Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan is to visit Russia to discuss ways to boost defense and military cooperation between the two countries. Dehqan will travel to Moscow on Monday at the official invitation of Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and will hold talks with senior political and defense officials.The two sides are scheduled to discuss the latest mutual, regional and international developments. Enhanced defense, military and technical cooperation between Tehran and Moscow will be among main objectives of the Iranian minister's visit.

Dehqan's trip to Moscow comes in response to a previous visit to the Islamic Republic by his Russian counterpart. During Shoigu's visit to Tehran in January 2015, the Iranian and Russian defense ministers signed an agreement to improve cooperation in defense and military arenas. The deal focused on the need for strengthening and promoting the level of bilateral military and defense cooperation with regard to the common interests of Tehran and Moscow.

Iran and Russia signed an agreement on the delivery of the S-300 missile system to Tehran, which was banned by Moscow back in 2010 under the pretext that the deal was covered by the fourth round of the UN Security Council sanctions, which barred high-tech weapons sales to the Islamic Republic.

In April 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree paving the way for the long-overdue delivery of the missile defense system to Iran after Iran and the P5+1 group of countries - the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia plus Germany - reached a mutual understanding on Tehran's nuclear program in the Swiss city of Lausanne.

On February 10, the Iranian defense chief said the country will take delivery of the first batch of Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system in the first quarter of 2016. Dehqan added that the Islamic Republic will receive the second batch by the first half of 2017.

Europa, in classical Greek mythology, was this Phoenician princess babe that drove lusty Zeus absolutely bonkers.

A trickster par excellence, Zeus turned into a white bull, lured Europa into riding him, and before she could escape, dove into the Aegean Sea and carried her off to Crete. The product of their inevitable lovemaking was King Minos. So keep in mind that Europa is the Minotaur's step-grandmother (more on the Minotaur in a minute.)

Prolific lover that he was, Zeus in the end always came back to his wife, Hera. But this time, not before bestowing selected gifts upon Europa. One of these gifts was Laelaps, a hound that never missed his prey. Then, one day, fate ruled that Laelaps should go after the Teumessian fox - which according to divine design should never be caught.

Imagine Zeus's predicament. After racking his divine brain, Zeus finally found an easy way out; he turned them both into stone and cast them into the night sky.

We can always draw on the psychedelic bacchanalia of classical Greek mythology to find graphic illustrations to the turmoil of our times. Imagine, for instance, Europa's elite - Mario Draghi and co. - racking their brains in Laelaps meets Teumessian mode trying to solve the eurozone riddle. And imagine as well a new Minotaur eating modern Europa's newborn sons and daughters.

Washington and Paris have called on Turkey to cease its massive artillery bombardment against Kurdish targets near the city of Azaz in northwest Syria, including an air base recently retaken from Islamist rebels, and to de-escalate tensions on all sides.

"We are concerned about the situation north of Aleppo and are working to deescalate tensions on all sides," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Saturday.

"We have also seen reports of artillery fire from the Turkish side of the border and urged Turkey to cease such fire," he said.

France also joined the US calls, with the country's Foreign Ministry urging Turkey to halt the bombardment of Kurdish areas in Syria.

"France is worried about the deteriorating situation in the region of Aleppo and the north of Syria. We call for the cessation of all bombardments, those of the regime and its allies on the entire territory and those of Turkey in the Kurdish zones," Paris said in a statement.

The priority should be the fight against Islamic State and the implementation of agreements reached by the International Syria Support Group (Russia, US and UN) in Munich earlier this week, it added.

Senior Iraqi security sources lashed out at the US and its regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, and said that Washington is the main cause of ISIL's survival in his country.

"We have compelling evidence that a US helicopter landed in Albu Arim palms of Fallujah city to take out the ISIL leaders who were in contact with the Americans," a senior Iraqi security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told FNA on Saturday.

He noted that other US aircraft were flying over the region to protect the airplane which was boarding the ISIL leaders, adding, "The US took out the ISIL leaders in order to rescue them from possible attacks by the Iraqi Army and security forces."

A Reuters article quoted Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as "raising the specter of a world war" in an interview to a German newspaper. The problem is - he didn't say any such words. The leading world news agency reported on an interview that Medvedev gave Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper on the eve of talks on Syria in Munich.

"All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table, instead of unleashing a new world war," the agency quoted the head of the Russian government as saying.

The report referred to a German translation of his words, which is incorrect and implies that Russia is warning that a full-scale war between leading world powers may be ignited from the Syrian conflict. The quote comes from the portion of the interview in which Medvedev argued against starting a foreign ground intervention against Syria, saying it would only prolong the armed conflict for years or decades to come.

