A top advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the US should officially apologize for killing dozens of Syrian troops in an airstrike.

Assad's media and political advisor Bouthaina Shaaban made the remark on Monday during an interview with the Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen TV network.

She noted that Washington has conveyed apologies to Syria but not in an official manner.

Following the incident, a US administration official said the US has "relayed our regret through the Russian Federation" over the deaths of the Syrian government forces fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Iran has managed to seize "thousands" of valuable US military documents when its navy intercepted and detained a group of US sailors in an embarrassing trespassing incident in January, the Revolutionary Guard commander said.

The humiliating January 12 incident took place when Iranian navy intercepted two American ships off Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. The US vessels, that according to the Pentagon were on their way from Kuwait to the US naval base in Bahrain, experienced mechanical problems and drifted into Iranian waters where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) detained everyone onboard.

Footage of nine men and one woman in Iranian custody made world headlines, forcing US Secretary of State John Kerry to use his diplomatic channels to secure the release of US servicemen just hours later. The incident, however, increased the confrontation level between the two navies in the region.

On Sunday, adding fuel to the fire, Commander of the IRGC, Second Naval Zone General Ali Razmjou told reporters that "thousands" of valuable documents were seized from the US sailors at the time of their brief detention.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations claims that Russia is responsible for the horrors that have descended upon Syria, but remained silent about the 1.5 million civilians whose water was shut off by US-backed rebels.

The United States Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power blamed Russia for the surge in violence in Syria after the ceasefire agreement collapsed last week following a US-led airstrike in Deir Ez-Zor that killed 62 Syrian Army soldiers and left scores injured causing fighting to intensify to a breaking point.

The remarks made by U.S. diplomats at United Nations Security Council meetings undermine the significance of this United Nations body, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 television news channel.

"It is always easy to stage a show at the Security Council. But this is a structure, which deals with extremely important issues and makes serious decisions. What the U.S. side is doing at the United Nations Security Council is simply devaluating the importance of this body," the Russian diplomat said.

Zakharova explained Washington's behavior by the fact that the United States is incapable of meeting its commitments on the Syrian peace settlement and has to switch over to undiplomatic methods in communicating with the Russian side.

According to press reports Mrs. Clinton went to see her daughter Chelsea, then to Appleseeds Kids Center, then to Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. The video below was taken when Secretary Clinton was leaving Appleseeds.

Two aspects to notice. #1) How deliberate Clinton is about the steps; this indicates yet another example of how her lower visual acuity field is tenuous. #2) How Hillary did not expect to see the reporter, Liz Kreutz, and how her entire demeanor morphs instantly.

Video embedded within tweet.

The war in Syria has reached a new level of intensity recently with a roller coaster series of events these past weeks. The SAA and their allies won a brilliant victory in Aleppo recapturing important areas that had been lost in the terrorist counter-offense at Ramouseh (See my August 2016 article Syria Libya Crimea Turkey) This meant trapping what was left of the massive terrorist force that had carried out this offensive and suffered huge losses in the process. Suddenly and unsurprisingly the American's decided to suggest a ceasefire which the Russians foolishly accepted and which would have sacrificed many of the gains the Syrians have won on the battlefield during the epic battle of Aleppo.

In exchange all they would have received were empty promises to separate the non-existent "moderate" rebels from Al Nusra. Making deals with the lame duck Obama administration is of course completely pointless at this late stage. Hillary the Queen of Chaos will soon begin her reign and the imperialist rampage she has planned will not be restrained by any empty promises Obama and Kerry make to Russia in order to save their terrorist proxies.

As top US officials admit they do not know who attacked the Aleppo relief convoy all prospects of an impartial investigation fade away.

One of the overlooked comments US General Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made at the Senate hearing on Thursday, concerned the recent attack on the relief convoy near Aleppo, which has recently been so much in the news.

Here is what he said

"I don't have the facts. There is no doubt in my mind that the Russians are responsible."

And here is what US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said, testifying at the same Senate hearing alongside General Dunford

"The Russians are responsible for this strike whether they conducted it or not."

