Without Russia, it is impossible to make serious headway in the settlement process in the Middle East, where the Russian Federation plays an important role, Jordanian King Abdullah II said Thursday at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

"The world should realize that without Russia, it is nearly impossible to make serious progress in the region," Abdullah II said. "Of course, we are very grateful to Russia for the role it plays in the Mideast region." He added that Moscow plays an important part in the Palestino-Israeli settlement and in the efforts to end the Syrian crisis.

"Besides, Russia and Jordan stand shoulder to shoulder in counteraction to terrorism and extremism in the region and worldwide," the king emphasized.

Putin, in turn, noted Jordan's stabilizing role in the Middle East where "the situation tends to deteriorate".

The Russian leader stressed that bilateral relations are developing and added that the leadership of the Russian Federation and Jordan are in constant contact. "We have good projects, and, which brings a special joy, trade turnover has sharply risen over the past year. It is not big in terms of figures but the tendencies are very good," Putin said.

The Jordanian king said his country appreciates bilateral relations, which are growing stronger.

According to materials prepared for the meeting, Russian-Jordanian trade turnover in January-May 2014 totaled $239.2 million, which is more than seven times higher than last year's figures.

The two countries cooperate in the sphere of power industry, in particular, on a project to build a nuclear power plant in Jordan whose completion is scheduled for 2020.

Jordan also displays interest in cooperating with Russia in the agricultural sphere, in particular, in "supplies at preferential prices [to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan] of wheat and barley", the materials say.

About 36 months ago Ireland's two-year notes were yielding 14% and its government and the Brussels apparatchiks were scrambling with tin cup in hand to stave off disaster. Now their yield is negative 0.01%.

Mirabile dictu!

Yes, a wonder to behold - but not one I can explain. Better its left to the experts in today's bizzzaro world of maniacal central banking. That is, with the reminder that the ECB has now set its deposit rate at negative 0.2%, here's how Goldman explained the Irish note miracle to the WSJ:

If "you buy short-dated Irish or French paper and pay less [than depositing at the ECB], you're improving your net income, even if the yields are still negative,"said Jonathan Bayliss, a managing director for global government bonds at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in London.

That's right, down is the new up. The price and yield of government bonds no longer have anything to do with risk or economics; its all about central bank machinations. Actually, its all about the speculator driven momentum surges that are triggered by central bank maneuvers.

The US is delaying the process of dismantling its old nuclear weapons over the possibility that they might be needed to defend Earth against potentially devastating asteroids, states a government report obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

Specifically, the government is holding onto nuclear warhead components that were originally scheduled to be disassembled in 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing an April report by the Government Accountability Office.

Instead, these components will be kept "pending a senior-level government evaluation of their use in planetary defense against earthbound asteroids," the report says.

One may not be surprised that the government is looking into steps to take should an asteroid appear to be on a crash-course with the Earth, as concerns over such scenarios have risen ever since a 20-meter bolide hit Chelyabinsk, Russia back in 2013. The space rock was not what scientists typically considered a threat to the planet - those are usually 50 meters or larger - but its explosion over the Urals city injured hundreds of people.

With increased attention being paid to this threat, government officials and some scientists believe that a timely blast from a nuclear weapon could change an asteroid's direction enough to avert impact with our planet.

For a Nobel Peace Prize President, Barack Obama seems destined to go down in history books as the President who presided over one of the most aggressive series of wars ever waged by a bellicose Washington Administration. Not even George Bush and Dick Cheney came close.

First, before the ink was even dry on his Nobel Prize certificate, Obama announced the Afghanistan "surge", pouring another 30,000 US military into that destroyed part of the world. Then came Obama's war against Libya's Qaddafi, followed rapidly by his war to try to topple Syria's Bashar al Assad. Soon after came Obama's "war for democracy in Ukraine," otherwise better called Obama's attempt to provoke Russia into a new war confrontation with NATO by backing a gaggle of Ukrainian oligarchs, criminals and outright neo-nazis in Kiev. In July of this year, Obama's Administration was pushing the President to launch a second try at bombing Syria back to the Stone Age, allegedly to destroy ISIS, a looney Jihadist Sunni sect that was said to be a joint venture of the CIA and Israeli intelligence.

