The Russian Defense Ministry is ready to assist Assad's military and the Free Syrian Army in uniting forces against Islamic State jihadists and other terror groups, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

In a statement Wednesday, Zakharova said that such diplomatic efforts are "based on the position voiced by Russia's president, Vladimir Putin," adding that Moscow will carry on with contacts with the "whole spectrum" of Syrian opposition.

Following Putin's orders, the Foreign Ministry is now also seeking to establish contacts with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) leadership to discuss the possibility of their involvement into the process of political settlement of the Syrian crisis.

Earlier Wednesday, the Russian president revealed that his French counterpart, Francois Hollande, had proposed uniting the FSA forces and President Assad's army to battle Islamic State terrorists. It could create the ground for political settlement in Syria, Putin added.

"During [my] recent visit to Paris, French President Francois Hollande expressed an interesting idea, saying it is worth trying to unite the efforts of [Syrian President Bashar] Assad's army and the so-called Free Syrian Army," Putin said during a meeting with Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.

Have you ever wondered what happened to the £375billion, equivalent to £6,000 for every man, woman and child in the UK, created by the bank of England electronically? This colossal sum of new money is created through the programme called Quantitative Easing (QE), and pumped into the financial markets by the purchase of government bonds.

The campaigning group Positive-Money estimates that this money pushed share prices up by 20%. The idea was that those benefiting from this would invest this new wealth in the real economy. But the reality is that this new wealth simply went into more financial products, to benefit them even more from rising share prices.

Positive-Money concludes that for every £1 created under QE only 8p trickled down to the real economy, with the rest getting trapped in financial markets, making the rich even richer.

I was a bit surprised as well as appalled at the reported reaction of U.S. military personnel who had participated in the November 2004 destruction of Fallujah under Operation Phantom Fury, to the January 2014 taking control of the city by Sunni insurgents. The New York Times reporter covering this story says that "watching insurgents running roughshod through the streets they once fought to secure, often in brutal close quarters combat, has shaken their faith in what their mission achieved."1 Marine Corps sergeant Adam Banotai is quoted as saying that "It made me sick to my stomach to have that thrown in our face, everything we fought for so blatantly taken away." Former State Department official Kael Weston, who worked with the Marines fighting in Iraq, and talked with them about this development, says that "This has been a gut punch to the morale of the Marine Corps and painful for a lot of families who are saying 'I thought my son died for a reason'."

There is a vagueness in these references to a supposed "mission" and "reasons." We should not forget that the U.S. leader in this Iraq enterprise, U.S. President George W. Bush, had originally claimed that the sole reason for invading Iraq was its possession of weapons of mass destruction and the threat that this posed to international peace and security. Once that was admitted to have been a fraud the mission and its purported reasons would seem to have disappeared and immediate withdrawal should have been called for. However, this was quickly adjusted to the mission of bringing democracy to Iraq, presumably to help the Iraqi people improve their lives as well as reduce the external threat of dictatorship. But any sensible person should recognize that a U.S. leadership that stands firmly with Saudi Arabia, and had earlier supported Saddam Hussein when he was attacking Iran, couldn't be expending resources for any democratic objective. There must be material or other semi-hidden objectives that can't be made explicit, except in unpublicized documents like the neo-con Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses or claims by disaffected insiders like former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that a plan for regime change in Iraq was firmed up well before 9/11.2

In March, neighbor country Lithuania reintroduced military conscription in light of geopolitical tensions over the Ukraine crisis.

"The issue [of general mobilization] is on the agenda, but not this year," Normunds Stafeckis told the Latvijas Radio 4 station.

According to the spokesman, reservist exercises will begin this fall. About 300 former servicemen have received corresponding notices, Stafeckis added.

Mandatory military conscription was scrapped in Lithuania in 2008, four years after the country joined NATO, as the Baltic nation chose to create a professional army.

In late September, the Latvian government endorsed a draft bill that would see the military boost spending in the coming years up to 2 percent of the country's gross domestic product, as a requirement of NATO membership.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, has shared a message from a Facebook "friend" who wants to help ISIS militants take revenge on Russian military fighting terrorists in Syria under Sharia law.

Gerashchenko said he received a message on Facebook which said that "Russian propaganda channels" and Russian army in almost every report "show off" their military personnel in Syria.

The post, as well as Gerashchenko's Facebook page, were unavailable for several hours. But later the post, as well as Gerashchenko's page, reappeared. An image of the post can be viewed, however, thanks to a screenshot.

"I think that their faces [on TV] will be enough, so that Islamic State militants and their supporters in Russia, the majority of whom are in the Caucasus region, could then find them and take revenge [on them] under Sharia law," the Facebook user wrote to Gerashchenko.

Gerashchenko, who also attached an RT video showing Russian military jets in Syria in his post, seemed to be inspired by the idea. He urged everyone who has any information about Russian servicemen fighting ISIS in Syria to report the data on the volunteer-made Mirotvorec (Peacekeeper) website. For such information, there would be a special section, entitled "Putin's crimes in Syria and Middle East."

The majority of Gerashchenko's Facebook friends supported the idea, calling it "brilliant" and "effective." However, not everyone got motivated by such a call.

