It is always a bad idea to defy an order from a federal judge - especially when the judge whose order has been blown off has a history of vigilance against law enforcement and prosecutorial abuse and has thrown out convictions that resulted from abuse. Yet the nation's premier, most powerful law enforcement agency has just done so.

The Mueller Special Counsel Office's case against General Michael Flynn took a bizarre turn Friday when the FBI failed to provide Judge Emmet G. Sullivan with the original form 302 account of its interview with Flynn in the early days of the Trump administration. General Flynn's guilty plea was based on yielding to the FBI's contention that he lied to them about his (perfectly legal) conversation with Russia's Ambassador Kislyak, concealing their discussion of sanctions. At the point of his guilty plea, General Flynn had been bankrupted by legal fees, and his son was threatened with criminal prosecution.

The Justice Department's internal watchdog revealed on Thursday that special counsel Robert Mueller's office scrubbed all of the data from FBI agent Peter Strzok's iPhone, while his FBI mistress Lisa Page's phone had been scrubbed by a different department, according to a comprehensive report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released on Thursday.

After Strzok was kicked off the special counsel investigation following the discovery of anti-Trump text messages between he and Page, his Mueller's Records Officer scrubbed Strzok's iPhone after determining "it contained no substantive text messages," reports the Conservative Review's Jordan Schachtel.

The Israeli army said on Sunday that over the weekend it found a Hezbollah attack tunnel crossing from Lebanon into Israel, the fourth discovered in recent weeks.

Israeli army spokesman added that though the tunnel no longer constitutes a threat, it has been rigged with explosives.

He warned that whoever enters it from the Lebanese side is risking their life, and accused Lebanon of violating UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and the sovereignty of Israel.

The discovery of a third tunnel crossing into Israeli territory was announced on Tuesday by the Israeli army, a week after Israel launched Operation Northern Shield, aimed at destroying cross-border tunnels constructed by Hezbollah.

NATO has expressed its 'regret' that Kosovo has decided to upgrade its Security Force into an army, but the move is just the next, logical step on the road to full statehood, which western powers have encouraged.

It's got a flag. It's got its own FIFI-recognized football team. It's in negotiations to join the Eurovision Song Contest. And now Kosovo has set out plans to have its own army. This week, the parliament in Pristina voted to transform the light-armed, crisis-responsive 'Kosovo Security Force' (FSK), into a proper army, with 5,000 active soldiers and 3,000 reservists.

As you might have expected, the development has been met with an angry response from neighboring Serbia, which still regards Kosovo as its own territory and is concerned that the new army, despite Pristina's assurances it would be multi-ethnic, might be used against the Serbian minority living there.

Syria will adopt a new rule of engagement with Israel now that Russia has taken a tougher and clearer stance on the conflict between Israel and the "Axis of the Resistance". Henceforth, Damascus will be responding to any Israeli strike. If it damages a specific military target it will reply with a strike against a similar objective in Israel. Decision makers in Damascus said "Syria will not hesitate to hit an Israeli airport if Damascus airport is targeted and hit by Israel. This will be with the consent of the Russian military based in the Levant".

This Syrian political decision is based on a clear position taken by Russia in Syria following the downing of its aircraft on September 18 this year. In 2015 when the Russian military landed in Syria, it informed the parties concerned (i.e. Syria, Iran and Israel) that it had no intention to interfere in the conflict between them and Hezbollah and that it would not stand in the way of Tel Aviv's planes bombing Hezbollah military convoys on their way to Lebanon or Iranian military warehouses not allocated to the war in Syria. This was a commitment to remain an onlooker if Israel hit Iranian military objectives or Hezbollah convoys transporting arms to Hezbollah from Syria to Lebanon, within Syrian territory. It also informed Israel that it would not accept any attacks on its allies (Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and their allies) engaged in fighting ISIS, al-Qaeda and its allies.