Now Obama's advisers, no doubt led by the blood-thirsty National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, have come up with a new war. This is the War Against Ebola. On September 16, President Obama solemnly declared the war. He announced, to the surprise of most sane citizens, that he had ordered 3,000 American troops, the so-called "boots on the ground" that the Pentagon refuses to agree to in Syria, to wage a war against....a virus?

Back in the day, when a pathocratic regime of paranoid, inept, remorseless psychopaths wanted to isolate their country, they just closed the borders. This had the benefit of keeping external enemies out as well as keeping anyone who might want to leave in. The biggest threat to a pathocracy, of course, comes from within: from the people who suffer under the control of oligarchs who couldn't care less about their people's well-being. Nowadays, however, the battle on the 'internal front' isn't so involved or overtly totalitarian in nature. (However, it can be just as brutal: the U.S. police kill civilians with impunity.)

Take FATCA for example.

Australia's security agencies now have the power to access any computer in Australia, for any reason. They don't have to let you know why, or even if they are doing it at all.

Big Brother has been knocking on the door, and the Government - and the so-called Opposition - have let him in. Legislation greatly increasing the Government's surveillance powers has passed both houses of Parliament, supported by both major political parties.

Under the new National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and its shadowy offshore counterpart the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) can monitor any device attached to any other device with just a single warrant. The definition of 'connection' is very loose, and effectively means that all devices connected to the Internet are covered.

The world's nuclear powers have set off thousands of the warheads since they were first developed. This map, from Radical Cartography designer Bill Rankin, tracks every nuclear explosion since 1945:
As the two military superpowers of the past six decades, the United States and Soviet Union are obviously on the top of the list.

Analysts have given the thumbs up to the Chinese central bank's announcement on Monday that the Chinese currency can now be traded directly against the euro in its interbank currency market.

This would be a major boost to trade between China and the Eurozone, says Nordea. China stepped up plans to increase the international use of its currency last October with an agreement between the European Central Bank and the PBOC to swap euros and yuan.

"From today, the USD is no longer needed for trading between CNY and EUR. The two currencies can be traded direct against each other. This would lower transaction cost in EURCNY trading and push for yuan internationalization,' said Amy Yuan Zhuang, senior Asia analyst at Noredea Research.

The yuan is now the second most-used currency in international trade after the US dollar.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff holds on to her lead against rivals in a poll released on Tuesday, ahead of Sunday's presidential race, strengthening her chances of being re-elected.

According to pollster Datafolha, Rousseff, who represents the Workers' Party, had 40 per cent support among voters, the same as the previous poll showed last Friday.

Third-ranked Aecio Neves rose in the poll and got closer to runner-up Marina Silva, making the fight for the second place tougher.

Silva, of the Brazilian Socialist Party, garnered 25 per cent support, down from 27 per cent last week, while Neves, of the conservative Brazilian Social Democratic Party, got 20 per cent support, up from 18 per cent last week.

Eight other candidates together got 3 per cent voting intentions.

Montville, N.J. - In the upscale New Jersey community of Montville, in Morris County, a proposed ordinance could give sweeping power to law enforcement that would allow officers the right to enter private property without a warrant if underage drinking is simply suspected.

Under the new ordinance officers would have the ability to search homes with probable cause, without any warrant required, if underage drinking is even suspected. Residents are understandably questioning whether the privacy gutting and property rights destroying ordinance gives law enforcement too much discretion.

"I just feel that it's not really their business to be going into people's houses," said high school senior Brendan Zevits in an interview with CBS 2. "If you want to do that, you need to get a warrant."

"Just coming in our houses searching - eventually, it's going to turn into hunches and all that, and once you base it on a hunch, then it's all downhill from there," said high school senior Stephen McManus.