As the Obama administration's policy of normalisation of relations with Cuba runs into obstacles Cuba may be tempted to look towards Russia, its old Cold War patron. In that case a resumption of military cooperation between Russia and Cuba is very likely.

An end to the United States' trade embargo on Cuba was demanded for the 25th consecutive year by the General Assembly of the United Nations and was passed by the overwhelming majority of 191 votes in favour with just two abstentions (the United States and Israel).

This called for an end to an outdated embargo established by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, and would reinstate the principles of free trade and open waters as between Cuba and the US.

However the embargo will continue in force because the voting is nonbinding.

It could mean direct or indirect losses of $110 billion according to the United Nations Development Program and more than $1 trillion according to the Cuban government.

Prensa Latina has estimated that between May 2012 and April 2013, the Cuban public health system incurred unnecessary expenses of $39 million because it had to acquire vital medicines and equipment from faraway markets.

The embargo has lasted for 52 years and runs the risk of becoming interminable with all the side effects that might bring, and President Obama has identified its resolution as being of utmost importance.

Newly released emails from the US State Department reveal Hillary Clinton and her senior aide Huma Abedin discussing ways to deal with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after he had published 250,000 diplomatic cables.

Abedin writes to Clinton in December 2010, advising the then-secretary of state on her statement on Assange and WikiLeaks.

"We view this not as a "clever game" of wiki leaks but rather as a "criminal act" against the United States of America," Abedin writes. "He might think this is a clever game today -but when he is prosecuted and if convicted - he will move from being a clever-cyber thief to a convicted criminal -- and will find out that's a whole different kind of game."

More than 1,000 emails from Clinton's private email server were published on the State Department website Thursday as part of a Freedom of Information request by Vice News into the FBI's investigation into the private server.

Many of the emails have already been released by WikiLeaks, but this one is new.

The State Department is due to release another batch of emails Friday.

In a newly leaked email from 2009, then-US Defense Secretary Robert Gates asks for the resumé of Beth Jones, whom Hillary Clinton insisted be the next US ambassador to Iraq. Jones was a top executive of a PR firm and partner of the Clinton Global Initiative.

"At Friday's meeting, Hillary made clear Beth Jones was her first choice for Ambassador to Iraq," Secretary Gates wrote on January 12, 2009 to current Clinton presidential campaign manager John Podesta. "Since I don't know her, we agreed that I should meet with her today or tomorrow. If she is still the frontrunner, would you have someone send me her resume and also reach out to her to ask her to call my office."

The Islamic State terrorist group has killed over 400 people around Mosul and transported many others into the city to use as human shield, a UN human rights spokesperson said.

Among those killed are some 50 fighters who deserted during the battle for the Kokjali neighborhood east of Mosul a few days ago, Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday. Before withdrawing, the militants executed 180 former Iraqi government officials, she said.

The terrorists also executed some 200 other civilians inside the city, Shamdasani added.

Emails recovered from Clinton's private server show massive data theft in 2009, possibly SSNs of every admin official

A newly released email from the State Department shows that Hillary Clinton was informed in April 2009 of a massive theft of data pertaining to former President Bill Clinton's White House records.

On April 13, 2009, Clinton attorney Cheryl Mills informed newly sworn-in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton via email that the National Archives could not account for a two-terabyte hard drive.

"The drive may contain a wide range of memos, emails, and other electronic documents from the Clinton White House."

The hard drive contained information from the administration of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The email was made public from State Department files on Thursday as part of an ongoing release of recovered emails that had been previously deleted from Clinton's private server.

The forwarded email said the National Archives had a duplicate and was examining it to know what was stolen. It was stolen or misplaced between Jan. 30, 2009, and March 24, 2009.

The possible data losses were all serious but only three documents were classified. Social Security numbers and birth dates may have been lost to thieves. Political information may have been stolen, too.

Russia expects Washington to provide an explanation after a report claimed that Pentagon cyber-offensive specialists have hacked into Russia's power grids, telecommunications networks, and the Kremlin's command systems for a possible sabotage.