In other words, despite the tidal wave of claims which have been flowing saying the Russians attacked the convoy, and despite the claims to that effect made by the anonymous US officials who have been prowling behind the scenes through the Western media, the US does not actually know that the Russians attacked the convoy. US General Dunford "doesn't have the facts" and US Defence Secretary Carter cannot say whether the Russians "conducted (the attack) or not"

It's an Israeli company that helps police forces gain access to data on the mobile phones of suspected criminals.

Cellebrite was in the headlines earlier this year when it was rumored to have helped the FBI to crack an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter.

Now the company has told the BBC that it can get through the defenses of just about any modern smartphone. But the firm refuses to say whether it supplies its technology to the police forces of repressive regimes.

Last week Cellebrite was showing off its technology to British customers. I was invited to a hotel in the Midlands, where police officers from across the UK had come to see equipment and software that first extracts data from suspects' phones, then analyses how they interact with others.

Eat your heart out, Al Gore. Being a carbon billionaire is so passé now that we're in the age of the $100 trillion climate swindle. So the real question is who (or at least which corporate front) will be the first carbon trillionaire? Will it be a carbon eugenics promoting Rockefeller or a global government promoting Rothschild, or a carbon divesting Saudi government, or one of the shady hedge funds that are spearheading weather derivatives and other Enron-developed financial instruments to try to cash in on the carbon fraud?

Whatever the answer, one thing is for certain: you won't see this question asked (let alone answered) in the establishment gatekeeping press. Instead you will see endless iterations of the accusation that anyone who disbelieves in the woo woo pseudoscience of climate catastrophism is funded by the very Big Oil oiligarchs who stand to benefit from the debunked climate scare.

Both mainstream press and pseudo-alternatives religiously trot out hit pieces from attack sites like Desmogblog to smear scientists and avoid actual scientific debate (which, for the record, the alarmists always lose). Conveniently left out of this chapter-and-verse reliance on Desmogblog is the fact that it is a PR front itself whose primary benefactor is a convicted money launderer. More to the point, they can't even research or accurately report on the most basic facts. I should know; when I started my ClimateGate.tv website with a free WordPress template and about $5/month of GoDaddy hosting they produced a laughable article claiming that the website was a tv station that was being funded by Big Oil.

No, there's not time at all in the mainstream press to raise even the slightest question about the hundreds of billions that are already being pumped into the carbon scam from government and institutional investors around the world or the tens of trillions that are expected to be spent in the coming decades. Instead, all of the media coverage is focused on the other side of the issue: who funds those who critique this (demonstrably incorrect) "consensus" on global warming?

A perfect case in point is the "exposé" that was published in the LA Times and InsideClimate News last year alleging that Exxon had the entire global warming puzzle solved as far back as the 1970s...and then actively worked to cover up that information. Never mind that they didn't actually withhold any of their research or findings from the public, and never mind their conclusion (namely, that the massive uncertainty surrounding climate variables meant that they had no clear picture of what is actually happening in the climate) was neither well-informed nor cause for panic; the narrative was already set.

A massive "#ExxonKnew" campaign was organized around the reports and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's claim that he would organize a posse of state AGs to investigate and prosecute Exxon for...something. Unsurprisingly, that campaign has disintegrated, not least because "investigators simply don't know what a climate model is."

Recently, the United States just renewed military aid to Israel in a decade-long, $38 billion deal - the largest of its kind in American history. It represents a significant increase in aid, roughly $3.8 billion a year - expected to be supplemented by additional assistance through US Congress - up from $3 billion per year previously.

The Atlantic in an article titled, Why Does the United States Give So Much Money to Israel?, attempted to explain the reasoning behind the otherwise unreasonable and unprecedented assistance by claiming:

Defenders of the deal would say it's necessary. Dalton described the uptick in spending as a natural extension of the long-standing relationship between the United States and Israel, "as well as close ties between those countries and their peoples." She described the "fraught neighborhood" surrounding Israel: war-torn Syria to the northeast, Hezbollah-influenced Lebanon to the north, and an Islamist insurgency in Egypt's Sinai to the south, all of which help explain the historically high promise of $5 billion in missile funding over the next 10 years.

However, experienced geopolitical analysts will point out that the United States does not have "friends," "allies," or "relationships" - only interests and those who serve them. And while The Atlantic attempts to explain the deal as a means of maintaining a "relationship," it and other publications admit that there are "strings attached." If examined carefully, these strings reveals just what interests this supposed "relationship" serves.