Well, well, well, aren't we seeing a massive turnaround of late. Putin was so sharp, calm and truthful at the UN and other recent speeches and interviews compared to the same old Amerikan false bravado diatribe it was like having a clean shower after swimming through a cesspool.

And the whole free world feels the same.

What I admire about him is his cool demeanor and very artful tact in how he approaches massively sensitive subjects. He has to cloak it in "diplomati-speak" of course to reach the type of audience within those bound up layers of communication, but he does it masterfully. You don't sense the BS factor and full on propagandized deception you get from the Obamaramadingdong script reading puppet.

Scores of Palestinians were injured in clashes across the West Bank and more than 200 were arrested in Jerusalem, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday he is "running an all-out war against Palestinian terrorism."

Palestinians protested today in a "day of rage," after a string of Palestinian attacks on Israeli citizens in the past week and Israeli incursions into the West Bank and Jerusalem—including the demolition of two homes overnight Monday and the killings of three Palestinian youths in the preceding 24 hours.

During the West Bank's main demonstration outside Ramallah, Israeli fire injured 13, six of them from live rounds, including Salah Zayyad, 35, a Palestinian journalist who was shot in the abdomen. Palestinian demonstrators threw rocks at security forces.

In Bethlehem, 27 were treated for tear gas inhalation, seven for injuries from rubber bullets, including two who are in critical condition for shots fired at the head. Another seven were hurt in a traffic accident after losing visibility while driving near the clash, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

The march followed a funeral for Abdel-Rahman Abeidallah, 13, who was shot in the heart during a demonstration yesterday. Abeidallah was the third Palestinian killed by Israeli forces on Sunday and Monday.

Before daybreak Israeli forces demolished the East Jerusalem homes of Ghassan Abu Jamal, 32, and Muhammed el-Ja'abis, 23, two Palestinians from the Jabal Mukaber neighborhood who were implicated in the killings of Israelis in 2014. Abu Jamal and his cousin Uday Abu Jamal, 22, stabbed to death five in a bloody attack on a north Jerusalem synagogue. El-Ja'abis was accused of killing an Israeli with a bulldozer in Jerusalem and was shot dead on the scene by security forces. His family says that it was not an intentional act, that he lost control of the tractor.

Punitive home demolitions are illegal under international law as a form of collective punishment. While Israel leveled houses as punishment throughout the second Intifada, a moratorium on the practice was in place at the close of the uprising until mid-2014.

The highest EU court said in a milestone ruling on the "Safe Harbor" data-transfer agreement that the US compromised the essential European right to privacy. Facebook and other companies could now be barred from blanket-sending data to the US.

"The Court of Justice declares that the Commission's US Safe Harbour Decision is invalid," the court ruling said.

Austrian law student Max Schrems, 28, filed a complaint to the data protection commissioner in 2013 saying that the US law didn't offer a sufficient level of protection against surveillance on data sent via Facebook to the United States. This came in the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations on mass US surveillance.

The hearing of the case brought against Facebook took place October 6 in Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters. As a result, the Safe Harbor system enabling data transfers from the European Union to the United States by thousands of companies was found to be invalid.

According to the ruling, the Irish data commissioner must now examine Schrems' complaint "with all due diligence" and "decide whether ... transfer of the data of Facebook's European subscribers to the United States should be suspended on the ground that that country does not afford an adequate level of protection of personal data."

There were no Facebook representatives at the hearing which was explained later in a statement: "This case is not about Facebook. The Advocate General himself said that Facebook has done nothing wrong," the company said.

Edward Snowden, who has just recently opened his Twitter account, welcomed the decision and was quick to congratulate Schrems.

Question 1: In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Mr. President, thank you very much for accepting the invitation of the Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran to give this interview. Thank you very much.

There are many issues which need to be raised; and in this interview, I'll raise a number of them. I hope that I'll get candid and transparent answers from your Excellency. For about five years now, Syria has been suffering from a war waged by armed terrorist groups that inflicted tremendous damage on the Syrian people. According to available statistics, these damages are estimated at more than USD 200 billion to the infrastructure, about 250,000 casualties and about six to seven million displaced Syrian individuals. All this was the result of Western states' insistence on overthrowing the Syrian regime. They haven't succeeded in doing so. Now we can see a change in positions regarding the situation in Syria. The states which used to call for overthrowing the regime have started to declare that they accept President Assad's participation in an interim government. What's your reading of this change in positions, and why has it happened?

While brazen psychopaths like Hillary Clinton and warmongers like Marco Rubio call for a No-Fly Zone in Syria, it appears that Russia has declared a "No-Go Zone" of its own. The Russian version, however, consists of a "No-Float Zone" and is located off the coast of Syria.

The "No-Float Zone" as Ziad Fadel of Syrian Perspective has labeled it, is focused on the Mediterranean sea, with ships already within the vicinity of the Mediterranean preparing to meet with those currently based in the Black Sea but who are now heading into the Mediterranean. Both ships and reconnaissance vessels are reportedly prepared to establish a "No-Float Zone" to serve as protection for approximately 140,000 Russian troops that appear to be heading to Syria.