The United States, Russia and other powers agreed to a "cessation of hostilities" in Syria's civil war, to take place within the next week, and immediate humanitarian access to besieged areas, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced here early Friday.

"It was unanimous," Kerry said of a communique issued after hours of meetings among participants in a group of nations that have supported and armed one side or the other in the four-year war. "Everybody today agreed," he said. But the proof of commitment will come only with implementation. "What we have here are words on paper," Kerry said. "What we need to see in the next few days are actions on the ground."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the projected date for ending at least some of his country's airstrikes in Syria is a week from Friday, but he emphasized that "terrorist" groups would continue to be targeted, including the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that is involved in the fight against President Bashar al-Assad. The group in some instances fights alongside rebel forces supported by the United States and its allies.

The Damascus government says Turkish forces have entered war-torn northern Syria to help foreign-backed militants fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry in a protest letter to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) said on Sunday that "around 100 gunmen some of whom are believed to be Turkish forces and Turkish mercenaries" entered Syria through A'zaz area which is located north of Aleppo near the Turkish border.

It also noted that the Turkish forces were accompanied by a dozen pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns.

"The operation of supplying ammunition and weapons is continuing via the Bab al-Salama crossing to the Syrian area of Azaz," the ministry said.

Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates hardened their positions on Sunday on blocking a move by President Barack Obama to fill the seat left by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, a lifetime appointment that would help decide some of the most divisive issues facing Americans.

The next justice could tilt the balance of the nation's highest court, which was left with four conservatives and four liberals. The vacancy quickly became an issue in the 2016 presidential race.

"We ought to make the 2016 election a referendum on the Supreme Court," U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Ukraine's interior minister said he could drop a media bombshell that would force foreign sponsors to stop all support for Kiev. The claim comes as the cabinet hangs in peril over the resignation of a reformist economy minister, who quit citing covert corruption.

Aivaras Abromavicius announced his resignation as economy minister last week, saying he doesn't want to be part of the plundering of Ukraine committed by corrupt officials. The move sparked a political crisis in Ukraine and resulted in the International Monetary Fund warning that it may suspend the multibillion dollar credit line to Kiev, unless it starts a genuine crackdown on corruption.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has information that could hurt Ukraine's standing with its foreign sponsors much more than Abromavicius resignation did, he said in an interview with Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper published Friday.

"Do you doubt I could drop a media bombshell that would have an effect several times bigger than Abromavicius caused? But I don't want to take steps, which would only result in IMF Managing Director waving her hands sadly, take away the support of the country's foreign partners. Some things must be settled out of the public eye," the minister said.

Presstitute Media, such as the UK Telegraph, spend a lot of energy debunking exposes of government conspiracies. For example, the thousands of highrise architects, structural engineers, physicists, nano-chemists, demolition experts, first responders, military and civilian pilots, and former government officials who have provided vast evidence that the official story of 9/11 is a made-up fairy tale at odds with all evidence and the laws of physics are dismissed by presstitutes as "conspiracy theorists."

Similarly, those, such as James W. Douglass, who have proven beyond all doubt that President John F. Kennedy was not assassinated by Oswald but by his own paranoid anti-communist military-security complex, are dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

The 9/11 Commission Report and the Warren Commission Report were cover-ups. VP Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives he sponsored needed a "new Pearl Harbor" in order to begin their military assaults on the Middle Eastern countries that had independent foreign policies instead of being US/Israeli vassals. 9/11 was their orchestrated "new Pearl Harbor," and this fact had to be covered up when 9/11 families persisted in their demands for an investigation and could not be bought off for large sums of money.

Similarly, the Warren Commission had no choice but to cover up that a popular American president, John F. Kennedy, had been murdered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the Secret Service, because he was believed by paranoid anti-communists to be "soft on communism" and thereby a threat to the security of the United States. The cold war was on, and the Warren Commission could not hold those responsible accountable without destroying the public's confidence in the American military and security services.

Nevertheless everyone aware of the forged case against Oswald knew what had happened. One of these people was Attorney General Robert Kennedy, JFK's brother.

Bobby Kennedy understood the situation. He knew that as a member of a cover-up administration he could do nothing about it. However, he knew that if he won the presidency, he could hold accountable those security elements responsible. His brother had told him that after his reelection he was going to "break the CIA into a thousand pieces." When the Vietnam war destroyed President Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy emerged as the next president of the US.