians decided to combat terrorism in Syria, essentially the Al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State (Daesh) and other groups associated to these two extremist entities, the balance of powers has now shifted in our favour and against these groups.

The Syrian Arab Army has succeeded and continues to succeed in making advances in different parts of Syria and is determined to topple them.

"...it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record."

So wrote FBI Director James Comey last week in what must be the most explosive lawyer-speak ever penned. He's being attacked for 'political interference' in the election, accused of 'siding with Putin', and has a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for him to 'resign' because - I kid you not - ‌"Mr. Comey has lent credence to Donald Trump's toxic accusation that the system is rigged."

I wish to supplement my own writing here by stating that a coup of sorts does appear to be underway in Washington, albeit a very subtle and carefully orchestrated one, the explicit details of which will play out behind closed doors. The FBI no doubt has every bit of dirt on everyone in Washington, but because most everyone is implicated in everyone else's crimes, it must be very cautious about what it chooses to target the Clintons with.

That is apparently why the FBI chose as its next weapon against the Clinton campaign the release of 129 pages of documents relating to former President Bill Clinton's pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich in 2001. The barely plausible reason it gave for doing so was that it was merely completing a FOIA request, one that just happened to add another nail in the Clinton campaign's coffin.

This latest anti-Clinton data dump by the Feds, with its implied besmirching of the probity of the Clintons, will likely make the average undecided voter in the USA think twice about voting for Hillary, even if they don't really know who Marc Rich is. But for those with the time and inclination to probe deeper, the Marc Rich case is actually very instructive in that it goes to the heart of the Clintons' power and the recurring role of the man currently threatening that power.

Militants led by designated terrorist organisation, Jabhat Al Nusra, now obliquely referred to by the Western media as "Jabhat Fateh al-Sham," has spearheaded another attempt to disrupt security operations against militants trapped in Syria's northern city of Aleppo.

Despite what is clearly a terrorist assault employing indiscriminate artillery fire provided by Grad rocket systems on an urban center and the use of suicide bombings employing vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED), Western media organisations are attempting to depict the assault as a "rebel counter-attack" meant to "break" what it is depicting as a "siege" by Syria's own military forces.

Reuters in their article, "Syrian rebels launch Aleppo counter-attack to break siege," would claim:

It is particularly interesting to see Reuters attempt to depict the assault as a "rebel" operation, despite being unable to name a single "rebel" group, and admitting the leading role designated foreign terrorist organisation Jabhat Al Nusra is playing as well as the use of clearly terrorist tactics being employed.

Reuters continues by admitting much further down in its article that:

Fateh al-Sham played a big part in a rebel attack in July that managed to break the government siege on eastern Aleppo for several weeks before it was reimposed.

Abu Youssef al-Mouhajir, an official from the powerful Ahrar al-Sham Islamist group, said the extent of cooperation between the different rebel factions was unusual, and that the largest axis of attack was on the western edge of the city.

Reuters is all but admitting that even the so-called "rebels" it attempts to credit the assault with are operating not under the banner of the "Free Syrian Army," but ultimately under the banner of Jabhat Al Nusra, quite literally Al Qaeda in Syria.

Reuters concedes that this "complicates" US foreign policy in Syria, claiming that heavier weapons cannot be passed on to "rebels" in fear that they would immediately fall into the hands of terrorist groups "rebels" are clearly operating under. Reuters, however, never explains why any weapons at all would be provided to "rebel" groups so clearly and transparently in league with Jabhat Al Nusra in the first place.

America will only treat Britain as a serious global player if the UK raises the share of its GDP contributed to NATO each year, according to former Labour Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen. Owen told an audience at the Swiss-based Progress Foundation that increasing the symbolic contribution of gross domestic product (GDP) to NATO from 2 percent to 2.5 percent per year would show the US it is a serious player. It would also help convince Europe, still smarting from the Brexit vote, that Britain is serious about security.


