Washington, D.C. — On Friday, the State Department announced it is withholding 22 emails from Hillary Clinton's private email dump because they contain information marked "top secret."

News of this scandal quickly spread as bipartisan calls for her indictment came out of every political corner. In spite of this confirmation of a crime from the White House, Clinton's campaign immediately objected, putting out a statement demanding that the emails be released.

When you know that the emails won't be released, a demand for them to be released comes particularly easy.

While it certainly would be an amazing spectacle to see such a high-level political war criminal face justice, the likelihood of such a scenario is all but non-existent — and the White House has no problem admitting it.

Human traffickers are taking advantage of Europe's refugee crisis to find sex and labor slaves, particularly children, Europol says. The EU police's chief of staff told the Observer that some 10,000 minors have gone missing since crossing into the EU.

Thousands of underage refugees have reportedly disappeared since registering with authorities, Europol's chief of staff, Brian Donald, told The Observer.

At least 5,000 children have gone missing in Italy alone, Donald said, adding that another 1,000 have vanished in Sweden. Donald stressed that an EU-wide "criminal infrastructure" could be specially targeting refugee children.

"It's not unreasonable to say that we're looking at 10,000-plus children. Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don't know where they are, what they're doing or whom they are with."

Moreover, there is already evidence of sexual exploitation, especially in Germany and Hungary. "An entire [criminal] infrastructure has developed over the past 18 months around exploiting the migrant flow. There are prisons in Germany and Hungary where the vast majority of people arrested and placed there are in relation to criminal activity surrounding the migrant crisis," said Donald.

Thickening the plot, Police have discovered that the illegal gangs helping refugees come to the EU are the same gangs involved with human-trafficking. "The ones who have been active in human smuggling are now appearing in our files in relation to migrant smuggling," said Donald.

Do you ever feel like you're the only one in your area or family that seems to understand what is really going on in the world? As a result, do you feel depressed isolated, fearful? It's natural to feel this way when we begin to see and understand the real and often shocking truth about how the world operates. But it can also be struggle. What you once thought was your purpose in life can fall away, leaving you wondering where to turn next and what, if anything, you can do to stop the madness on our planet.

This week on Behind the Headlines we'll be sharing our thoughts about facing the horrors of life on planet earth and where we can still find inspiration, purpose and willpower, and how diet and lifestyle are directly involved in achieving those goals. In this task, we'll be joined by hosts of the Health and Wellness show, Doug DiPasquale and Tiff Miller.

We hope you'll join us on Sunday January 31st 2016 from 12-2pm EST, 6-8pm CET for what may be one of the last Sott Radio Network shows to be hosted by Blogtalkradio, because we're ditching these losers and striking out on our own.

Running Time: 01:53:00

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave a remarkable press conference that was entirely ignored by western media: For Russia, there will be no more 'business as usual' with the European Union or the United States. A new stage of history is dawning which can develop only on the basis of equal rights and all other principles of international law.

On Tuesday, 26 January Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held his annual press conference before an audience of about 150 journalists, including the BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg and many other well-known representatives of mainstream Western media. The purpose of this traditional event is to review issues faced by his Ministry in the past year and to give his appraisal of results achieved.

The Minister's opening remarks were concise, lasting perhaps 15 minutes, and the remaining two hours were turned over to the floor for questions. As the microphone was passed to journalists from many of the different countries represented in the room, the discussion covered a great variety of subjects. By way of example, I would name here the negotiations over re-convening the Syrian peace talks in Geneva, David Cameron's comments on the findings of a UK public inquest into the Litvinenko murder, the possibilities for reestablishing diplomatic relations with Georgia, the likelihood of a new 're-set' with the United States, and prospects for resolving conflicting claims over the Southern Kurile islands so as to conclude a peace treaty with Japan.

To the best of my knowledge, not a single report of the event has yet appeared on major online American, French, British, German newspaper portals or television channels. This was not for lack of substance or newsworthy sound bites, including the headline 'no business as usual' remark. As the sharp-tongued Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented not long ago with respect to a similar news blackout that followed another major Russian press briefing: what are all these accredited Western reporters doing in Moscow if nothing gets published abroad? Do they have some other occupation?

In keeping with custom, the Ministry posted the entire 3 hour video recording on Youtube. It also posted transcripts in Russian and English on the www.mid.ru site. The Russian version takes up 26 tightly spaced printed pages. This is what I have used, since I prefer to go to the source and do my own translations when I have the option. The English version probably takes 40 pages, given the normal expansion from Russian to English in the translation process.

