A resurgent Al-Qaeda poses a growing threat to the West as Islamic State is driven out of its strongholds, British Secretary of Defense Michael Fallon and security experts told media. They warn its branch in Syria, Al-Nusra Front, may be planning attacks.

"Al-Qaeda is still alive and kicking in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Yemen and elsewhere," Fallon said, as reported by the Times newspaper.

"It has not been finally defeated and we are very conscious of that [...] It is a very direct threat to the UK. Not just the [defense] ministry, but the security agencies are very much aware of that," he added. He claimed that is one of the reasons the UK is keeping troops in Afghanistan, as Al-Qaeda has been setting up camps in the south of the country, where British forces were based.

Al-Qaeda is a militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization founded back in 1988 by Osama Bin Laden, the man behind the 9/11 terror attacks in the US. It spawned an offshoot terror organization in war-torn Syria, Al-Nusra Front, which has recently been renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

Considered one of the strongest jihadist groups in the region, it is currently battling President Bashar Assad's army in Syria. One of the group's leaders, Abu Mohammad Julani, was named a "specially designated global terrorist" by the US State Department in 2013.

Muslim communities in the UK regard Prevent - the government's anti-extremism strategy - as a "spying programme" which targets followers of the Islamic faith, according to the UK's terror law watchdog. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism, David Anderson QC, said Muslim fears around the controversial programme were "exaggerated" but "very real."

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today Program, Anderson called for an independent review and overhaul of the controversial strategy, which was set up to counter radicalisation. "There is a strong feeling in Muslim communities that I visit that Prevent is, if not a spying programme, at least a programme that is targeted on them," he said.

"In some cases it is even felt it is targeted not just at Islamist terrorism or extremism, but at the practice of Islam. People who pray or who wear the veil, for example, are sometimes felt to be under suspicion. Now, I'm sure those fears are exaggerated, and they are certainly not what the programme is supposed to be about, but the fact is that they are very real," he added.

Anderson called for an independent review of the Prevent program to restore trust among Muslim communities. The barrister also said there should be greater transparency about what the program is doing and better engagement with the Muslim community. "The government has to be more open about what it is doing, and it has to subject itself to some kind of independent scrutiny that can judge whether it's effective or whether it isn't," Anderson said.

A hotel in Aleppo, Syria housing international journalists and humanitarian aid workers was shelled overnight, according to the Russian media. The fire presumably came from a rebel-controlled area. The militants shelled a hotel in the center of Aleppo, Syria, which is known to house many foreigners, including a group of journalists and the representatives of several humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, UNICEF, and Red Crescent, Russian TVC channel reported.

According to the broadcaster, employees of Russia's "Zvezda" TV channel were in the hotel at the time. Journalists from Russia's Channel 1, VGTRK, and REN TV broadcasters were also staying at the hotel, and Channel 1 also recounted the shelling.

Eighty-millimeter mortar guns were fired at the hotel, according to Channel 1. Six mortars were reportedly fired at the complex. One leveled the hotel-staff building, and another destroyed the roof of the gym. The windows of the building were shattered by the blast wave, and several trees were ripped out in the hotel yard. "A bomb fell into the yard and shrapnel flew into the window. I was sitting on a chair and just fell to the floor, I was so scared," a woman who lives in a nearby house told Channel 1.

All of the guests were evacuated just in time. They were led downstairs where they were protected by concrete walls. No one was killed and no major injuries have been reported. "These were unguided missiles, so it's hard to tell where they came from. Most probably, from the Bustan al-Qasr area. It's good there were no victims this time," a source in the Syrian military told Channel 1.

Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the situation in Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday, less than 48 hours after the State Department announced a suspension in "bilateral channels with Russia" related to reducing the violence in Syria. The Wednesday phone call between the two diplomats, first disclosed by the Russian Foreign Ministry, raised immediate questions about whether the United States was already backtracking on its threat to cut off ties with Moscow.

In acknowledging the phone call, State Department spokesman Mark Toner defended the high-level contact. "They did talk about the situation on the ground in Syria," he said, "my argument back to you would be it would be irresponsible for Secretary Kerry not to raise what's happening in Syria and make our concerns clear about what's happening there."

Toner faced stiff push back from reporters seeking to understand the practical extent of the suspension of ties. "You tell the Russians one thing, and then you turn around and don't follow through on it," Associated Press reporter Matt Lee said.

Toner said the suspension only applied to a diplomatic channel setup to sustain a cessation of hostilities in the country. Such a suspension apparently did not preclude talks between Kerry and Lavrov on Syria who have remained in near constant contact throughout the deadly civil war. "While that particular bilateral channel has been suspended we're not going to just walk away from what's happening in Syria," Toner said.

Six years of Fed & Wall Street hype come home to roost.

Something funny happened on the way to the bank: In August, commercial and industrial loans outstanding at all banks in the US fell for the first time month-to-month since October 2010, which had marked the end of the collapse of credit during the Financial Crisis.

In October 2008, the absolute peak of the prior credit bubble, there were $1.59 trillion commercial and industrial loans outstanding. As the Great Recession chewed into the economy, C&I loans plunged. Many of them were cleansed from bank balance sheets via charge-offs. But then the Fed decided what the US needed was more debt to fix the problem of too much debt, thus kicking off what would become the greatest credit bubble in US history. By July 2016, C&I loans had surged to $2.064 trillion, 30% above their prior bubble peak.

The Clinton presidential campaign has been caught scripting reality, this time at a town hall in Haverford, Pennsylvania. During the town hall meeting, a 15-year-old girl was supposedly "chosen at random" out of the audience to ask Hillary Clinton a question.

The young lady gave a such a well-scripted performance that a suspicious individual on YouTube going by @Spanglevision chose to further investigate.