"Over the next four years, besides adding the present UK EEAS budget to our contribution to NATO, we will need to move as quickly as we can to devoting 2.5 percent of GDP to NATO to be seen as serious," Owen said in his address. He warned that "only in a revived NATO, where European countries are no longer as President [Barack] Obama rightly accused us of being 'freeloaders,' and we make a greater financial contribution, will Europe redress the imbalance between us and President Putin's Russian Federation."


On the relationship with Europe, Owen argued: "When the EU recognizes that the UK is even more committed to European stability as well as security then Brexit will be seen in a different light as strengthening the wider Europe." Before committing to an extra 0.5 percent, the British government may want to check [that] it is actually meeting its stated obligations.

The State Duma Committee for Defense has approved a draft law allowing citizens to sign short-term military contracts and participate in counter-terrorist operations in Russia and abroad, as well as other missions required by extraordinary circumstances.

The bill is applicable to people on active military service and reserve servicemen. The maximum term of contracts is set at one year. The text of the draft reads that the soldiers summoned on short-term contracts could be used for "maintaining or restoring peace and security outside Russia's borders."

The current Russian Law on Military Service allows for military contracts, but their length is set as between two and five years. In drafting the new bill, the government explained that shorter contracts would help quickly mobilize forces for particular tasks, which is important in the rapidly-changing world. Additionally, according to Defense Ministry estimates, many more professional soldiers express a willingness to prolong their contracts if the original ones are signed for shorter terms.

The deputy head of the upper house's Committee for Defense, Senator Franz Klintsevich, said that after the new bill is passed Russia will get new tools for operative reaction to new threats. "Today it is simply impossible to make precise forecasts for a year or two. As the events in Syria have demonstrated to us, everything can change literally every day. Therefore, no one can know when a necessity for counter-terrorist operations may arise or how long they would last," he said.

The U.S. media has widely declared Venezuela a "dictatorship" in recent days — actually re-declared it as such for the umpteenth time.

The vilification of Venezuela's government has never been subtle over the past two decades. Venezuela's former President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, was called a "dead communist dictator" by Bernie Sanders' campaign in response to attacks by a Clinton super PAC. The Democratic National Committee just released a pro-Clinton commercial that depicted Chavez as a dictator. In reality, the only dictatorship to exist in Venezuela over the past 18 years was led by Pedro Carmona after a military coup deposed Chavez for two days in 2002.

That dictatorship had the backing of the U.S. government and major U.S. media like the New York Times. Key leaders of the opposition participated in the 2002 coup: Leopoldo Lopez, Henrique Capriles, Maria Corina Machado to name some of U.S. media's favorites. In August, Henry Ramos, the president of the opposition-led National Assembly, publicly lamented the defeat of the 2002 coup.

On October 26, the New York Times, NYT, essentially reprised its infamous editorial of April 13, 2002, in which it said that Carmona was a "respected business leader" who ensured that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." The NYT's 2016 version of the editorial said that Venezuela is now a "dictatorship in the making" and that "If there is more bloodshed, Mr. Maduro (the current Venezuelan president) will be responsible." The message to the Venezuelan opposition could not be clearer: no matter how violently you or your supporters behave, we will ignore it as we always have in the past.

Adil Oksuz and Kemal Batmaz, who are suspected of plotting the coup attempt in Turkey, visited the United States on July 11-13, according to local media.

Suspected masterminds behind a July coup attempt in Turkey visited the United States shortly before the thwarted coup to meet dissident Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Ankara of orchestrating the mutiny, Turkish media reported Wednesday.

Adil Oksuz and Kemal Batmaz, who are suspected of plotting the July mutiny, visited the United States on July 11-13, according to the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper.

On July 15, a military coup attempt took place in Turkey. It was suppressed the following day. Over 240 people were killed during the coup attempt and an estimated 2,000 were wounded.

Ankara has accused Gulen, who has been living in the US state of Pennsylvania since 1999, and his followers of playing a key role in the coup. Gulen himself has denounced the rebellion and declared his innocence.