Emergency Fed meetings at the White House, the launching of new gold trading market at the Shanghai Gold Exchange, revelations Deutsche Bank admitting it manipulated gold and silver prices, China starting its own global payment system. These may all seem unrelated, but according to macroeconomic researcher Rob Kirby, they are all connected. Kirby explains,

"With China and their upstart CIPS, which is the China Interbank Payment System, China appears to be on the verge of merging their interbank payment system with SWIFT. My gut is telling me that this will very much marginalize America as the main processor of global payments. This, in my view, will embody very possibly a global reset in terms which currency is going to be the world's reserve currency. I have a very sneaking suspicion that when China merges with the SWIFT system, I believe there is a very strong possibility that China will back their currency with gold. I do believe this is why China has aggressively been buying physical gold for the past 10 or 15 years. They have been doing it with a view to dislodging the dollar or greatly diminishing the dollar as the world's reserve currency. That's what I think is at play right now. I think U.S. bankers and regulators have caught wind of this and are aware it is coming. I also believe this is the reason for all the secret meetings they have been having. The Federal Reserve Board met in secret behind closed doors (Monday morning), and they gave us some frivolous reason why they were meeting. The Fed Chairman, that Monday afternoon, walked over to the White House and met with, not just the President, but also the Vice President. The notion that the President and Vice President would be in the same room at the same time tells you this is national security related. If you don't think the preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency isn't a national security issue, you better think again."

Continuing its crackdown on press freedoms, the Turkish government has blocked access to the Sputnik News Agency website. Ankara has justified its decision by citing "administrative measures."

"After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the law Nr. 5651, administration measure has been taken for this website (sputniknews.com) according to decision Nr. 490.05.01.2016.-56092 dated 14/04/2016 of the Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication," reads message that appears for anyone trying to access the Turkish site.

Sputnik News was not notified of the Turkish government's decision ahead of time, according to Turkish bureau chief Tural Kerimov. "We received no notifications, warnings or other messages from the competent authorities. No communications have been received since the blocking," Kerimov said. "Access to Sputnik's website in Turkey is blocked from mobile devices and computers with no VPN."

When asked for clarification of its decision, the Department of Telecommunications and Communication said "because it is already late and there are no responsible persons [available], we cannot provide comment on this issue," insisting they could only comment at a later date.

Reports of website access problems began at roughly 7:50 PM local time, and was blocked several hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin's Q&A, in which he made several statements about Russian-Turkish relations. Putin said he considers Turkey a friend, but the behavior of "individual politicians" is inadequate.

Given a hypothetical scenario in which both President Erdogan and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko were drowning, Putin was asked to whom he would offer a hand. The Russian president responded that it's impossible to save someone who doesn't want saving, but that Russia is ready to assist any partner willing to accept help.

As an Economic Hit Man (EHM) in the 1970s I spent a great deal of time in Panama. I hate to admit it, but I helped forge the system that has now been exposed in the Panama Papers. It is a system of legalized crimes. How else can we describe it?

This EHM system has created a global economy where 62 individuals have as much wealth as half the world's population, big corporations enjoy the airports and highways, fire and police departments, school systems, and other infrastructure of countries like the United States without paying for them and where governments are controlled by a handful of extremely wealthy individuals. The hard-earned tax dollars of the average US citizen finances the infrastructure and social services that benefit the very rich and their corporations while they shelter their incomes in tax havens.

Although the tax sheltering schemes disclosed in the Panama Papers were developed in the 1970s - during my time as an EHM in that country - the foundations of the system go back more than a century. In 1903 President Teddy Roosevelt fomented a rebellion to wrest Panama from Colombia so that the US could build the Panama Canal. JP Morgan and Company was appointed as the new country's official fiscal agent. Soon after that, Panama passed laws that enabled John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company to avoid US taxes and regulations by registering its ships in Panama. It was just the beginning. . .

Two weeks ago, author and journalist William Dunkerly broke a story on OpEd News concerning new information about the 2006 death of ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. We subsequently covered the story on RI.