Two bomb blasts have struck the outskirts of Syria's capital, Damascus. At least 45 people were killed in twin blasts in the mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood, Syria's Interior Ministry reported. The Islamic State terrorist group has taken responsibility for the attacks.

According to the ministry, "more than 45 people were killed and dozens were injured." Police say that the death toll is set to rise because "some of those injured are in a critical condition."

According to the television station of Lebanon's militant Shiite Hezbollah group, the attacks took place in the Sayeda Zeinab district, where Syria's major Shiite shrine is located.

Nine Americans have been detained on terrorism charges in Saudi Arabia over the past week, according to the English-language daily Saudi Gazette. The American citizens were arrested along with 24 other suspects, including 14 Saudis, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, a United Arab Emirates citizen, a Palestinian and a citizen of Kazakhstan, the newspaper reported on Sunday citing an unnamed source.

According to the paper, four Americans were detained on Monday and another five were arrested in the following days. The US embassy refused to immediately respond to a request for comment.

The report comes as five people were killed on Friday in a suicide bomb attack and shooting at a mosque in the region of al-Ahsa, in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, which has a Shia-majority population. At least ten people were wounded in the attacks, which targeted the Imam Reza Mosque in the town of Mahasen in al-Ahsa. Also in late October, the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Najran city. The attack killed at least one person and injured 16 others.

Some 532 Daesh terrorist suspects, who are charged with planning a series of terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, are currently under investigation prior to their trial at Criminal Court in Riyadh. Most of the arrested terrorist suspects are Saudis, but they also include Egyptians, Yemenis, Jordanians, Algerians, Chadians, Nigerians and others from unidentified nationalities.

ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

The US Department of Defense "can confirm" that a Russian Su-34 strike fighter violated Turkish airspace on Friday, the Pentagon's spokesman said in a statement. Yet Washington has called on both Moscow and Ankara to "take measures to prevent escalation."

"We are aware of reports and can confirm that yesterday another Russian combat aircraft violated Turkish — and NATO - airspace," Pentagon spokesman Mark Wright told RIA Novosti in a written statement Saturday.


"We call on Russia to respect Turkish airspace and cease activities that risk further heightening instability in the region," Wright's statement goes on.

Twin bomb explosions have rocked a suburban area of the Syrian capital, Damascus, leaving 45 people dead and 110 injured, the interior ministry says.

An explosive-laden vehicle went off on Sunday on a street in an area near the holy shrine of Hazrat Zeinab, the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). Later, a bomber set off his explosive belt in the same neighborhood.

According to later reports, Daesh Takfiri terrorist group has assumed responsibility for the twin blasts.

The foreign-sponsored militancy in Syria, which started in March 2011, has so far claimed the lives of over 260,000 people and displaced nearly half of the Arab country's population within or out of its borders. Syrian army soldiers, backed by fighters from allied popular defense groups, have recently liberated several areas from the grips of Daesh and other terrorist groups operating in the Arab country. The recent advances of the Syrian forces against Daesh and other terrorist groups have been expedited by the air cover provided by Russia, which began on September 30, 2015, at the request of the Damascus government.

Let's start with the IMF "reform" which will be in full effect in a few weeks. Even this mini "reform" had been repeatedly vetoed by the Empire of Chaos. Washington still holds the largest quota and voting shares in the IMF, ahead of Japan. But now China is in the 3rd place and BRICS members Brazil, Russia and India are in the top ten.

This does not spell out radical change though. The US government still refuses to implement a full reform that will end up reducing the IMF's global power. China, meanwhile, advances with facts on the ground such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the BRICS with their New Development Bank (NDB), a serious attempt at breaking the stranglehold of a fraudulent - and hyper exploitative - monetary and financial system.

Japan says it has deployed two Patriot missile interceptors in Tokyo to counter North Korea's activity. The deployment comes amid reports that Pyongyang is preparing for a space rocket launch.

Two ground-to-air Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) launchers were installed near the Defense Ministry's headquarters on Saturday morning, according to the Japan News website. The Ministry said they had been set up as a safeguard in case it became necessary to shoot down a North Korean missile or any debris that might fall from one onto Japanese territory.

The ground-to-air units are to be placed mainly in the Okinawa Prefecture and Tokyo metropolitan area, as there are fears that these are the two locations North Korean missiles might hit.