The 'White Widow', a British female terrorist suspect who allegedly fought alongside ISIS terrorists in Syria and was sought internationally has reportedly been shot dead in Ukraine. The news was reported by Russia's Regnum news agency.

Samantha Lewthwaite, 30, was allegedly gunned down two weeks ago. However, no independent confirmation was available.

A source at the UK's foreign office told ITV News that "we are aware of reports that Samantha Lewthwaite has been killed in Ukraine".

Lewthwaite recently fought alongside one of Kiev's most infamous squads - the Aidar battalion, which was condemned by Amnesty International for its unmatched cruelty in eastern Ukraine.

An Afghan judge tripled the jail sentences of two former heads of Kabul Bank to 15 years on Tuesday at the end of a re-opened court case into the bank's collapse in 2010, which followed allegations of fraud and triggered a financial crisis.

Afghanistan's new President Ashraf Ghani announced on Oct. 1 that he would re-open the inquiry into the theft of almost $1 billion from the bank, fulfilling a campaign promise to make fighting corruption a priority.

The case also involved Mahmoud Karzai, the brother of Ghani's predecessor president Hamid Karzai. Mahmoud Karzai, a shareholder in the bank, has so far been spared jail but the judge on Tuesday ordered that his assets be frozen, along with those of others, until all the funds stolen from the bank have been returned. They face prosecution if the funds are not repaid.

The Afghan government was forced to bail out the country's then biggest bank after a run on deposits in 2010. It was later re-launched as the state-run New Kabul Bank, but confidence in the banking sector has yet to fully recover.

Only about a third of the $935 million stolen has been recovered, according to the receivers.

The two former heads of the bank, founder Sher Khan Fernod and former Chief Executive Haji Khalil Ferozi, had been convicted in the initial inquiry of taking $810 million of the stolen money and were both sentenced to jail for five years. Their jail terms were tripled on Tuesday.

"The court sentences you both, Sher Khan Fernod and Haji Khalil Ferozi to terms of 15 years in jail for embezzlement and money laundering of the Kabul Bank money," the judge, Mehrajuddin Hamidi, said, adding that they could appeal against the verdict.

Foreign donors, whom the Afghan government relies on to pay its bills, have welcomed Ghani's decision to re-open the inquiry. The Afghan Attorney General's office had said the initial sentences were too lenient given the amount of money stolen.

The Russian President is using asymmetrical strategies to stop - and ultimately bring down - the enemies of the Russian state

There are 7.2 billion people in this world but the United States fears only one man - Vladimir Putin. That's because on virtually every front of the new Cold War, the Russian President is walloping the collective challenge of the West. Fear can make you do strange things. Forbes magazine has named Putin as the most powerful person on the planet for the second year running.

It is said about the Russians that they take a long time to saddle their horses but they ride awfully fast. After slowly nursing the collapsed Russian economy back to health, Putin is now going for broke. In Syria, Crimea and Ukraine, the West has melted away at his approach and has faced humiliating setbacks. In the field of energy, it will be Russian - not western - pipelines that will dominate the Eurasian landmass.

But instead of scorekeeping, a more instructive exercise would be to try and understand how Putin has managed to keep Russia ahead in the game.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday held a 15-minute private meeting with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, at which the main issue was the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17. Without any conclusive evidence, Abbott has repeatedly accused Russia of being responsible for the tragedy.

The brief discussion, held on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Beijing, was the first exchange between the two leaders since Abbott last month threatened to "shirtfront" Putin over MH17 at the upcoming G20 Leaders' Summit in Australia. "Shirtfront" is the term for a particularly violent tackle in Australian Rules football.

The official Australian government statement following the Abbott-Putin encounter underscores the highly provocative role being played by the Abbott government for the US in its confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Within hours of the crash, Abbott began making the unsubstantiated claim that Russia bore responsibility for the deaths of 38 Australian citizens and residents on MH17.

US policy paper reveals desire for construction of full-scale extraterritorial army to invade Syria. Such an army is being built in Iraq and Turkey and it's called "ISIS."

