Two-thirds of Russian citizens say that after 2018 they would like to see Vladimir Putin or his personally proposed successor as president after the elections. Less than 20 percent of Russians say that the nation should choose someone with a different approach.

According to a poll conducted by the independent agency Levada Center in late November, 57 percent of respondents would prefer to see Putin reelected as president in 2018. Eleven more percent said that the incumbent president should be replaced by someone he himself proposes as his successor.

Eighteen percent said that they would prefer another person as president who would suggest a different political course, while 14 percent of responders said it was too difficult for them to answer the question at the moment.

In the same poll, 48 percent of Russians said that currently no politician in the country could effectively replace Putin, while 33 percent said that the replacement could be found once the need arises and 6 percent answered that they already know a perfect candidate. Twelve percent of respondents said they found the question too complex to answer.

Behind closed doors, speaking with investors and Wall Street analysts, the gun industry views mass shootings as an opportunity to make lots of money.

Ordinary people are despairing about the frequency of tragic events like the murderous rampage in San Bernardino on Wednesday, or the Planned Parenthood massacre last week. And the cycle of mass killing, media frenzy, and political stalemate starts anew each time, The Intercept reported on Thursday.

But meanwhile, gun sales continue to break records, a fact that has not gone ignored by financial analysts. The Intercept reviewed on Thursday investor transcripts for gun companies, ammunition manufacturers, and sporting stores, and found many instances of industry executives discussing mass shooting incidents and the resulting political dynamics as lucrative.

Here's how it works. Following a mass shooting, there is talk of gun control, which the National Rifle Association and other gun advocates attack as an assault on the Second Amendment. Notably, gun and ammunition manufacturers often donate, either directly or as a portion of each sale, to the NRA. The fear of losing gun rights leads to panic buying, which brings greater profits to gun retailers, gun companies and their investors.

ISIS is responsible for spreading a flesh eating bug across Syria according to the Kurdish Red Crescent.

Human rights workers have said that more than 500 cases of Leishmaniasis disease have been reported in Syria over the past 12 months.

Dilqash Isa of the Kurdish Red Crescent, said: 'As a result of abominable acts by ISIS that included the killing of innocent people and dumping their corpses in streets, this is the leading factor behind the rapid spread of Leishmaniasis disease.'

The female shooter in the San Bernardino, California massacre, Tashfeen Malik, pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Facebook post immediately before the attack, officials have told several news organizations.

Malik posted under a different name, a US official familiar with the investigation told CNN.

The post was later removed, apparently by Malik herself, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing law enforcement officials. However, FBI technicians were able to recover it.

The post appeared "just before the attack," a law enforcement source told NBC News.

If confirmed, the finding could be a "game changer" in the investigation, two officials told Reuters.

Here is one of the reasons why the Fed is confident the US economy is strong and resilient enough to sustain a rate hike: since January, the US has added 293,900 waiter & bartender positions and zero manufacturing workers.

Unless one is an economist, no further commentary is needed.

If one is an economist, we eagerly look forward to an extended discussion why one should focus only on the blue line and ignore the red one, debate the adverse impacts of the weather (both hot and cold) on manufacturing, listen to how the collapse of high-paying jobs is actually a good thing for low-paid food servers, and how this is merely a confirmation of the bullish split of the US economy into a growing services and a "slightly softer" manufacturing sector.

A baffling, surreal scene just played out on the two networks, where the landlord of the San Bernardino shooting suspects apparently allowed reporters into their apartment.

The result was disturbing. On live national television, reporters sifted through the remains of the lives of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. They picked over children's toys. They held up photos, speculating about whether the woman depicted in one might be Malik. They displayed Social Security cards and driver's licenses with readily identifiable information—and not just for the deceased suspects:


As if the journalistic irresponsibility of baselessly speculating while holding up images of potentially innocent people on TV wasn't bad enough, it beggars belief the scene wasn't taped off and guarded. Reporters were given free rein to walk through an apartment that is an important part of the investigation, and they were allowed to handle what one would expect to be evidence. Police didn't appear to know the media tour was going on. Brian Ries of Mashable reports:


However, an NBC spokeswoman said the tour was approved by the FBI:

A group of San Francisco policemen cornered a 26-year-old man and opened fire on him at point-blank range, riddling his body with 15 shots Wednesday afternoon. The killing, graphically depicted in a video posted on Instagram, took place in the Bayview section of the city, one of its poorest neighborhoods. The video can be viewed here.

The victim, later identified as Mario Woods, 26, was armed only with a kitchen knife, which he held onto despite being pepper-sprayed and shot with beanbag ammunition. Woods was making no move to attack police, and can be seen in the video backing away and raising his hands in front of him as though in self-defense.