After some online investigative work, it was revealed that the "randomly selected" audience member - who was also the only person with a question written on a prepared script - was child actor Brannan Leach, who just so happens to be the daughter of democratic Pennsylvania state senator Daylin Leach; a Hillary supporter.

Here is the obviously staged "random" question from Brennan to Hillary Clinton:

Brennan:

"Hi Madam Secretary. I'm Brennan and I'm 15 years old. At my school, body image is a really big issue for girls my age. I see with my own eyes the damage Donald Trump does when he talks about women and how they look. As the first female president how would you undo some of that damage and help girls understand that they're so much more than just what they look like?"

And, this folks, is what life is like in the Matrix; where politicians script questions for little girls and feign that they are random, while knowing full well what question will asked be and having an answer already in the can.

Hillary Clinton:

"I'm so proud of you for asking that question. You are right — my opponent has just taken this concern to a new level of difficulty and meanness. And, it's shocking when women are called names and judged solely on the basis of physical attributes.

"My opponent insulted Miss Universe. I mean, how do you get more acclaimed than that? But, it wasn't good enough. So we can't take any of this seriously any more. We need to laugh at it. We need to refute it. We need to ignore it. And we need to stand up to it."

Here is the full analysis from Spanglevision.

Nearly two years after the Netherlands made waves in the gold market when it announced that it had secretly repatriated 122 tons of physical gold from the New York Fed, this morning there was another surprising announcement out of the Dutch central bank which said is was planning to move the country's gold reserves from the center of Amsterdam to land owned by the defense ministry near Zeist. According to a statement by the bank, the security measures necessary to guard the gold are a problem for both staff and visitors, and as a result it would transfer the assets to a safer location.

The aim is to move the gold to the new location, Camp New Amsterdam, at the beginning of 2022. The new complex, dubbed the Cash Centre, will also be used to sort and distribute bank notes and to hunt for fake cash.

According to official data, some 189 tons of gold are stored in Amsterdam but the bank has total reserves of 612 tons. In order to spread the risk, Dutch gold is also held in central banks in New York, Ottawa and London.

President Bashar al-Assad affirmed that the United States doesn't have the will to reach any agreement about Syria, and that Syria knew in advance that the US agreement with Russia will not succeed because the main part of that agreement is to attack al-Nusra which is an American card in Syria.

In an interview given to Denmark's TV 2 channel, President al-Assad said that "moderate opposition" is a myth, and that reaching a political solution requires fighting terrorism, asserting that it's not acceptable that terrorists will take control of any part of Syria.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: So, Mr. President, let us begin with the current situation in Aleppo. The last few weeks, terrifying pictures have come out from Aleppo. I mean, we see the residents of the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo in a very dire situation. They seem exhausted, they seem terrified, the situation is very violent. What is the strategy behind launching such fierce attack from the Syrian and Russian armies at the moment?

President Assad: Actually, we didn't launch an attack, because the Syrian Army has continued its drive toward liberating every part of Syria including Aleppo or eastern Aleppo from the terrorists, but there was a ceasefire for one week in order to give the treaty, or the agreement, let's say, between the Russians and the Americans a way to be implemented, and it didn't work. When that week ended, we continued our drive as army to liberate eastern Aleppo from the terrorists. But actually, when you want to talk about the dire situation in eastern Aleppo, it's not because of the government; it's because of the terrorists. They've been in that area for years now, but we only heard about that "dire situation" in the media recently, in the Western media, because the situation of the terrorists is very bad. This is the only reason. While if you want to talk about the situation there, we never prevented any medical supply or food supply or any other thing from entering east Aleppo. There's no embargo, if that's what you mean, there's no embargo, and our role as a government is to encircle the terrorists in order to liberate every part of the city.

Russian diplomacy in the 21st century is characterized by its trademarked balancing and mutually beneficial pragmatism. This pair of traits is difficult enough for any power to practice individually and is extra challenging to do so concurrently with the other, though Russia masterfully manages to pull this off because of its "deep state's" consensus on the country's grand strategic purpose in Eurasia. To avoid any misunderstandings, the "deep state" that's being referred to is the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies that ensure long-term political stability for the state, and in Russia's case, they're in complete agreement about the need for Moscow to balance the various, and often times competing, forces in the supercontinent in order to maintain peaceful harmony between them.

Whether it's through military diplomacy or traditional statecraft, Russia is working hard to defuse the state-on-state tension that the US has stoked all throughout Eurasia. The world has borne witness to just how quickly Russia's direct involvement in the Mideast totally rewrote the rules of the game in that region, just as it stands to do in East Asia as Moscow and Tokyo edge closer to signing a conclusive peace treaty with one another and resolving the "Kuril Islands dispute". The strategic situation in Europe has reached a stalemate between Russia and the US/NATO, while events in the Arctic haven't yet dynamically begun to develop and won't do so until after more of the ice melts sometime in the coming future, so the only Rimland portion of Eurasia still unaccounted for by Russia's pan-continental balancing act is South Asia, which has only recently come to the fore of Moscow's attention in this regard.

Ali Tannany, 27, was celebrating his bachelor party with friends, relatives and neighbors in Jabalia Camp in Northern Gaza in August when Israeli missiles were launched into the Strip, shelling several arbitrary areas in the region. The attack was considered an immediate response to the launching of a missile by Palestinian resistance groups on August 21st against Sderot, located less than a mile east of Gaza. Ali and his guests were not shaken when the shelling started and continued their celebration. However, as the sound of bombs got louder and closer, people started leaving the party and Ali had to ask the rest of his guests to seek safety in their homes.

Israel has seemingly altered its reaction policy to resistance rockets; it now responds with immediate, massive seismic missiles. It did so again today, striking targets in Gaza in retaliation for a rocket fired at an Israeli community.