"If no official reaction from the American administration follows, it would mean state cyberterrorism exists in the US. If the threats of the attack, which were published by the US media, are carried out, Moscow would be justified in charging Washington," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, according to the ministry's website.

NBC News said earlier in an exclusive report that US military hackers have penetrated crucial infrastructure in Russia, "making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the US deem it necessary."

Well, here we are: at the bottom of the barrel under forty feet of slag. In a few days' time, we'll know our fate: the five-alarm fire of Trump Rule (oh, how those police unions are chomping at the bit!) or the Clinton Age of Hyper-War (oh, how those neocons are chomping at the bit!). In either case, the entrenched coagulation of corporate interests and war profiteers that have strangled the peace, prosperity and prospects of the American people will not be budged an inch. The change that people are so desperately hungry for — so hungry that that some of them might well elect an Establishment insider whose sinister clowning makes him appear to be a 'rebel' — will not come. Thus their bitterness will grow deeper, more sour, erupting more and more often in physical violence: from militarized police against protestors, from Trump-empowered racists (if he wins or loses), from extremist militias, from angry, maddened people on every side. And of course there will be more — much more — of the horrific, never-ending, globe-spanning violence of the bipartisan Terror War that churns on and on, no matter who is sitting temporarily in the White House.

There's no use in pretending that's not what we face. But there's also no use in pretending that this situation is somehow sui generis, some terribly unlucky conflation of unforeseen circumstances coming together at this particular time. It is in fact the culmination and embodiment of the deliberate choices of the most powerful forces in society: the choices to enrich themselves beyond all reason and extend their military and economic dominance over the earth.

It doesn't matter that many if not most of the practitioners and functionaries of this system "believe" in its rightness. It doesn't matter that brutal neoliberal nostrums and extremist imperial notions have become religious dogmas for those who see themselves as the "meritocracy." It doesn't matter if the leaders and factotums genuinely believe in the "exceptionalism" they preach or if they are cynical power-seekers. It doesn't matter if they actually believe their rapacious financial machinations are reflections of the "natural law" of the "the market" that will eventually benefit all, or if they know themselves to be what they really are: ugly souls disfigured by greed. The end result has been the same: a long series of deliberate choices by a bipartisan elite that have hollowed out the lives and communities and futures of millions of Americans, and created a living hell of war, ruin and hatred over much of the earth.

Hillary Clinton deleted a 2009 email in which she forwarded classified information to her daughter, Chelsea. The email was released on Friday by the State Department. It is one of thousands of documents recovered by the FBI from Clinton's private email server.

The Dec. 20, 2009 email chain, entitled "Update," started with a message from Michael Froman, who served as a deputy assistant to President Obama and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

The email, which is redacted because it contains information classified as "Confidential," was sent to Jake Sullivan, Clinton's foreign policy adivser at the State Department, and several Obama aides. Sullivan sent it to Hillary Clinton who then forwarded it to Chelsea, who emailed under the pseudonym "Diane Reynolds."


The entire text of the classified email is redacted because it contains foreign government information.

Russia has been successful in fighting against Daesh and other terrorist groups in Syria while the United States has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts solely because it suits Washington's interests, Irfan Abdulselam Muhammed, a Turkmen commander with the People's Mobilization Forces (PMF), told Sputnik.

"We will be happy if Russia, having reached an agreement with the central government, will fight against Daesh on Iraqi territory," he added.

According to militants' sources, armed 'moderate' opposition groups started to fight against each other in order to take control over rapidly diminishing resources in the besieged city.

After a failed attempt to break through a military blockade of Syrian troops in eastern Aleppo, armed 'moderate' opposition groups started to fight against each other over rapidly diminishing resources, including weapons and advantageous positions in the city.

An intense fighting between members of various groups was registered on the western frontier of the eastern side of Aleppo on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based watchdog group, reported.