The accusations are being made by Paul Barril, a retired captain in the French gendarmerie nationale (similar to internal troops in Russia or national guard in some countries) who had a long career in special forces (GIGN) and counter-intelligence, and is well known in France.

Since his retirement Barril has been involved with a number of private security agencies. Currently he is a partner in the Nadjadi Group, courtesy of whom this exclusive interview was obtained.

Barril is also a figure of controversy, having been connected to a few scandals. Some have raised questions surrounding his service as an advisor to the Rwandan government at the time of the 1994 genocide in that country. However, he strongly maintains he played no role in any crimes.

Israeli firms have teamed up with militants in Sudan, operating gold and uranium mines in the South Kordofan state and smuggling the reserves to the occupied Palestinian lands, a report says.

Hassan Abdallah Dudu, a local chief, said the Israelis are tapping mineral reserves in the areas controlled by Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), the Sudanese Media Center (SMC) reported on Thursday.

They are smuggling them, which also include other minerals, across the border into South Sudan to be transported to Israel, he said.

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan grows increasingly authoritarian, the European Parliament has filed a resolution to express its concern over Turkey's declining democratic values.

The administration of President Erdogan has shown increasingly dictatorial tendencies. He has displayed ill will toward his own people, by conducting military raids against Kurdish communities in the country's southeast, and he has leaned toward military adventurism through his actions in Syria and north Iraq.

Erdogan has also shown a lack of respect for press freedoms, by cracking down on those critical of the government, both at home and abroad. In 2015, 14 journalists in the country were imprisoned, and on Thursday, Sputnik News was added to a growing list of media outlets banned by Ankara.

As the Battle of New York looms, an underground shadow war flirts with High Noon. After nearly one year, the FBI has finally investigated the treasure trove contained in Hillary Clinton's subterranean private email server. The FBI has refused to release any records. Remember, this is a criminal investigation.

Former State Department IT official Bryan Pagliano - who essentially set up Clinton's personal server - was granted immunity in exchange for cooperating with the FBI's investigation. A whodunit applies on whether Pagliano was told this server might be the conduit of secret State Department communications as well as top secret National Security issues.

The timeline of the Clinton subterranean homesick server blues does raise eyebrows. The story first broke in March 2013, when Romanian hacker "Guccifer" leaked four intercepted Sidney Blumenthal e-mails - related to Libya and Benghazi - to selected global media outlets.

Only RT - routinely denounced in the US as a Kremlin propaganda arm published them at the time. It took the New York Times a hefty two years to report that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, used a private email account.

Now Forbes comes out all guns blazing:

"The Kremlin's cyber warfare army has had ample opportunity to steal Clinton's entire e-mail cache (including 31,830 "private" e-mails). Such hacking would likely have taken place before the Kremlin's propaganda arm, RT (Russia Today), published Sidney Blumenthal's e-mails to Clinton on March 20, 2013, presumably sending out alarms at that late date to Clinton to secure her private server. The Clinton cache of e-mail correspondence in the hands of the Kremlin or other hostile intelligence agencies could represent one of America's greatest intelligence disasters, giving Vladimir Putin the opportunity to determine the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election or, barring that, to cast a cloud over a Clinton presidency."

Away from Putin now cast as The Great Elector, the crucial player is Pagliano. This is entering Grand Jury investigation territory. The Department of Justice (DoJ) - to which the FBI is subordinated - cannot grant immunity; only federal judges can, when formally requested by a DoJ prosecutor. And that, in itself, is a big deal.

The Russian Ambassador to the UN has called on members of the Security Council to exert influence on Turkey so that Kurds be included in the Syria peace process. Vitaly Churkin also warned against any "secret agenda" and further unilateral endeavors in Libya.

Speaking to Izvestiya daily on US-Russian interactions in Syria, Churkin said that Pentagon officials tend to underestimate the much needed cooperation with Moscow, as the Russian success in fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists took them by surprise.

"Generally speaking, close Russia-US interaction at various levels - political, diplomatic and military - is the backbone of the crisis settlement efforts. Everyone understands that. And the fact that the Americans, especially Pentagon representatives, are underestimating it may probably mean that they are still at a loss over Russia's energetic actions in Syria in the last six months," he said.

