The global provider of interbank money transfer services, SWIFT, has confirmed more hack attacks on its member banks. The attacks occurred after SWIFT updated security procedures following February's breach at the Bangladesh central bank.

In a private letter to customers, SWIFT said there had been new cyber-theft attempts since June, some of them successful.

"Customers' environments have been compromised, and subsequent attempts (were) made to send fraudulent payment instructions," Reuters quoted a copy of SWIFT's letter. "The threat is persistent, adaptive and sophisticated - and it is here to stay."

SWIFT said some banks attacked had lost money. It didn't say how much money was taken or how many of the attempted hacks succeeded. The company did not identify specific banks, but said they all shared one thing in common - weaknesses in local security that attackers used to compromise local networks and send fraudulent messages requesting money transfers.

In June, SWIFT warned banks of a number of cyber-attacks on its system and asked them to update their software. It released a security update for the software 11,000 financial institutions use to access its network.

It was the first time the global network had acknowledged there were cyber-attacks on its system, as well as the hacking of the central bank of Bangladesh. In that attack, cyber-thieves stole $81 million from the bank's account at the US Federal Reserve.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian airstrikes killed around 40 Daesh jihadists in the Syrian province of Aleppo.

Russian airstrikes killed around 40 Daesh jihadist group in the Syrian province of Aleppo, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday. "On August 30, 2016, a mass gathering of Daesh fighters numbering up to 40 have been killed as a result of the Russian Su-34 bomber's strike in the Maaratat-Umm Khaush area of Aleppo province," the ministry said.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that a second-in-command of the Daesh jihadist group has been killed in an airstrike in the Syrian province of Aleppo.

"Among the killed terrorists confirmed through multiple intelligence channels was Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, better known as 'official media spokesman' of the Islamic State international terrorist group," the ministry said in a statement.

Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups.

Aleppo has been under siege by militant groups, including Jaish al-Islam, Ahrar ash-Sham and Jabhat Fatah al Sham, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, classified as terrorist organization in Russia. The city has seen intense fighting over the past few months, with the Syrian army and local militia forces managing to encircle large groups of militants in the eastern districts of the city.

The Financial Times editorial page carries a logo that proclaims: "Without fear and without favour". Indeed the editors have shown no fear when it comes to. . . fabricating lies, promoting imperial wars decimating countries and impoverishing millions, whether in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and now Venezuela. The fearless "Lies of Our Times" have been at the forefront forging pretexts for inciting imperial armies to crush independent governments.

Despite its pretentious scribblers and prestigious claims, the FT is seen by the Anglo-American financial class as a belligerent purveyor of militarist policies designed for the most retrograde sectors of the ruling elite.

What is most striking about the FT fearless fabrications on behalf of imperial militarism is how often their political and economic prognostications have been incompetent and flat out wrong.

For the past ten years, the FT editorial pages have described China in economic crisis and heading for a fall, while in reality, the Chinese economy has grown at between eight and six percent a year.

For over a decade and a half, the FT editors claimed Russia under President Vladimir Putin presented an international existential threat to 'the West'. In fact, it was the 'Western' armies of NATO, which expanded military operations to the borders of Russia, the US, which financed a neo-fascist coup in Kiev and the US-EU which promoted an Islamist uprising in Syria designed to totally undermine Russia's influence and relations in the Middle East.

The FT's economic gurus and its leading columnists prescribed the very catastrophic deregulatory formulas which precipitated the financial crash of 2008-09, after which they played the clownish role of "Mickey the Dunce" - blaming others for the failed policies.

The fearless FT scribes are currently leading a virulent propaganda campaign to promote the violent overthrow of the democratically elected Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro.

This essay will identify the FT's latest pack of fearless lies and fabrications and then conclude by analyzing the political consequences for Venezuela and other independent regimes.

They see it as a 'historic opportunity.'

The mainstream media has been working overtime to position Putin's Russia as our newest and most pressing international threat, and now even the most absurd events in media are linked to Russian interference. The reason why media is working so hard to create the impression that Russia is actively conspiring against is because conflict with the former Soviet Union is good for business.

If you had any remaining doubts that the world is being forced into perpetual military conflict so that a morally corrupt world elite can garner huge profits, then consider recent comments by members of the military industrial complex about the benefits of escalating tensions between Russia and the West.

Former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Richard Cody, retired as four-star army general and is now Senior Vice President of L-3 Communications, the seventh largest defense contractor in America, as noted by Business Insider. In 2015, L-3 was awarded 7,622 government contracts for an obligated amount of some $5 billion putting them in a key position to influence government and take advantage of any escalation of global military conflict.

Hardly a day goes by without some "news" about the Russian "threat," and in the past twenty-four hours the hate-on-Russia campaign seems to have picked up speed. After learning from Hillary Clinton that Vladimir Putin is not only responsible for the Trump campaign, but also for the "global nationalist movement" that yanked the British out of the European Union, mainstream media are telling us that Russian interlopers are supposedly invading our electoral process by hacking into voter databases. The Washington Post "reports":

"Hackers targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, and the FBI alerted Arizona officials in June that Russian hackers were behind the assault on the election system in that state.

