Russia and Ukraine made progress on Friday towards resolving a row over gas supplies, but European leaders said Moscow had to do much more to prop up a fragile ceasefire and end fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The mooted deal aimed at re-opening Russian gas supplies to Ukraine ahead of the cold winter months came as something of a surprise following an initial round of talks in Milan that the Kremlin said was "full of misunderstandings and disagreements".

However, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said a subsequent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of France and German had made some headway in defusing a crisis that has revived memories of Cold War enmity.

"We have the first limited progress on the gas issue. We have agreed on the main parameters of the contract," he said, adding that all sides remain committed to a ceasefire deal struck last month to halt a pro-Russia revolt.

Saudi Arabia has unleashed an economic war against selected oil producers. The strategy masks the House of Saud's real agenda. But will it work?

Rosneft Vice President Mikhail Leontyev; "Prices can be manipulative... Saudi Arabia has begun making big discounts on oil. This is political manipulation, and Saudi Arabia is being manipulated, which could end badly."

A correction is in order; the Saudis are not being manipulated. What the House of Saud is launching is "Tomahawks of spin," insisting they're OK with oil at $90 a barrel - also at $80 - for the next two years; and even at $50 to $60 for Asian and North American clients.

The fact is Brent crude had already fallen to below $90 a barrel because China - and Asia as a whole - was already slowing down economically, although to a lesser degree compared to the West. Production, though, remained high - especially by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - even with very little Libyan and Syrian oil on the market and with Iran forced to cut exports by a million barrels a day because of the US economic war, a.k.a. sanctions.

Obama's September 24 speech at the UN is the most absurd thing I have heard in my entire life. It is absolutely amazing that the president of the United States would stand before the entire world and tell what everyone knows are blatant lies while simultaneously demonstrating Washington's double standards and belief that Washington alone, because the US is exceptional and indispensable, has the right to violate all law.

It is even more amazing that every person present did not get up and walk out of the assembly.

The diplomats of the world actually sat there and listened to blatant lies from the world's worst terrorist. They even clapped their approval.

The rest of the speech was just utter bullshit: "We stand at a crossroads," "signposts of progress," "reduced chance of war between major powers," "hundreds of millions lifted from poverty," and while ebola ravages Africa "we've learned how to cure disease and harness the power of the wind and the sun." We are now God. "We" is comprised of the "exceptional people" - Americans. No one else counts. "We" are it.

It is impossible to pick the most absurd statement in Obama's speech or the most outrageous lie. Is it this one? "Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition."

Or is it this one? "After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled. Against the will of the government in Kiev, Crimea was annexed. Russia poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands. When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days. When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border."

The entire world knows that Washington overthrew the elected Ukrainian government, that Washington refuses to release its satellite photos of the destruction of the Malaysian airliner, that Ukraine refuses to release its air traffic control instructions to the airliner, that Washington has prevented a real investigation of the airliner's destruction, that European experts on the scene have testified that both sides of the airliner's cockpit demonstrate machine gun fire, an indication that the airliner was shot down by the Ukrainian jets that were following it. Indeed, there has been no explanation why Ukrainian jets were close on the heels of an airliner directed by Ukrainian air traffic control.

The entire world knows that if Russia had territorial ambitions, when the Russian military defeated the American trained and supplied Georgian army that attacked South Ossetia, Russia would have kept Georgia and reincorporated it within Russia where it resided for centuries.

Guinea's President Alpha Conde has thanked Russian specialists for assistance in fighting Ebola, Russia's public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor announced Friday.

Guinea's president also thanked the service for the humanitarian aid and expressed hope that Russia will continue helping the country in fighting the virus.

"[Guinea's] President [Alpha] Conde expressed deep gratitude to the Russian Federation for the help it provides in fighting Ebola. According to him, the level of organization and the performance ... of Rospotrebnadzor's team in the Republic of Guinea are very high and hold out a hope that the joint effort will help to overcome the current crisis caused by the outbreak of Ebola virus," the statement on Rospotrebnadzor's official website says.


In August, Rospotrebnadzor sent a special purpose epidemiological protection team to Guinea to participate in the humanitarian mission on fighting Ebola. Currently Rospotrebnadzor's mobile laboratory is set in the country's capital.

President Putin's visit to Serbia has received a sour reception from the EU. Though official comment has been muted (it is not as if there is anything to complain about), commentary in European media clearly expresses EU annoyance.

Why should this be so? Why should European leaders be upset that a Russian leader attends a ceremony in celebration of his country's liberation of a European capital from fascism?

