On Saturday, a US defence official confirmed that American troops had come under "indirect fire" by unknown forces in Syria's Deir ez-Zor province. That attack took place at a base situated near the Conoco gas field, which is home to a large portion of Syria's gas riches, and has been illegally seized by US forces and their local allies since 2017.

A US military base near the Omar oil field - Syria's largest source of crude oil - has come under attack, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported Sunday, citing local sources.

Footage of the aftermath of the attack has yet to be authenticated,

This is reportedly the fourth time facilities near the Omar field have been attacked in the past week or so. On Wednesday, the Syrian Democratic Forces - a US-backed mostly Syrian Kurdish militia involved in the illegal occupation of eastern Syria - announced they had "thwarted" a drone attack in the area. However, pro-Syrian government media reported that a drone attack carried out on Thursday caused smoke to rise from the base near the field, and that two other attacks were launched before that in the space of several days.

Biden was criticized for just two retaliatory strikes that were cited as failing to do much to deter Iranian proxies held responsible by Washington for the attacks.

"Iran-backed militias' continued assault on US personnel in Iraq cannot be tolerated. President Biden must put forward a real strategy for deterring and ending these attacks, rather than continuing his bare-minimum, tit-for-tat approach that is failing to deter Iran or its militias and puts American lives at increased risk," Oklahoma's Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, on the Armed Services Committee, was cited as saying in a statement to POLITICO.

In response to the criticism, Biden's Democratic allies point to the fact that the POTUS is acting under Article II powers, contained in the Constitution, to defend US service members by retaliating.

He does not, they underscore, possess the authority to launch offensive strikes against the Iran-backed militia groups without congressional approval.

"These are very fact-specific determinations," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) of the US Foreign Relations Committee was cited as saying.

Some Democrats have likened the situation with the plethora of attacks to a low-scale war. Since it might be considered "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Act, they are calling on Joe Biden to consider asking Congress for approval to continue striking the Iranian proxies.

[T]he OPCW states that its secretariat "deployed a team to perform a technical assistance visit" related to the suspected poisoning of a "Russian citizen" at Germany's request on August 20. The problem is that on that day, Navalny was only flying from the Russian Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. It was on that flight that he first felt ill and was then rushed to a hospital in another Siberian city, Omsk, following the plane's emergency landing.

Russia demanded that the OPCW explain "how this is even possible" and why the organization had previously told the participating states that its team was only sent to Germany in early September, Shulgin said.

So, what do we have here? When Navalny first felt unwell while still onboard a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the OPCW experts were already waiting for him in Berlin?

The revelations also elicited a reaction from the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova. She said the glaring inconsistencies in the OPCW report only show that some Western nations, together with Navalny himself, are "going down" with their whole "chemical weapons poisoning story."

Instead of answering Russia's questions, the OPCW executive committee session saw another "drama" about Navalny's "supposed poisoning with a chemical weapon agent," Shulgin said. "Routine anti-Russian theses have become a 'must' for the NATO nations at any OPCW event," he added.

• Latest Navalny Novichok water bottle poisoning claim stretches all credibility, but Western media swallows it without question
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• Doctor who treated Alexei Navalny after 'poisoning' dead from heart attack at 55
• The Navalny case, the Berlin doctors, and the Lancet: Hippocrates vs. Mengele
• German 'Novichok poisoning' claims over Navalny will prompt familiar circus of sanctions & Russia demonisation. But who benefits?
• Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense

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• Haiti's president just got assassinated and the media are already calling for US intervention
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These are the same hard-left politicians who changed the voting rules in Pennsylvania during the pandemic by executive order.

Texas and over 20 states sued Pennsylvania for violating the US Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions. But these states did not make the changes through the state legislatures as spelled out in the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court threw the case out and allowed this lawlessness of the states.

Pennsylvania has some funny stuff going on. They're panicked.

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• Supreme Court still sees no steal, again declines to hear Trump lawsuit against Pennsylvania's dodgy election rule changes
• Trump ally Sen. Doug Mastriano raises 2020 election audit plan in Pennsylvania

Haitian government officials said they've asked the United States to deploy troops in an auxiliary effort to help shield Haiti's infrastructure from attack. They requested U.S. forces to help protect Haiti's port, airport, gasoline reserves, and other facilities. There are concerns that the leader's murder could exacerbate the already fraught situation in the country, which is afflicted by civil unrest, economic instability, gang violence, and a COVID public health crisis, among other woes.

Haitian minister of elections, Mathias Pierre, said he fears that "urban terrorists" that have been creating chaos lately might exploit the power vacuum to attack infrastructure centers.

"The group that financed the mercenaries want to create chaos in the country," he said. "Attacking the gas reserves and airport might be part of the plan."

The U.S. will also send $5 million to bolster the Haitian National Police's resources.

The interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, has declared a 15-day "state of siege," which in effect imposes martial law, in an effort to bring order to the deteriorating, near-anarchical environment in Haiti.

• Haiti president Jovenel Moïse assassinated - UPDATE
• Clinton's Interim Haiti Recovery Commission: A vicious joke on Haitians
• Wikileaks blew the Clintons' 'Haiti Scam' wide open
• 'Disaster capitalism': Why Haitians prefer local NGOs over American Red Cross
• The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?