The corporate-financier funded and directed policy think tank, the Brookings Institution, has served as one of several prominent forums documenting and disseminating US foreign policy. It would host in part the architects of the so-called "surge" during the nearly decade-spanning US occupation of Iraq, as well as battle plans for waging a covert war against Iran now well under way.

Part of this covert war against Iran involved the arming and backing of listed terrorist groups, and in particular, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) which has killed US servicemen, American civilians, as well as countless innocent Iranians over the decades. Among those signing their name to this plan found within Brookings' "Which Path to Persia?" report, was Kenneth Pollack. Now, in efforts to overthrow the government of Syria, also a stated and integral part of undermining, isolating, and destroying Iran, Pollack has revealed another element of the plan - to create a full-scale proxy military force outside of Syria, then subsequently invading and occupying Syria with it.

Introduction:

Why is the Ukrainian Government, which the U.S. supports, bombing the pro-Russian residents who live in Ukraine's own southeast?

Why is the American Government, which aims to oust Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad, bombing his main enemy, ISIS?

This report will document that both bombings are different parts of the same Obama-initiated business-operation, in which the American aristocracy, Saudi aristocracy, and Qatari aristocracy, work together, to grab dominance over supplying energy to the world's biggest energy-market, Europe, away from Russia, which currently is by far Europe's largest energy-supplier.

Here are the actual percentage-figures on that: Russia supplies 38% of it, #2 Norway (the only European nation among the top 15) supplies 18%, and all other countries collectively supply a grand total of 44%. That's it; that's all -- in the world's largest energy-market, Russia is the lone giant. But U.S. President Obama's team are working hard to change that, to do a huge favor for the royals of Saudi Arabia and of Qatar, and yank that business for them. (Unfortunately, the residents in southeastern Ukraine are being bombed and driven out to become refugees in Russia, as an essential part of this operation to choke off Russia's gas-supply into Europe and transfer that business mainly to those royals. This objective against Russia and for those royals is considered to be far more important than its many thousands of victims are, and no one in the Obama Administration has provided any indication -- at least publicly -- that tears have been shed there for the residents in southeast Ukraine who have been mass-murdered and for the roughly million of them who have fled to refuge and safety in Russia to escape being bombed by the America's new client-state, the Ukrainian Government.)

Obama has initiated, and is leading, this international aristocratic team, consisting of the U.S. aristocracy and mainly two Sunni Moslem aristocracies -- the Saudi and the Qatari royal families -- to choke off Russia's economic lifeblood from those European energy sales, and to transfer lots of this business, via new oil and gas pipeline contracts and new international trade-deals, over to the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Those royals, in turn, are assisting Obama in the overthrow of the key Russia-allied leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, who has performed an indispensable role for Russia in blocking any such massive expansion of Saudi and Qatari energy-traffic into Europe, and who has thus been a vital protector of Russia's dominance in the European energy-market.

America's aristocracy would be benefited in many ways from this changeover to Europe's increasing dependence upon those Sunni Moslem nations, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have long been allied with U.S. oil companies, and away from the Shiite Moslem nation of Iran, and from Iran's key backer, Russia.

The most important way that America's aristocrats would benefit from the deal would be the continuance, for the indefinite future, of the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency, in which energy and energy-futures are traded. The Sunni nations are committed to continued dominance of the dollar, and Wall Street depends on that continuance. It's also one of the reasons the U.S. Treasury's sales of U.S. Federal debt around the world have been as successful as they have been. This also provides essential support to the U.S. Federal Reserve, and especially to the six Wall Street banks that do virtually all of the derivatives trading.

Furthermore, Obama's effort to force the European Union to weaken their anti-global-warming standards so as to allow European imports of oil from the exceptionally carbon-gas-generating Athabasca Canada tar sands -- which are approximately 40% owned by America's Koch brothers, the rest owned by other U.S. and allied oil companies -- would likewise reduce Europe's current dependency upon Russian energy sources, at the same time as it would directly benefit U.S. energy-producers. Obama has been working hard for those oil companies to become enabled to sell such oil into Europe, turning the screws on Europe to weaken those standards.

