US military personnel are engaged in counterterrorism operations across 15 different countries, President Barack Obama said in a biannual statement to Congress released on Monday.

The letter outlined US military counterrorism operations across the globe in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Yemen, Djibouti, Libya, Cuba, Niger, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Jordan, and Kosovo. All nations have US combat-equipped personnel deployed for a specific counterterrorism mission.

Obama indicated that that there is no timeline for the war on terrorism, and he will direct "additional measures to protect US citizens and interests" if necessary.

"It is not possible to know at this time the precise scope or the duration of the deployments of US Armed Forces necessary to counter terrorist threats to the United States," Obama said.

Under the 2001 authorization for use of military force, the US president must update Congress every six months on the military operations against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.

Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince, who is also the country's defense minister, is heading to Washington DC on Monday, amid a scandal over the release of information providing the possible links of members of the Saudi royal family to 9/11, along with tensions over oil and the Iran deal.

Prince Mohammed, 30, who is King Salman's son and third in line for the throne, is said to be visiting Washington to engage in talks with US officials regarding "strengthening bilateral relations and discussing regional matters of mutual interest," the Saudi Press Agency said in a statement. Mohammed is the main voice behind the "Vision 2030," a plan to move the Saudi economy away from reliance on oil.

A sonar signature, which Swedish military claimed to be crucial evidence of a foreign submarine's presence near Stockholm during the 2014 hunt, came from a "Swedish object," the country's defense minister has admitted.

Peter Hultqvist would not go into details about the source of the signal, but said the military reconsidered their assessment of its nature in September 2015, he told Sveriges Radio.

The hunt for a foreign submarine, presumed to be Russian by the Swedish media, was launched off Stockholm in October 2014. The media reported that an emergency hail on a frequency used by the Russian Navy prompted the hunt. An amateur photo of the supposed boat was widely circulated. Hultqvist took up office earlier the same month.

Waking up to news of the Orlando shooting, I thought of the possibility that a Muslim shooter would be identified, in which case a Trump presidency would be nearly guaranteed.

As with 9/11, the 2015 Paris massacre and the San Bernardino shooting, Islamic terror is immediately fingered, with the purported killer already dead. What lightning fast police work, eh?

With so many corpses to sort out, the name and origin of the perpetrator are immediately available. Omar Mateen is 29-years-old, of Afghan descent and is a registered Democrat to boot.

After the Boston Marathon Bombing, the Tsarnaev brothers were meant to be killed, but Dzhokhar miraculously survived though hundreds of bullets were fired at the boat in which he was hiding. If the purpose was to uncover a terror network, why would our government try to kill such a valuable prisoner? Unarmed, injured and trapped, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wasn't going anywhere. They could have starved him out.

NATO in the future may take part in the US-led coalition's efforts to fight Daesh terrorist group in the Middle East, NATO's Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow said Monday.

Vershbow added that the alliance, at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi, has sent experts to Baghdad to evaluate possible expansion of NATO's mission to train the Iraqi military in the country.

"NATO may contribute directly to the coalition in the future, possibly by providing surveillance by NATO airborne warning and control [system] planes, the AWACS planes, to escort the coalition's air operations," Vershbow said at the opening of the International Security Forum in Geneva.

The stakes could not be higher. Not only the future of the BRICS, but the future of a new multipolar world is in the balance. And it all hinges on what happens in Brazil in the next few months.

Let's start with the Kafkaesque internal turmoil. The coup against President Dilma Rousseff remains an unrivalled media theatre/political tragicomedy gift that keeps on giving. It also doubles as a case of information war converted into a strategic tool of political control.

A succession of appalling audio leaks has revealed that key sectors of the Brazilian military as well as selected Supreme Court justices have legitimized the coup against a President that has always protected the two-year-old Car Wash corruption investigation. Even Western mainstream media was forced to admit that Dilma did not steal anything but is being impeached by a bunch of thieves. Their agenda; to stifle the Car Wash investigation, which may eventually throw many of them in jail.

The leaks also unveiled a nasty internecine carnage between Brazilian comprador elites — peripheral and mainstream. Essentially the peripherals were used as lowly paperboys in Congress for the dirty work. But now they may be about to become road kill - along the illegitimate, unpopular, interim Michel Temer "government", led by a bunch of corrupt-to-the-core PMDB politicians, the party that is heir to the sole opposition outfit tolerated during the 1960s-1980s military dictatorship.

The Polish parliament has approved a bill to amend the country's anti-terrorism laws, giving authorities more flexibility in monitoring the movements of foreign citizens without court approval, and allowing the holding of suspects without charges for up to two weeks. Under the bill, Poland's state security service would be allowed to conduct surveillance of foreign citizens for up to three months without prior court approval, Reuters reported.

Authorities would also be allowed to hold suspects for 14 days without charges but with court approval, drastically lengthening the current period of 48 hours. The legislation would also make it easier for foreigners to be deported if they were deemed a threat, and would regulate the sale of pay-as-you-go SIM cards, which are currently sold freely and anonymously. Such SIM cards, combined with "throwaway phones," are often used in crimes as they cannot be easily traced to a particular individual.