"The bureau told Arizona officials that the threat was 'credible' and severe, ranking as 'an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10,' said Matt Roberts, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.

"As a result, Secretary of State Michele Reagan shut down the state voter registration system for almost a week."

So the Russkies are invading the American polity, launching a cybernetic assault on the very basis of our democracy? Really? Well, no, as becomes apparent when the reader gets down in the weeds and exercises his critical faculties, if such exist. Because by the time we arrive at paragraph five of this "news" story, we learn that:

"It turned out that the hackers did not succeed in compromising the state system or even any county system, but rather had managed to steal the user name and password for one Gila County elections official."

Oh, but never mind that nothing much happened and no data was altered, because:

"Nonetheless, the revelation comes amid news that the FBI is investigating suspected foreign hacks of state election computer systems, and earlier this month warned states to be on the alert for intrusions."

"Russian" hackers have now been magically transformed into "suspected foreign hacks": we aren't supposed to notice this shift in attribution because, after all, the FBI is supposedly putting its imprimatur on this conspiracy theory. Except they aren't: nowhere in the story does the FBI confirm that the Russians or any foreign actors are behind this.

New warheads will be capable of overcoming enemy air defense systems and intercepting fighters in the stratosphere at an altitude of up to 130,000 feet. According to military experts, the new weapon will not be put into operational use and will be used only as a deterrent.

Russian designers are carrying out final tests of the newest Kh-32 cruise missiles for the Tu-22M3 long-range bombers involved in the Syrian operation. The new weapon will be able to rise into the stratosphere to a height of up of 130,000 feet, with a nuclear or conventional 500-kilogram (1,102 lb) warhead and hit targets within a few yards.

Each long-range bomber can carry only two of these cruise missiles, each of which weighs about six tons.

As Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the Natsionalnaya Oborona (National Defense) magazine, told RBTH, the Kh-32 is perfect for attacking the enemy's carrier strike groups and large ships.

"However, the weapon will not be used in the operations of the domestic Aerospace Forces abroad and will serve only as a deterrent as part of the Russian Federation's military doctrine," he said.

Kazakh officials say alleged members of three militant Islamist groups have been apprehended in the western part of the country.

The Committee for National Security (KNB) said on August 31 that authorities have detained 10 suspects in the Western Kazakhstan region and 11 suspects in the northwestern region of Aqtobe.

The committee said the suspects were brought into custody after investigators found guns, explosives, and ammunition in their homes.

According to the KNB, the detained men were planning a series of terrorist attacks against civilians and law-enforcement officials across the two regions.

Last week the New York Times reported a shocking statement from the former University of California chancellor on the importance of stopping the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) on campus because it threatens to poison the next generation of American leaders against the special relationship between the United States and Israel.

Linda K. Wertheimer reported:

[I]n December, Mark G. Yudof, former president of the University of California system, helped create the Academic Engagement Network. The group has some 275 members, mostly faculty, on about 110 campuses working in opposition to the B.D.S. movement. "I don't want to see B.D.S. become stronger because, 20 years from now, these students will be judges, heads of Congress," Mr. Yudof told me. "We have to respond now to maintain the historical relationship with Israel."

Word to the wise: when you play a rigged game in a mobster-run casino, don't expect to walk away with all your winnings. But you already knew that, didn't you?

Regardless of whether he knew it or not, Apple CEO Tim Cook just learned that lesson the hard way. In 2013 the European Commission began investigating Apple's tax deals with Ireland. In 2014 it came out with its formal allegation, namely that the taxation deals worked out between the government of Ireland and Apple's Irish subsidiaries in 1991 and 2007 constituted a violation of Article 108(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (which, as we all know, relies on Aritcle 107(1)'s definition of activities "incompatible with the internal market" of the EU). This scrutiny naturally comes in response to Apple's employment of the trusty old "double Irish with a Dutch sandwich" tax strategy, among other gambits.

Clear as mud? Good. Here's the non-gobbledygook explanation: the state is a group of gangsters running a protection racket. You can play by their rules and jump through their hoops as much as you like, but when they decide you're getting too big for your britches they swoop in to take you down a peg.

A group of 60 congressmen have signed a letter seeking to delay the arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Foreign Policy reported on Monday. The US magazine said the move signals that the "frustration is growing in Congress over Saudi Arabia."

"A bipartisan group of 60 lawmakers have signed a letter seeking to delay the Obama administration's planned sale of $1.15 billion in arms and military equipment to Riyadh."

The letter, addressed to President Barack Obama, cites the growing number of civilian casualties in Yemen caused by the Saudi-led military coalition, and the Obama administration's failure to reign in its Arab ally.

"This military campaign has had a deeply troubling impact on civilians," wrote the lawmakers in a draft obtained by Foreign Policy.