And, finally, the extension of U.S. fracking technology into Ukraine, and perhaps ultimately even into some EU nations, where it has been strongly resisted by the residents, might likewise boost American oil firms and reduce the enormous flow of European cash into Russian Government coffers to pay for Russian gas (which doesn't even require fracking).

In other words, the wars in both Syria and Ukraine are being fought basically in order to grab the European energy market, away from Russia, somewhat in the same way (though far more violently) as Iran's share of that market was previously grabbed away by means of the U.S.-led sanctions against Iran. The current bombing campaigns in both Syria and Ukraine are directed specifically against Iran's chief ally, Russia.

First, will be discussed here the bombing-campaign against Iran's and Russia's ally Assad in Syria; then against the residents of the ethnic-Russian areas of Ukraine, where Western oil companies want to frack.

Russia has denied NATO claims that its army has crossed into eastern Ukraine in the past few days, calling them groundless, the Defense Ministry said.

"We have stopped paying attention to the groundless accusations made by NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Philip Breedlove, of the 'observed' Russian military columns allegedly invading Ukraine," said Defense Ministry official representative, General-Major Igor Konashenkov on Wednesday.


He gave a reminder of earlier and similar NATO claims, which have not been backed by any evidence.


"[We have] repeatedly stressed that there was and is no evidence supporting Brussels' regular trumpeting over the alleged presence of Russian forces in Ukraine," Konashenkov said.

In our continuing look at this artificial western construct, the Caliphate, we would like to bring as much informed opinion on the table as possible. Thierry does a marvelous job of getting to the heart of the matter.

While Pepe Escobar is roving the Eurasian plains and showing us the future, he has also talked to our featured analyst, Thierry Meyssan, on ISIS.


While Western public opinion is fed information about the constitution of a purported international coalition to fight against the "Islamic Emirate", the latter changes shape discreetly. Its principal officers are no longer Arab, but Georgian and Chinese. For Thierry Meyssan, this mutation shows that NATO ultimately intends to use the "Islamic Emirate" in Russia and in China. Therefore, both countries must act now against the jihadists before they return to sow chaos in their countries of origin.

Russia's long-range bombers will conduct regular patrol missions from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, the military said Wednesday, a show of muscle reflecting tensions with the West over Ukraine.

A statement from Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu came as NATO's chief commander accused Moscow of sending new troops and tanks into Ukraine - a claim quickly rejected by Russia.

Shoigu said the tensions with the West over Ukraine would require Russia to also beef up its forces in the Crimea, the Black Sea Peninsula that Russia annexed in March.

He said Russian long-range bombers will conduct flights along Russian borders and over the Arctic Ocean. He added that "in the current situation we have to maintain military presence in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific, as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico."

He said that the increasing pace and duration of flights would require stronger maintenance efforts and relevant directives have been issued to industries.

Russian nuclear-capable strategic bombers were making regular patrols across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans during Cold War times, but the post-Soviet money crunch forced the military to cut back. The bomber patrol flights have resumed under President Vladimir Putin's tenure.

The patrols have become even more frequent in recent weeks with NATO reporting a spike in Russian military flights over the Black, Baltic and North seas as well as the Atlantic Ocean.

Some of the world's biggest banks - UBS, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, and HSBC have agreed to pay out $3.4 billion to settle an investigation into the institutions' rigging of foreign exchange rates.

The probe accused banks of tampering with currency interbank rates on the largely unregulated $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.

"The setting of a benchmark rate is not simply another opportunity for banks to earn a profit. Countless individuals and companies around the world rely on these rates to settle financial contracts, and this reliance is premised on faith in the fundamental integrity of these benchmarks," Aitan Goelman, Director of Enforcement at CFTC, said in a press release on Wednesday.

"The market only works if people have confidence that the process of setting these benchmarks is fair, not corrupted by manipulation by some of the biggest banks in the world," Goelman added.

US, UK, and Swiss regulators ordered the fines in tandem. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) slapped the six banks with $1.7 billion in fines and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) levied more than $1.4 billion in penalties.

Switzerland's UBS was given the biggest fine of $800 million, Citigroup will pay $668 million, JPMorgan must pay a $662 million penalty, Royal Bank of Scotland was fined $634 million, and HBSC $618 million.

Charges against individuals are expected.