Woods is backed into a wall by at least a half-dozen cops, all with guns drawn. He attempts to sidle along the wall to his right. Then one of the cops accosting him steps in front of him, cutting off his last route of escape. When Woods takes one further step, the cops open fire, while bystanders scream in horror.

The police were responding to a report by a stabbing victim who was receiving treatment at San Francisco General Hospital, who claimed he'd been attacked at Third Street and Le Conte in Bayview-Hunters Point. Woods was at that location when police arrived. The resulting confrontation was recorded on smartphone video by a witness on a city bus passing by.

When the uploaded video caused widespread outrage, the San Francisco Police Department sought to smear the victim, releasing a report that he had been identified as a gang member in 2009, affiliated with the so-called Oakdale Mob, and subjected to a civil injunction.

The "gang injunctions" issued by San Francisco authorities after 2006 amount to lifetime bans on individuals going to certain neighborhoods of the city, usually the poor neighborhoods in which they had grown up and where their families live. Eyewitnesses and acquaintances told the local press that Woods was no threat to anyone, someone who "wouldn't hurt a fly" and was frequently seen hanging around in the neighboring smoking or drinking a beer.

When I first learned of the recent attacks in Paris, a chill went down my spine. "No," I thought, "This is all happening too fast."

I was terrified. I was not terrorized, mind you. What happened in Paris was tragic, of course. But I was not so ignorant and innumerate as to think the kind of violence it represented was a statistically significant direct threat to myself and my loved ones. I was fully cognizant that, even with the recent uptick in terror attacks, the probability of my family ever being caught up in one was vanishingly minuscule. I am more likely to be felled by a deer or a bolt of lightning than by a jihadist's Kalashnikov.

What terrified me was the response of all the people who are incapable of such a proportional perspective: those who saw the news from France and panicked, thinking "I'm next!" As distant as it was, the Paris attacks unleashed in America a surge of fear and of calls for greater police powers, as well as an attendant wave of anti-Muslim hate and war lust.

On the evening of November 29 hundreds of people demonstrated outside the Berlin refugee registration centre, the State Office for Health and Social Affairs (LaGeSo), to protest against the inhumane treatment of refugees. The demonstration was organized at short notice by volunteers from the group "Night before LaGeSo" via Facebook and was supported by other groups, including "Moabit Helps".

Many of the demonstrators, who gathered despite pouring rain, brought homemade signs and banners bearing slogans such as "Refugee crisis? No, a management crisis!" "First welcome, then (allowed to) freeze" and "Stop the shameless spectacle".

Rebecka, a student at Humboldt University who regularly helps refugees, came to the demonstration because she regards the conditions at LaGeSo as scandalous. "The behaviour of the Berlin Senate can only be described as institutional racism", she said. "The temperature has dropped and the first fatality is only a matter of time. This can only be explained by the fact that people are to be forced to quit Berlin."

A similar assessment was to be heard from almost everyone aware of the conditions prevailing at LaGeSo and who had decided to attend the demonstration. For months, hundreds of refugees have been forced to wait for hours at the gates of the site in all weather conditions, to sign up for an asylum procedure or receive vital provisions. Those forced to queue include many sick persons, the elderly and children.

Although the initial registration of refugees has now been outsourced, many still wait at the LaGeSo premises for transport to the new application centre in Bundesallee. Hundreds also wait day after day to obtain a guarantee of payment for accommodation in a hostel, a medical certificate or other essential social services.

LaGeSo's Kafkaesque numbering system has collapsed, and so it is now basically: first come, first served. This deliberately created situation means that people begin queuing in the evening and then spend the night in front of LaGeSo in the hope of securing an appointment the next day.

The stuff we're forced to witness and read about is incredible. Literally.

Besides this obviously orchestrated clampdown and ramped up war mongering following the Paris "incident', front and center is the Syrian turnaround by a bold stepping, clear minded Russia. The media is beside itself furiously trying to bury, minimize, justify and demonize this wise and functional step , the barefaced truth of which is turning this psychopathic move toward western hegemony on its warped head.

The ongoing genocides in Yemen, Ukraine and Palestine continue with nary a flicker of mention in the western press, with the Yemen extermination recently exacerbated no doubt by weaponized storms further jeopardizing the lives of millions in that defenseless country.

If that isn't dystopian enough, the newly placed head of the Human Rights Commission of the so-called United Nations is none other than Saudi Arabia, a country deeply tied to all things terrorist who have just announced a mass beheading to take place as part of their public relations inspired move to continue to appear as barbaric as possible.