A new American reconnaissance satellite has made it to orbit to begin the latest secret mission for the U.S. government.

The classified NROL-61 satellite launched into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida this morning (July 28) at 8:37 a.m. EDT (1237 GMT), riding into space atop a two-stage United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.

NROL-61 will be operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency in charge of the United States' fleet of spy satellites. NRO payloads are generally classified, and NROL-61 is no exception; no information is available about the satellite's precise activities or final orbit. (ULA's brief mission description states simply that NROL-61 will operate "in support of national defense.") You can see more launch photos from the Atlas V mission in our full image gallery here.

Ammar al Baluchi was brutally tortured in CIA custody, along with other detainees, but now it is reported that the black site where Baluchi was held has been destroyed, Alka Pradhan, defense attorney for Gitmo detainee Ammar al Baluchi, told RT.

The September 11 mass murder trial has yet to begin at Guantanamo Bay detention facility for several detainees who, in the government's opinion, are guilty enough to be charged. However, the legal proceedings are being held up by the prosecution's evidence.

The prosecution handed over about half of its evidence to the trial judge for review, but the judge swiftly sent it back, calling almost all of it 'inadequate' and asking the prosecutors to fix the errors. This represents evidence that has yet to be presented to the defense teams, which are still in the dark.

A new type of advanced surveillance satellites will soon bolster the reconnaissance capabilities of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

The mainstay of the new space surveillance system will be the new 14F156 Razdan satellites, which are expected to replace the existing 14F137 Persona craft.

Several sources in Russian industrial and military circles have told the newspaper Kommersant that the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Progress State Research and Production Rocket Space Center are already discussing the specifics of engineering Razdan satellites.

The UK's growing military budget can accommodate a new weapons system worth over $240.6 million, to be fitted on the next-generation Global Combat Ship, UK Defense Ministry said Thursday.

"Our growing defence budget means we can invest in a cutting edge weapon system for the Royal Navy's next generation Global Combat Ship at the best value for taxpayers," UK Minister for Defence Procurement Harriett Baldwin said.

Why are known terrorists at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia? Doesn't the Secret Service vet people that are in the same building as the President of the United States anymore?

What the hell is going on?

Invited as a guest to the 2016 Democratic National Convention is none other than Kadri Veseli, the Speaker of the Kosovo Assembly.

Veseli is a former Kosovar Albanian leader of the KLA and its spy organization SHIK. He's being indicted along with the current president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci for small things like organ trafficking and crimes against humanity.

"A new investigation into the shadowy spy group, known as Shik, could also prove embarrassing for western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and France's DGSE, whose support for prime minister Hashim Thaçi, the PDK and Shik dates back to the 1998-9 Kosovo war. At the time, the Americans and French backed Thaçi as the most effective Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander fighting the Serbian military, which was conducting a brutal counter-insurgency and "ethnic-cleansing campaign"...The launch of the new inquiry, which will be conducted by Kosovan and Eulex investigators, will raise questions of why it was not begun five years earlier.

Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree on Thursday officially confirming an amnesty for rebels who lay down arms.

"Armed fugitives hiding from justice shall be exempt from liability if they surrender and hand over their weapons to the competent judicial authorities or the police within three months from the date of this decree's publication," the document states.

The Center for the National Language has fined the Mayor of Riga, Nils Ushakov, for the use of the Russian language on his social media. The mayor made this public knowledge on his Facebook page, on 27 July.

He noted that he will be disputing the fine, and that the administration will continue utilizing three languages: Latvian, Russian and English. "I'd like to ask the Center for the National Language to do what they're actually good at, such as make up Latvian names for Pokemon."

In February, Ushakov made a statement that the City Council will continue to provide information via its social media in both Latvian and Russian. Earlier the same month, one of the managers of the Center of the National Language had accused the City Council of "legalizing the use of two national languages." In his view, state departments may only utilize languages outside of Latvian in extreme circumstances.

FBI Director James Comey warns that defeating Islamic State in Syria could lead to the spread of terrorist attacks in the West.

