After six months and nearly one billion tweets on Twitter, it took a media frenzy over a small measles outbreak in California at the beginning of 2015 to draw the attention of some in the national media to finally start reporting on the significance of the CDC Whistleblower story from the summer of 2014.

Patrick Howley of The Daily Caller has reported that the Obama administration has granted whistleblower immunity to Dr. William Thompson, a senior epidemiologist at the CDC who co-authored and published research on the MMR vaccine for the CDC back in 2004. His decision to become a whistleblower and reveal data that was concealed by the CDC linking the MMR vaccine to autism among African American boys was revealed during the summer of 2014.

The Greek Foreign Ministry has confirmed receipt of a request from Washington, asking that Russia be denied use of Greek airspace for aid flights to Syria, Reuters reported.

The announcement came from the Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman, who added the US request was being considered.

On Sunday, a diplomatic source in Athens told RIA Novosti that Greece had refused to close its airspace to Russian planes carrying humanitarian aid to Syria.

There is no better way to describe the international monetary system today than through the statement made in 1971 by U.S. Treasury Secretary, John Connally. He said to his counterparts during a Rome G-10 meeting in November 1971, shortly after the Nixon administration ended the dollar's convertibility into gold and shifted the international monetary system into a global floating exchange rate regime that, "The dollar is our currency, but your problem." This remains the U.S. policy towards the international community even today. On several occasions both the past and present chairpersons of the Fed, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, have indicated it still is the U.S. policy as it concerns the dollar.

Is China saying to the world, but more particularly to the U.S., "The yuan is our currency but your problem"? China's move to weaken the Yuan against the US dollar is in fact a huge response to America's resistance to reforming the international monetary framework. It's telling American policy makers that the longer they delay acting on reforming the international monetary system, the harder and longer they are going to make it for the U.S. to climb out of their trade deficit and depreciate their currency to where they need it to be.

China has been preparing for this moment for several years by accumulating gold through its central bank but also by using banks/corporations and individuals. It has in recent years signed several international agreements to bypass the US dollar in international trade and use preferably the Yuan. It has created an alternative World Bank (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) and a gold fund to invest in gold mining for more than 60 countries. The project is being overseen by the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) and it is likely that the newly mined gold will be either traded on the SGE or be sold directly to the PBoC and other central banks. It has also bought a large amount of gold and kept the exact amount as secret as possible.

The international monetary system is in crisis and ready to collapse. It has been since at least 1971 but it seems we are very close to the end (within five years). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is working discreetly to have the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) replace the US dollar as the international standard. Since the delinking of the dollar from gold in 1971, the US dollar has been the de facto international standard. The IMF itself makes no bones about its ambition to establish the SDR as the global reserve currency.

According to reports, five Chinese warships have moved into the Bering Sea near Alaska after participating in a naval exercise with Russia. Yet the consensus of analysts is that the ships are not viewed as a threat by the United States government, even as President Barack Obama is currently travelling in northern Alaska near the Arctic Circle.

Defense Department acknowledges Chinese vessels

White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed that the Defense Department had identified a number of Chinese vessels in that region, but that military analysis had revealed that there was no form of threat, or indeed threatening activities, emanating from the naval presence.

Nonetheless, the US military continues to monitor the region, increasingly wary of ships emanating from China in the area. It has been reported that the US authorities have been tracking the movement of vessels in the region for days, as they continue to traverse international waters. Although comments emanating from Washington have been diplomatic, the defense department has also taken what is fundamentally a neutral position.

Earnest stated that the intention of the ships at this time is still unclear, and clearly there is at least some form of suspicion among the US administration. However, despite this suspicion, as long as vessels behave in accordance with international law, it seems certain that that United States will retain its diplomatic distance.

Navy Cdr. Bill Urban, a Pentagon spokesman, indicated that vessels from China have not been spotted in the Bering Sea before, but was also keen to emphasize that the United States viewed the conduct of China as acceptable at the time of writing. Urban stated that the United States respected "the freedom of all nations to operate military vessels in international waters in accordance with international law".

The command and part of aviation formations of the 6th Air Force and Air Defense Army of the Western Military District, stationed in Russia's Central Military District, have been alerted within a surprise combat readiness inspection of the district's command and control bodies and forces, the Russian Defense Ministry's press service told TASS on Monday.

"Aviation units of the Western Military District have been put on full combat alert. The flight personnel and technical engineer personnel involved in the surprise inspection activities will soon conduct redeployment to operational airfields," the ministry said.

Russia has no interest in joining the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) according to Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russian oil major Rosneft. "OPEC has lost its influence as a key market regulator, no interest for Russia to join," he said.

Unlike OPEC countries, the Russian oil industry is less state-regulated, said Sechin, adding that due to climatic peculiarities, Russia cannot quickly adjust oil production.

Francois Hollande has said France will welcome 24,000 refugees as part of an EU-wide plan that "can and will" bring the crisis under control.

Speaking at the start of a live TV press conference, the French president said his country has a duty to take in those fleeing war and persecution, and is ready to do so.

His comments came as David Cameron prepared to outline Britain's plan to tackle the refugee crisis. The Prime Minister was expected to say that the UK would take "thousands" more asylum-seekers as part of a "fundamental rethink" of its role as a place of refuge.

Mr Hollande also said that France would begin military operations over Syria as part of its response to the crisis.

He said reconnaissance missions would begin on Tuesday, with a possible goal of launching future air strikes against Isis militants in that country.