In fact Putin's visit strikes on European nerves with a host of issues, warranting the European reaction.

At its most basic, the reminder of Russia's central role in the defeat of fascism and the liberation of Europe from Hitler's yoke is unwelcome to the leaders of certain EU states (e.g., Poland, Romania, the Baltic States) who have spent an inordinate amount of time denying or minimizing the fact and drawing false parallels between Nazism and Communism. That a European country, such as Serbia, celebrates without qualification its liberation by the Soviet army, explodes this false narrative.

Beyond this, there are more immediate political considerations linked to the Ukrainian and Yugoslav crises.

US President Barack Obama has authorized the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to use reserve and National Guard troops in the United States' response to the Ebola spread in West Africa, the White House said.

"I hereby determine that it is necessary to augment the active Armed Forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation United Assistance, which is providing support to civilian-led humanitarian assistance and consequence management support related to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa," President Obama said in the Executive Order released late Thursday on the White House official website.

National Guard troops are comprised of the reserve military force from all US military units of every US state and territory. They are used as an additional military reserve to protect the country during times of national emergency.

The US already has hundreds of boots on the ground in West Africa, and have committed to send up to 4,000 troops to the region to build Ebola treatment centers and to provide logistics and training to local personnel.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday that 4,493 people have died from the current Ebola outbreak, and as of October 12, there have been 8,997 confirmed and probable cases of the disease in seven different countries. The WHO is also predicting that by the end of the week, there will be over 4,500 Ebola deaths and over 9,000 cases of the deadly disease.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a little-known organization under the Defense Department's purview that provides geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) to the spy community. Now it is moving from providing maps to focusing on analysis.

The NGA's mission is to provide "timely, relevant, and accurate geospatial intelligence in support of national security," its website says. "From the discovery of atrocities in Kosovo, to support for the cities hosting the Olympics, through the response to Hurricane Katrina, and our work in Haiti and Japan, NGA has provided critical GEOINT support when our nation needed it most."

With the installation of Robert Cardillo, a 31-year intelligence community veteran, as its director at the beginning of October, the NGA is poised to take a bigger role in the intelligence community. Cardillo took over from Letitia Long, the first woman to head a major intelligence agency, when she officially retired after four years at the helm of NGA and more than 36 years total in the intelligence community.

As many WUWT readers know, I have been using alexa.com for quite sometime to gauge the performance of WUWT. Reader "Pat" brought this recent strange disparity to my attention. When you see things like the Drudge report plummet and MSNBC soar, you know immediately that something isn't right:

Those who run watchdog news websites are scratching their heads and trying to make sense of the latest data released by a California company that measures website traffic.

According to data for July through September, almost every major website - from WND to the Drudge Report and Breitbart - saw its rankings drop on Alexa.com while pro-government sites mostly went up.

Source: WND

The claim seems to be true when you look at Alexa's publicly reported traffic graphs. Here's the Drudge Report according to Alexa:

(Lower numbers are better, for example, Google is #1)

President Barack Obama insisted Wednesday that the US response to the Ebola outbreak is effective and that the chances of the deadly virus taking hold in the United States are "extremely low."

Concerns about health protocols have grown since two nurses that looked after Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of the disease, contracted the virus. Duncan was infected with Ebola in Liberia, where he is from, and then took a flight to the US.

Obama told reporters after a hastily convened meeting with 20 senior White House officials, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Vice-President Joe Biden and Attorney-General Eric Holder, that he himself had close contact with health workers treating Ebola patients while visiting Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and felt safe doing so.

"I shook hands with, hugged and kissed not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory, because of the valiant work they did in treating one of the patients. They followed the protocols, they knew what they were doing, and I felt perfectly safe doing so," said the president.

Obama said it wasn't like the flu virus, which can be transmitted in the air through coughs and sneezes.

He said he was "absolutely confident" that there will not be a serious outbreak of Ebola in the US, but stressed that it will become increasingly difficult to control the epidemic if it is not dealt with at its source in West Africa.

The president held video conferences with the French, British, German and Italian leaders on Wednesday to discuss the international response to the outbreak.

In case you weren't aware, the Pentagon is set to roll out a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War. Personally, it's hard to get excited about commemorating an event that led to the death of over 58,000 American soldiers and more than a million Vietnamese, particularly since much of it was the direct result of well documented lies and deception, such as the Gulf of Tomkin incident.

What's worse, the Pentagon intends to rewrite history by whitewashing this period of civil unrest and government shame from American history. The propaganda is so blatant that it has resulted in many of the era's most well known protestors and activists to come together in order to stop it.

The New York Times reports that: