Turkey has intervened in Syria, as expected, under the guise of fighting ISIL. Turkey's desire to have a larger buffer zone has been known for some time, but it has little to do with ISIL. Turkey wants to protect itself from its own Kurdish population, and from being obliged to treat those Kurds with basic dignity. It has now been maneuvered into a position where the best way it can achieve this is by helping create a new Kurdish state, as the US has long desired, on terms as favorable to both Turkey and the US as possible.

The timing of this intervention is highly suspect. It is related to the US elections and gives a boost to the US, the Obama administration and Obama's preferred successor, Hillary Clinton. But it also gives the Turkish military the green light to do what they have long been waiting with bated breath to do.

The US strategy is to let the Turks occupy territory in Syria which would otherwise have fallen to the US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which have until now been the spear point in securing the Turkish-Syrian border areas still under the control of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). This presents Turkey as the conqueror of the Kurdish terrorists who threaten it.

It also means that a "legal" Kurdish state can be established within territory occupied by "legal" powers, rather than a rogue state set up by terrorists. This latter was the first stage in the original plan, but ISIL having failed to deliver this, we have moved on to Stage Two - the takeover by legal forces, which had always been the endgame.

One of the country's most renowned physicians joined the growing chorus of prominent health professionals who are sounding an alarm about Hillary Clinton's physical fitness to be commander-in-chief.

Hillary Clinton took to the late-night circuit with Jimmy Kimmel to downplay the growing concern among the American people that she may be suffering severe side-effects traced to her concussion in December 2012 or potentially even suffering from a separate secret illness.

Of course, the focus on physical energy may have began as little more than a by-product of her opponents braggadocios claims of physical well-being having already labeled his primary opponent Jeb "low energy" Bush with a similar attack, but many are wondering if there may be some truth behind it.

Syria's permanent Representative at the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari has stressed that "it is impossible to defeat Daesh in Syria without first defeating it in Turkey," asking how Turkey can say that it is fighting Daesh in Jarablus if Turkey itself allowed the establishment of Daesh and helped in the development of this terror organization's abilities.

Interviewed by the Russian Sputnik news agency on Wednesday, al-Jaafari clarified that the Turkish regime has helped provide "Deash" with thousands of Toyota cars and other branded cars with built-in weapons and with funds from the Gulf states to purchase weapons from Ukraine, Croatia, Bulgaria and other countries.

Under the air cover of the US-led coalition's air force, the Turkish regime's tanks and armored vehicles Wednesday morning crossed the Turkish-Syrian borders into the Syrian city of Jarablus, allegedly to fight "Deash", in a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian state.

Al-Jaafari affirmed that those who actually want to help Syria fight terrorism must coordinate their efforts with Damascus and form a real coalition to help fight the terrorists.

"There is no doubt that there is Russian-Iranian pressure on Ankara to change its policy toward Syria. Turkey says one thing and does another. We hear good speeches every day but no real action can be seen. If there were any new actions consistent with their statements, they would not have started the operation in Jarablus," al-Jaafri pointed out, according to the Russian agency.

He further said that it is wrong for anyone who pleases to fight terrorism to send in their planes into Syria and say, "I will support this but will not support this and that too without any consent of the Syrian government. We live in the 21st century, not in the woods. People have forgotten that there is international law."

Journalist Adam Davidson who writes New York Magazine and hosts a show on NPR says the Clinton Foundation is "all about buying access" describing it as "gross."

Appearing on this week's "Slate Political Gabfest" podcast, journalist Adam Davidson who previously served as a moderator for the Clinton Global Initiative, the centerpiece of the Clinton Foundation, blasted the former Secretary of State and former US President for shamelessly using charity as a cover for a complex pay-to-play scheme.

"It seems, to me, that it is all about buying access. It is incredibly expensive just to go to the thing, it's $100,000-something," said Davidson before digging into the nuts and bolts of the pay-to-play scheme.

Iran has detained an Iranian-Canadian member of its nuclear negotiation team on suspicion of 'infiltration,' the state's official news agency, IRNA, has reported.

Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, a member of the Ontario Institute of Chartered Accountants in Canada, was identified as the suspect by hard-line news outlets Wednesday.

'The report is correct,' judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi told IRNA Sunday. 'He was released based on bail. Yet, his charge is not proved.'

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri on Thursday called on Iraq's Sunnis to prepare for a "long guerrilla" war as Islamic State militants lost more land near their de facto capital Mosul.

Islamic State (IS) has lost this year about a half of the territory it conquered in 2014 and 2015 in Iraq in battles against government and Kurdish forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition as well as Shi'ite militias supported by Iran.

The ultra-hardline group is also retreating in neighboring Syria against an array of U.S.-backed Syrian and Kurdish forces and the government army backed by Iran and Russia.

Russia, Iran and Turkey have increasingly improved their political and military cooperation in a bid to tackle Daesh and resolve the Syrian crisis. The China Youth Daily singled out three reasons behind this process. While Moscow and Tehran have long fostered working relations, bilateral ties between Moscow and Ankara were damaged when Turkey, a NATO member and a key Washington ally in the region, downed a Russian bomber in northern Syria. "Disagreement with NATO on ways to fight Daesh in Syria and the botched coup prompted Ankara to turn to Russia. According to available information, Recep Tayyip Erdogan managed to prevent the military coup from succeeding because Moscow shared intelligence data with him," the newspaper noted.

It is nearly impossible to believe that NATO was not aware of an unusual military mobilization on the eve of the coup, the media outlet said, adding that the bloc apparently did not share this information with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Russia used the opportunity and the Turkish leader understood who his friends and enemies are.

Meanwhile, last week, Tehran allowed Moscow to use its Hamadan airfield to refuel bombers that were tasked with bombing militant targets in Syria, primarily Aleppo, an unprecedented development in Iran's modern history. The China Youth Daily offered three reasons that could explain improving counterterrorism cooperation between the three nations.

The Saudi army is preparing, arming and equipping over 5,000 Salafi and Al-Qaeda terrorists in the Southern part of Yemen for war against the Yemeni army and popular forces in the kingdom's Najran province, media reports disclosed on Sunday.

"Saudi Arabia has resorted to making direct use of thousands of terrorists to confront the Yemeni forces following its heavy defeats in Najran and Assir provinces," the Arabic-language media quoted unnamed Yemeni military sources as saying on Sunday.

Since the Saudi invasion of Yemen nearly one and a half years ago, there have been many reports about coordination and cooperation between the Saudi troops and al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to attack the popular forces in different parts of the impoverished country.

As tensions in the South China Sea region continue to rise, both the US and China appear ready and willing to engage in a contest of electronic warfare capabilities.

During the last few years, China has apparently constructed a considerable number of radar installations on the South China Seas islands. These facilities, which could potentially be employed for a variety of purposes, drastically increase China's real-time awareness and intelligence capabilities over a large portion of the region.

Furthermore, while radar installations may appear less threatening than, for example, surface-to-air missile systems or airbases, they in fact give China a significant edge over other powers that operate in the South China Sea, according to an article posted on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's blog website The Strategist.

Over the past two years, the Caucasus Emirate (IK) proclaimed in late 2007 by then Chechen insurgency commander Doku Umarov has lost much of its manpower. In addition to the 410 militants reported killed in 2014-15, many sector commanders and rank-and-file fighters alike are said to have pledged loyalty to the rival extremist group Islamic State (IS), and hundreds of them have left Russia for Syria.

A video clip uploaded in June 2015 claimed that all IK fighters in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Daghestan, and Kabardino-Balkaria had pledged allegiance to IS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But at least in the case of Kabardino-Balkaria, that proved not to be the case. In that republic, Zalim Shebzukhov, who had apparently succeeded Astemir Berkhamov as commander of the Kabardino-Balkar-Karachai IK wing in 2014 and was formally identified as such in a video clip early in 2015, remained loyal to the IK cause, while Robert Zankishiyev, the leader of a rival group of fighters, formally pledged allegiance to IS in a video clip uploaded in August 2015. Zankishiyev was killed in a shoot-out in Nalchik in November.