Russia's oil output has continued hovering at post-Soviet record levels in November despite the plunging crude price and the global glut.

Production of crude and gas condensate stood at 10.779 million barrels a day (mbd) during the month, according to the Russian Energy Ministry. Output was slightly beneath the record October level of 10.782 mbd.

Russian oil and gas output rose by 6.62 million tons from January to November, compared with the same period last year.

Crude exports reached 5.32 million bpd last month, which is an 11 percent higher from the previous year but 2.4 percent lower than October.

Experts say that the low oil price has no impact on Russia's output. Russian oil companies have increased profits and output since the weaker domestic currency has protected their business. The depreciating ruble cut costs and taxes for the companies that generate earnings in US dollars but pay most of their expenses in rubles.

The fact that France has turned into a police state shouldn't be that surprising to most people. After the terror attack in Paris, their government declared a state of emergency, which may last another three months. As a result, travel has been restricted, there is a heightened police and military presence on the streets, and thousands of raids have been conducted throughout the country in recent weeks.

It doesn't take a genius to recognize that as a police state. It's practically a textbook definition. However, there's more to this state of emergency than heightened security. What France is seeing right now is outright tyranny. The Paris attack was the perfect excuse for their government to transform their society into an open air prison, and there's no telling what their country will look like when the dust settles.

In an effort to curb intolerance, the racist Tweets of Brazilian citizens are being printed on massive billboards near their homes. The campaign was launched after a black TV weather presenter was the subject of racist taunts online.

The "Virtual Racism, Real Consequences" campaign is organized by civil rights group Criola, which uses geotagging data to determine the location of racist Twitter and Facebook users. Those tweets are then printed on billboards in the offenders' communities.

"Those people [who post abuse online] think they can sit in the comfort of their homes and do whatever they want on the Internet. We don't let that happen. They can't hide from us, we will find them," Criola founder Jurema Werneck told the BBC.

Here's an interesting factoid about contemporary policing: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog, Armstrong Economics, last week.

Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.

Far-right party poised to win two regions for first time as it reaps electoral advantage from France's fear of Islamists and migrants

Looking out across hundreds of flag-waving supporters at a rally in the northern city of Lille, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen told the crowd that the Front National was the only party that could reassure France in this moment of "infinite sadness".

The deaths of 130 people in the Paris terrorist attacks were, she claimed, the result of government inaction, lies, and, above all, its "crazy, undiscerning immigration policy". The Socialist president, François Hollande, who had declared war on terrorism, was "a war chief who hasn't even got the measure of the enemy!" she boomed. Only 10 months after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Paris kosher supermarket left 17 dead, the government had failed to protect French people from another attack and was "more than just responsible" she cried.

The crowd stamped their feet and roared support, chanting "Hollande resign! Hollande resign!"

The political fallout from the Paris terror attacks looks likely to shake France's Socialist government this Sunday when the country votes in the first round of key regional elections. Even though Hollande has seen his popularity rise since the attacks, this has not helped his wider party and its candidates. Instead, it is Le Pen's Front National that stands to make the most gains at the ballot box.

Welfare reform has driven many low-income parents to depend more heavily on family and friends for food, childcare, and cash.

Pity the married working mom, who barely has time to do the dishes or go for a run at night, much less spend a nice evening playing Boggle with her husband and kids.

But if married working parents are struggling with time management these days, imagine the struggles of low-income single parents. Single-parent households (which by and large are headed by women) have more than tripled as a share of American households since 1960. Now, 35 percent of children live in single-parent households.

Coweta County, GA — American police have once against demonstrated that their agenda is not to protect and serve, but to dominate and control by any means necessary. On November 20th, sheriff deputies in Coweta County, Georgia were summoned to help subdue a man having a psychotic breakdown and ended up tasing him to death.

Thirty-two-year-old Chase Sherman, together with his fiancée, Patti Galloway and his parents, Kevin and Mary Ann Sherman, were returning from a vacation. During a layover at the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, Chase started having hallucinations and acting agitated. According to his father, he "got nervous ... about planes crashing, and he just didn't feel comfortable on a plane. ... He thought nobody recognized him. I said, 'Chase, we're fine. We're going to get a car and drive home.' He didn't know where he was at." So they rented a car to drive the rest of the way to their home in Florida.

Chase's fiancée told his parents that he may have smoked "Spice"—also known as "synthetic marijuana"—before they had left on the five-day trip, which may have been the cause of the episode.

The following press release was issued by Students for Justice in Palestine at San Jose State University:

San Jose State University Students Pass Resolution to Divest from Corporations that profit from the Israeli Occupation.

On Wednesday November 18, 2015, San Jose State University became the first California State University to pass a student government resolution to divest from companies complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This was achieved in a 10-5-0 vote (10 yes, 5 no, 0 abstained)

During the hearing, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Black Student Union, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan), and other student organizations stood in solidarity with the black students of the University of Missouri by raising their fists during the pledge of allegiance.

The Associated Students resolution calls on the Board of Directors of the Tower Foundation to remove San Jose State University's holdings from four companies that play an active role in the human rights violations committed by the Israeli Government in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This resolution is endorsed by 28 organizations the vast majority of which are student organizations of diverse backgrounds. The first corporation mentioned in the resolution, Caterpillar, is responsible for supplying Israel with D9 bulldozers which are used by the governing regime to demolish Palestinian homes and violate human in rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

The second corporation mentioned in the resolution, Motorola Solutions, services "MotoEagle Surveillance System" which is used by Israel to control Palestinian movement in vast "special security zones" which surround Illegal Israeli settlements. Israel bans Palestinians from entering these areas, even if they are owned by Palestinians, which in effect, confiscates land from Palestinians. Israel has implemented this system in over 20 illegal Israeli settlements, and has implemented this system at the illegal separation wall.

Researchers trace the super rich's biases and political values.

The richest Americans increasingly are taking over the levers of power and shaping the political debate, despite opposing views held by a majority of Americans, a new and unprecedented academic study of the top 1 percent has confirmed.

The super-rich are more politically active than average Americans, financing and contacting elected officials and knowing many on a first-name basis. Their agenda, which is often cited by public officials across the country, emphasizes private profit-making and is skeptical of almost every public program to address economic inequality, the study by Chicago-based university researchers found. The top 1 percent's social agenda, while "more liberal than others on religious and moral issues, including abortion, gay rights, and prayer in school," is still "much more conservative than the non-affluent on issues of taxes, economic regulation, and social welfare," the researchers found.

A document released by the courts over the FBI's use of National Security Letters (NSLs) and gag orders show the agency used secret interpretations of the Patriot Act to demand extensive access to sensitive web history and location data - without a warrant.

"For more than a decade, the FBI has been demanding extremely sensitive personal information about private citizens just by issuing letters to online companies like mine," Nicholas Merrill, former owner of Calyx Internet Access and a plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. The document released on Monday, in which the agency had demanded access to user data, was sent to Merrill by the FBI over a decade ago.