Israel respected the will of Moscow until the beginning of 2018, when it started to attack Iranian bases and Syrian military warehouses, though it never attacked a Hezbollah military position. Israel justified its attack against the Iranian base, a military facility called T4, by claiming it had sent drones over Israel. Tel Aviv considered violation of its neighbours' sovereignty as its exclusive prerogative. Damascus and Iran have responded with at least one confirmed shooting down of an Israeli F-16. Israel started to attack Syrian warehouses, mainly where Iranian missiles were stored. Iran has replaced every single destroyed warehouse with other more sophisticated precision missiles, capable of hitting any objective in Israel.

The oil industry engaged in a secret public relations campaign to undermine U.S. fuel economy standards, according to a new investigation from the New York Times.

One of the main actors was the largest oil refiner in the country, Marathon Petroleum. Marathon, along with others, ran a "stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards," the NYT reported. The campaign argued that the U.S. no longer needs fuel economy standards because it is now such a massive producer of oil.

"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," a draft letter that was sent to members of Congress said. The Trump administration took up the talking points in its official justification for the proposed watering down of fuel economy standards.

Police have deployed water cannon during a rally against the controversial UN migration pact in Brussels. Officers were seen scuffling with protesters, who threw firecrackers before facing off with law-enforcement.

The rally was dubbed the 'March against Marrakech' in reference to the city where the pact was signed earlier in December. It was organized by the right-wing Vlaams Belang party which has long been a vocal opponent of the agreement.


While having initially kicked off peacefully, the demonstration started to heat up with some of the participants burning firecrackers and hurling bottles as they marched down the street.

The US may have used months of solitary confinement to "pressure" jailed Russian gun activist Maria Butina into pleading guilty, international law attorney and former Pennsylvania State Senator Bruce Marks told RT.

Butina likely pleaded guilty to "very technical charges" as she expected not to "serve prison time" and hoped that she would be "returned to Russia," Marks said.

The woman, living in the US on a student visa, was detained in July and accused of working for the Kremlin. Officials in Moscow deny the allegations.

As part of the plea deal, struck this week, Butina admitted to a conspiracy to act as "an agent of a foreign government" without required registration, as she was attending the National Rifle Association (NRA) events and working to establish ties with Americans.

U.S. President Donald Trump told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Washington was working on extraditing Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based leader of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday.

"In Argentina, Trump told Erdogan they were working on extraditing Gülen and other people," Çavuşoğlu said at conference in 18th Doha Forum in the Qatari capital Doha, referring to the G20 summit in Argentina from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1.

FETÖ staged the July 15, 2016 coup attempt to overthrow the democratically elected Turkish government, in which 251 people were killed and more than 2,200 people were injured. The terrorist group is also accused of using its members in the police and the judiciary to launch two other coup attempts on Dec. 17 and 25, 2013, under the guise of graft probes, in addition to sham trials launched against its adversaries using illegal or fake evidence and trumped-up charges


The U.S. remains the main hub of FETÖ, where the shadowy group operates hundreds of charter schools and affiliated companies, providing visa and employment opportunities for thousands of its followers. Gülen has lived in a self-imposed exile in a secluded compound in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania since 1999.

You do have to wonder about the political savvy of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government. The furious fallout from China over the arrest of a senior telecoms executive is going to do severe damage to Canadian national interests.

Trudeau's fawning over American demands is already rebounding very badly for Canada's economy and its international image.

The Canadian arrest - on behalf of Washington - of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, seems a blatant case of the Americans acting politically and vindictively. If the Americans are seen to be acting like bandits, then the Canadians are their flunkies.

Wanzhou was detained on December 1 by Canadian federal police as she was boarding a commercial airliner in Vancouver. She was reportedly handcuffed and led away in a humiliating manner which has shocked the Chinese government, media and public.

The business executive has since been released on a $7.4 million bail bond, pending further legal proceedings. She is effectively being kept under house arrest in Canada with electronic ankle tagging.

To add insult to injury, it is not even clear what Wanzhou is being prosecuted for. The US authorities have claimed that she is guilty of breaching American sanctions against Iran by conducting telecoms business with Tehran. It is presumed that the Canadians arrested Wanzhou at the request of the Americans. But so far a US extradition warrant has not been filed. That could take months. In the meantime, the Chinese businesswoman will be living under curfew, her freedom denied.