"At some point there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we've never seen before," FBI Director James Comey told an audience at a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University on Wednesday, the New York Times reported.

"Not all of the Islamic State killers are going to die on the battlefield," Comey added.

Comey predicted that the US-led military coalition would eventually succeed in defeating IS in Syria, but that "through the fingers of that crush are going to come hundreds of really dangerous people and they are going to flow primarily to Western Europe, but we may as well be right next door to Western Europe given the ease with which people travel."

Most of the world has an image of the United States as the one country of the advanced industrial world that took consequent action in the wake of the March 2007-September 2008 financial crisis. The result, we are carefully led to believe—via the politically ever-correct mainstream media like The New York Times or the CNBC financial network or Bloomberg—is that American banks and corporations today are back on their feet, healthy, robust. We are led to believe that eight years of Obama Administration economic genius have produced near-all-time low unemployment as the US leads the way among the G-7 to healthy growth. Only one thing wrong with this picture—it's a complete, fabricated lie, fabricated by Washington with the collusion of the Wall Street banks and the Federal Reserve. The reality is pretty scary for those living in ignorance. The cracks now emerging in an unprecedented level of US corporate debt are flashing red alert on a new economic crisis, a very, very ugly one.

Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman once made the stupid argument that "debt doesn't matter." Dick Cheney back during the 2002 Washington budget debates over the wisdom of making new tax cuts amid huge costs to finance the new Washington War on Terror, made the equally stupid comment, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." In the real world, where debts of private households, of governments like Greece or Portugal or Detroit City, or private corporations like Chesapeake Energy or General Motors, effect jobs, technology, entire communities or nations, debt certainly does matter.

Corporate Debt Time Bomb

Even more dangerous than the enormous rise in US National Debt since 2000, to levels today of over $19 trillion or 108% of GDP, is the alarming rise since 2007 in US debt of corporations, excluding banks. As of the second quarter of 2015 high-grade companies tracked by JPMorgan Chase paid $119 billion in interest expenses over the year, the most in debt service costs since 2000. Disturbing is that that was despite record low debt borrowing costs of 3%. US corporations took advantage of the Fed's unprecedented near-zero interest rates to borrow up to the hilt. It made sense were the economy really improving. Now with a significant recession looming in the USA, the debt is suddenly a problem. This is the true reason the Fed is unable to raise interest rates beyond the purely symbolic 0.25% last December. The US corporate debt pyramid would topple. Yet the zero interest rates are wreaking havoc for those investors or insurance companies invested in bonds for "security."

Now signs are appearing that point to very serious developing corporate debt problems. Delinquencies - late debt repayments of 30 days or more - in the US corporate sector are rising significantly in recent months. In a genuine economic recovery, business debt delinquencies fall, as all ships are floated by a rising tide of recovery. Delinquencies are costly and avoided whenever possible. An early sign of a weakening economy on the other hand, is a rise in corporate debt delinquencies. Delinquencies lead to defaults lead to corporate bankruptcy of not reversed by an improving economic environment. And the real US economic environment is anything but improving.

French lawmakers' upcoming visit to Crimea proves that anti-Russia sanctions imposed by the West are no longer efficient.

An upcoming second visit to Crimea by a delegation of French lawmakers on July 28-31 is proof that anti-Russia sanctions imposed by the West have no effect, French parliament Foreign Affairs Committee member Thierry Mariani, who will lead the delegation, told Sputnik on Thursday.

In July 2015, a group of 10 French deputies visited Crimea for the first time despite domestic and European criticism. The lawmakers said at the time that what they had seen in the region was completely different to how it was usually portrayed in Western media.

"This time around we have to choose from a lot of candidates. One half of our delegation consists of new deputies and another half — of ones that traveled to Crimea a year ago. This shows that the sanctions against Russia and sanctions promised for the parliamentarians who traveled to Crimea a year ago have absolutely no effect," Mariani said ahead of his meeting with Russian parliament speaker Sergei Naryshkin.