For the peace process in Syria to move on, the Russian envoy has once again stressed that Kurdish participation in Geneva is essential. Yet at the same time, he expressed concern that Western countries are unwilling to pressure Turkey, who repeatedly refuse to allow the Kurds to join the discussions, despite them remaining one of the most important elements of resistance to terrorism in Syria.

It's a bitter five years that have been endured by the Syrian people as a whole. Those who are either pro-state or in opposition have experienced this war. These two parties are the only ones who love and work for the homeland, of course according to the vision of each party in regards to the country and the leadership of the country. The behavior of each party is dependent on a long time procedure, which was built through the influence of different factors and formats on the concept of each party. Although the concepts of the pro-state party and the opponent's party are different, there are still many common values between them both, like loving the country and seeing their land as a great land from the point of view of history and culture. Even the fighting against each other has their love for their homeland in common.

Both parties have given a lot in terms of martyrs, who were put on the sacrificial altar of the homeland, or in terms of the economic burden suffered by the Syrian people, which amounted to a degree that is hard to believe that any other people can endure, or in terms of the psychological burden caused by this war, which changed the peaceful and beautiful reality of co-existence to the contrary. Doubt began to enter into the souls and the hearts, asking about the reality of co-existence.

Here, once again, the Syrian people showed a huge understanding, analyzed the situation, and knew what was meant by co-existence and cohesion between themselves. The Syrian people built a collective consciousness that is aware that what is happening in Syria is a "conspiracy and not a revolution". They knew that what happened in Syria was happening due to the will of the countries that want to destroy Syria. Some are hopeful of the possibility of looting our wealth and the others saw in Syria (Levant) a center, from a historical and cultural point of view, for human values, while these "others" in our region do not have the minimum level of these values and think that money can compensate for these values.

These two parties in Syria were probably, at the beginning of the crisis, in two positions close to each other, especially in terms of objecting to some phenomena of the internal situation that existed in Syria, which President Bashar Assad indicated to them. Perhaps the two parties could have stood in the same position if the course of events in Syria had happened differently. Many from both sides receded after the first months of the crisis, and were content with monitoring and trying to understand what is going on in Syria. This period of retreating and overlooking from both Syrian parties was not long; they discovered that what is happening cannot be described as a "revolution", and those who were carrying weapons cannot be "revolutionaries", as "revolutionaries" do not kill their own people, they do not tear hearts from the chest, they do not destroy their land, and they never do such dirty acts like the ones these "revolutionaries" actually have done.

On March 23 General Breedlove, Chief of Staff of the American European Command gave an address to the Ministry of Defence of Georgia, announcing new American-British-Georgian military exercises to be conducted in May this year under the code-name Noble Partner 2016. In that address he set out the real intention of the American elite; war with Russia. He stated the following, to his Georgian puppets, apparently with a straight face;

"Now, to my visit here. The security situation across Europe continues to evolve and become more and more complex. We continue to face security direct challenges from two directions. To the East, we face a resurgent, aggressive Russia, which has voluntarily chosen to be an adversary and poses an aggressive and long-term threat to the United States and our European allies and partners.

"To the South...Europe faces the daunting challenge of mass migration, spurred by state instability and collapse...and masking the movement of criminals, terrorists, and foreign fighters. As a result of conflict in the region "Daesh" - is spreading like a cancer, taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations - and our own - with terrorist attacks. Its brutality is driving millions to flee from Syria, and Iraq...creating an unprecedented humanitarian challenge.

"As we work with allies and partners to respond and overcome both of these serious threats, we stand fully behind Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Today I was privileged to visit the Administrative Boundary Line with your Chief of Defense and our Ambassador. There I witnessed the illegitimate division of the Georgian people. As your brave, valiant nation has witnessed first-hand, Russia continues to seek to extend its coercive and corrosive influence on its periphery, and now it is also trying to re-establish a leading - and aggressive - role on the world stage. Russia ultimately seeks to overturn the established rules and principles of the international system, fracture the unity of the free world, and to challenge our resolve."