The changes are being pushed forward ahead of two major events set to take place in Poland. In July, a summit attended by the heads of NATO members, including US President Barack Obama, will take place in Warsaw. Two weeks later, the city of Krakow will host World Youth Day, a Catholic event due to be attended by Pope Francis and around two million pilgrims from across the globe. Experts say that both events pose a terror risk. "Poland does not face any immediate threats from Islamist militants, but we are no longer an anonymous country for them," a high-rank security source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The legislative changes have been backed by the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which says the move is necessary to address such threats. The parliamentary approval came as a pan-European rights body recommended on Friday that Poland introduce more checks to the surveillance powers of police under another law amended by PiS. Amnesty International, however, was quick to slam the bill for giving "seemingly unlimited powers" to Polish intelligence services.

In order to officially become law, the changes must be approved by the upper chamber of parliament, where PiS also has a majority, and be signed by the president - both of which are extremely likely scenarios.

In early February, in a post titled "A Wounded Deutsche Bank Lashes Out At Central Bankers: Stop Easing, You Are Crushing Us", we showed just how vast the feud between Europe's biggest - and ever more troubled commercial bank - and the ECB had become. As DB's Parag Thatte lamented then, "ECB rhetoric suggests additional easing measures forthcoming in March. While a fundamental tenet of these measures, in particular negative rates, has been to push investors out the risk spectrum, we remind that arguably the impact has been exactly the opposite." And while the DB analyst has been correct, and now NIRP is widely accepted as a major mistake, the ECB proceeded to not only ease even more just one month after this first DB lament, but in what may have been a direct affront to DB, launched the monetization of corporate bonds, something which as we documented earlier today has now led to the complete disconnect between bonds and underlying fundamentals.

It was also led to daily record low yields for government bonds around the globe.

Last but not least, it has pushed the stock price of Deutsche Bank to levels not seen since the financial crisis as DB suddenly finds itself unable to make money in an NIRP environment.

Which brings us to today, when overnight DB's chief economist David Folkerts-Landau released a scathing report titled "The ECB must change", one which blows DB's February lament out of the water, and in which DB accuses the ECB of putting not only its future at risk, but the future of the entire Eurozone, with its destructive policies.

As Russia deploys new frigates and submarines, the Black Sea is becoming a Russian lake. Since securing control of its Sevastopol naval base in Crimea the Russian navy has acted to strengthen Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

The first of a new series of naval frigates - the Admiral Grigorovich - joined the fleet on Thursday. Admiral Grigorovich will shortly be joined by her sister, Admiral Essen, and thereafter -probably next year - by a further sister, Admiral Makarov, These are advanced frigates equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, supersonic Oniks anti-ship missiles, a 100 mm naval gun, Shtil anti aircraft missiles (a naval variant of the well-known Buk missile system) and a Kamov KA26 helicopter.

The three Admiral Grigorovich class frigates are the first large surface warships to have joined the Russian Black Sea Fleet since the USSR's collapse. All the other major surface ships in service with the Black Sea Fleet were built before 1980, with the oldest - the guided missile destroyer Smetlivy - dating from 1969. The arrival of the Admiral Grigorovich therefore reverses a long history of decay, with the status of the Black Sea Fleet left previously uncertain by doubts over the future of the fleet's key base at Sevastopol.

The original plan was to provide the Black Sea Fleet with a force of 6 Admiral Grigorovich class frigates. That project has been at the very least delayed because of the need to find Russian built replacements for the Ukrainian built engines used by the last three members of this class, which are still under construction. Whilst an alternative Russian engine has been sourced from NPO Saturn in Rybinsk, it seems it may not be available until 2020, with the navy prioritising its use for its more advanced Admiral Gorshkov class frigates, which are intended for the Northern and Pacific Fleets. There is apparently now a suggestion that construction of the three remaining Admiral Grigorovich class frigates be discontinued, or that the frigates be completed after 2020 and then sold abroad, so that more resources can be allocated to building more of the advanced Admiral Gorshkov class frigates, some of which might eventually also be deployed to the Black Sea.

The three Admiral Grigorovich class frigates are only the most visible reinforcement of the Black Sea Fleet. Of at least equal importance is the deployment of 6 advanced Varshavyanka diesel-electric submarines to the Black Sea Fleet, which has taken place since 2014.

The economy of the state of Israel that enables it to treat the international community with such contempt, is dependent entirely upon its trade with the EU single market. And that, apart from any other consideration, is another important reason for the UK to vote to leave the European Union.

The position of the EU as Israel's primary trading partner is enabled under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, notwithstanding that Article 2 of that Agreement very clearly states:

"Relations between the parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this agreement."

It is a blatant fact that Israel - as illegal occupier of the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been in gross breach of this provision since the very inception of the Agreement and yet the EU has turned a blind eye to the continuing violations that include the illegal settlement of over a half a million Israelis on Palestinian soil in a deliberate effort to prevent the establishment of an independent state for the largest indigenous people of the region.

The reason for this intolerable state of affairs is unquestionably the influence of the lobbyists embedded within the councils and committees of the European Union at virtually every level in Brussels and elsewhere, who exert a corrupting effect upon EU political and economic policy in order to skew EU political decisions, funding and bilateral trade to the favour of the (non-member) Israeli state.

A vote to divorce the United Kingdom from the EU would clearly indicate British rejection of such artificial and dangerous 'arrangements' that have such an adverse impact upon both regional and world peace.