"We have proof that attacks have been planned from Syria against several countries, notably France," he told the news conference.

"My responsibility is to ensure that we are informed as much as possible on the threats to our country ... so I have asked the defence minister that from tomorrow reconnaissance flights begin over Syria that will enable us to consider air strikes against Isis."

British Prime Minister David Cameron is pressing for military strikes against Islamic State in Syria within a month, according to senior sources. The leader is also reportedly prepared to accept 15,000 refugees from the war-torn nation.

Senior officials told the Sunday Times that Cameron has ordered aides to devise a plan to tackle the migrant crisis.

That plan includes persuading Labour MPs to support airstrikes in Syria in a House of Commons vote in October.

Chancellor George Osborne seemed to indicate the government is indeed planning military action in Syria.

"We've got to defeat these criminal gangs who trade in human misery and risk people's lives and kill people," he said. "You've got to deal with the problem at source, which is this evil Assad regime and the [ISIS] terrorists."

Cameron came under pressure to order airstrikes on Saturday night, with former Defence Secretary Liam Fox saying: "Our response is inadequate. The policy of attacking ISIS in Iraq but not in Syria is patently absurd."

British "political hypocrisy" and the country's interference in Syria's affairs was condemned by Syria's foreign ministry, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported on Sunday. Damascus has sent two letters to the UN, accusing the British government of "colonialist experience" and supporting terrorist organizations in Syria.

Tory whips have reportedly told Cameron that enough Labour MPs may now be prepared to vote for military action, offsetting the 30 Conservative members who oppose it.

They believe that if Jeremy Corbyn, who is opposed to military action, wins the Labour leadership next weekend, the party's moderate may be prepared to go against their leader to make a point. Labour voted against airstrikes in Syria two years ago.

A GOP law on judicial appointments has been thrown out, and now it's the judiciary itself that hangs in the balance

What began as merely a fiscal mess in Kansas has become a full-blown judicial crisis.

On Wednesday, a district court ruled against the state, and threw out a 2014 law passed by Republicans that took the power of appointing chief judges away from the Kansas Supreme Court and handed it to local judges. But that rather simple question of judicial administration could have further-reaching consequences, thanks to a provision in a second law passed by the legislature earlier this spring that would cut off funding for the state's entire court system, if the 2014 law was struck down.

Kansas officials were so worried about the consequences of the court's decision that the state's attorney general, Derek Schmidt, successfully filed to have the ruling stayed until the courts rule on an appeal and the validity of the 2015 law.

My immediate concern ... is that the court does not appear to have decided the validity of a 'nonseverability' clause contained in a later statute, which means today's decision could effectively and immediately shut off all funding for the judicial branch of state government.

It is critical to keep the state judiciary operating.

We've previously covered Kansas's financial struggles, as a Republican experiment in conservative economic policy failed spectacularly, leaving the state deeply in the red. The fiscal crisis divided and, for a time, paralyzed the GOP-controlled legislature before lawmakers reluctantly agreed to nearly $400 million in sales taxes earlier this year.

The current dispute flows from the budget battle: Ever since the state Supreme Court in 2014 ordered the legislature to increase funding for education, Governor Sam Brownback and his allies in Topeka have sought to wrest power over appointments from the Supreme Court and make it easier to replace judges. (A majority of the justices on the high court were appointed by Brownback's Democratic predecessor, Kathleen Sebelius.)

In a recent article for independent Czech online news and opinion journal Svobodne Noviny, columnist Jaromir Petrik explained why he is fed up with the media's presentation of Russia as the world's greatest threat to peace, while the US, which has launched a series of aggressive wars across the globe over the last decade, seems to get a pass.

Petrik began his piece by recalling that "this year, in his State of the Union address, President Obama named only one country as America's enemy - Russia, mentioning ISIL as another enemy. In an earlier speech, Obama equated Russia to the Ebola virus. Why is this so? Is Russia really the aggressor, responsible for destroying the Arab world through its support for the regime of Syrian President Assad? Did Russia really attack Ukraine, as we are constantly told by media resources such as Reuters, CNN, BBC and by our own Czech Television?"

"The art of propaganda," the columnist continued, "lies in the skillful propagation of half-truths, but how could Putin have unleashed the war in Ukraine? Was it Putin who overthrew the democratically elected government of President Yanukovych, planting in its place a putschist government headed by Turchynov and Yatsenyuk? Was it Putin who ordered them to start their so-called 'anti-terrorist operation' to exterminate the populations of Donetsk and Lugansk, regions which had refused to recognize the coup, and their new rulers?"

The reality, Petrik argued, was quite the opposite, with "American 'diplomats' concentrated in Kiev threatening Yanukovych against using violence against the demonstrators," while "these same 'demonstrators'" would go on to "approve a war against the population of eastern Ukraine." All the while, "those same American 'diplomats' would accuse Russia of unleashing this war."

Emphasizing that Ukraine is part of a wider, global problem, Petrik noted that "more than enough has already been said and written about Iraq and Libya: These countries were attacked by NATO, led by the United States. Moreover, the 'democrats' led by the US ended up killing the presidents of both these countries, along with many members of their governments," which ultimately "plunged the conquered nations into chaos."

In the journalist's view, the crux of the issue is that "the US cannot accept the blame" for its global misadventures, "and therefore points the finger at Russia and Putin as the main culprit for global aggression. Washington has forced Europe to introduce senseless economic sanctions which, aside from Russia, have weakened Europe, but not so much the US itself."