Gunmen killed at least 134 Fulani herders in central Mali on Saturday, a local mayor said, the deadliest such attack of recent times in a region reeling from worsening ethnic and jihadist violence.

The assaults on the villages of Ogossagou and Welingara took place as a U.N. Security Council mission visited Mali seeking solutions to violence that killed hundreds of civilians last year and is spreading across West Africa's Sahel region.

Moulaye Guindo, mayor of the nearby town of Bankass, said armed men, dressed as traditional Donzo hunters, encircled and attacked Ogossagou at about 4 a.m. (0400 GMT).

"We are provisionally at 134 bodies recovered by the gendarmes," Guindo told Reuters by telephone from Ogossagou.

He said another nearby Fulani village, Welingara, had also been attacked, causing "a number" of deaths, but he did not yet know how many.

Following shelling by militants in the Syrian province of Hama, 21 people have been delivered to the Al-Suqaylabiyah hospital with gas poisoning symptoms, Syrian TV reported.

A reported 21 people were delivered to the Al-Suqaylabiyah hospital in Hama, suffering from asphyxia, thought to be caused by the use of poisonous gas by militants who fired several shells at the city, the Ikhbariya broadcaster reported, citing a head of the local hospital.

Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, with government forces fighting numerous opposition groups as well as militant and terrorist organizations.

There is nothing more epic than a Youtube video by Jimmy Dore immediately after he has been proven right about something. It's thunderous. It's unequivocal. And it happens a lot.

"Now, I've gotten Russiagate right here," Dore said in a new video following revelations about the finalized Mueller report that there will be no further indictments, leaving the grand total of Americans charged with Russian conspiracy at exactly zero.

"I did that in my garage," Dore added. "Those other stations didn't do that. Not because they don't have the resources I have. They did that 'cause they didn't want to. They did that 'cause they weren't interested in the truth. They did that because what they wanted to do was fuckin' get Donald Trump so bad they were willing to turn off their critical thinking skills and just listen to their lizard brains. And they wrecked America in the process. And we stood up against it, and we got smeared for standing up against it, and we still get smeared."

Whereas the U.S. regime and its allies demand that Crimea be returned to being ruled by the Ukrainian Government, as it had been during 1954-2014 (but Russian at all other times), all polls, ever since at least 2013 (when the U.S. Government started polling this) have shown that approximately 90% of Crimeans want to be ruled instead by Russia's Government, and the latest of these polls was issued on March 14th.

Here is the opening of the Tass report on this poll:

Overwhelming majority of Crimeans would again vote to reunite with Russia, says poll

According to the poll, Crimea's confidence in President Vladimir Putin's is higher than in the rest of Russia, viewed positively by 90% of the respondents

SIMFEROPOL, Th. 14 March 2019 /TASS/. Crimea remains positive about the peninsula's reunification with Russia and if the referendum was held today, 89% of Crimeans would support joining Russia, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center announced in Simferopol the results of a poll on Thursday.

"The attitude towards Crimea's reunification with Russia remains decisively positive. Eighty-nine percent would cast their votes to reunite with Russia if a referendum were held next Sunday, and 93% view the reunification in a positive light. The level of negative attitudes and support for an Autonomous Republic of Crimea as part of Ukraine are minimal (3% each), the data says. The survey also noted that across Russia, 85% of respondents support the reunification. ...

The rabbi pointed out that his "end of days" prediction depends on whether Jews keep "repenting" and "keeping everything which God wants them to keep".

An astral phenomenon known as a supermoon which occurred earlier this week and coincided with the Jewish holiday of Purim may be a sign of the coming end of days, according to Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson, whose claims were recently published by the Daily Star.

According to the newspaper, the rabbi pointed at the significance of the supermoon as being mentioned in Torah, having "deciphered codes" within the Book of Genesis and discovering worlds "huge moon", "Purim", "repentance", "Israel", "warning" and "Messiah", which suggest a link between Purim and this lunar event.

Controversial academic Jordan Peterson told RT's Afshin Rattansi that the left's obsession with equality of outcome is doomed to failure, advocating instead for individuals to assume greater personal responsibility.

"It seems to be very difficult for people on the left to draw a line between what's acceptable and what's unacceptable," Peterson told the host of RT's Going Underground when asked to comment on the rise in popularity of socialism-friendly politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.

While acknowledging that the moderate left has ushered in labor laws and other reforms which have benefited society, the Canadian professor argued that the emphasis on "diversity, inclusivity and equity is a sign that the left has gone far too far."

At the end of last year, mainstream media were rife with stories about how President Trump was wrong about the border because, actually, statistics show that illegal immigration levels are at "historic lows." A headline from a Politico article in November is representative of the genre: "Immigration crisis? The stats tell a different story."

The story the media thinks the stats tell is that there is no border crisis because the total number of apprehensions along the border peaked in 2000 at about 1.6 million and current illegal immigration levels are about what they were in the 1970s.

But this convoluted talking point is deeply misleading. Border apprehensions are in fact on the rise, on pace to reach their highest levels since 2008. What's more, the "historic lows" line doesn't account for the different types of illegal immigration or the very different policies in place to deal with distinctive categories of migrants. Given the reality of what's happening on the border today, the "historic lows" talking point is almost meaningless.

For example, of those 1.6 million illegal immigrants arrested in 2000, the vast majority were Mexican adults traveling alone, and were quickly deported in accordance with federal law. Historically, most of the illegal immigration along the southern border has consisted of Mexican adults. As recently as 2012, 90 percent of apprehensions along the southern border were single adults. Today, that's changed. Family units and unaccompanied minors now make up 60 percent of all apprehensions along the southern border.

The change is important because we don't treat single adults the same way we treat families and minors traveling alone. Instead of detaining or deporting them-as we do with adults-federal immigration officials are releasing families and children into the United States with orders to appear before an immigration judge, a process that can take years.

President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to promote free speech on college campuses by threatening colleges with the loss of federal research funding if they do not protect those rights, but the big three network evening newscasts did not find the action newsworthy enough to include in their lineups.

"It wasn't something that enthused the liberal broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and, NBC) so they omitted it from their evening broadcasts," conservative watchdog group Media Research Center analyst Nicholas Fondacaro wrote.

"NBC Nightly News" found time for segments on anticipation for the Mueller report, Boeing, a feature on the opioid epidemic, CVS's decision to sell CBD products, a decades-old cold case, drama surrounding allegations that a figure skater deliberately injured an opponent, a "Game of Thrones" star's health scare and former FBI director James Comey's thoughts on the Mueller report.

How appropriate, don't you think? America's longest war, the Afghan one, now heading into its 18th year, may set another kind of record -- for the longest withdrawal ever. The Pentagon recently revealed news of its daring "plan" to end that war. It will take up to five years to get 14,000 U.S. troops (and unknown numbers of private contractors), military equipment, and the like out of that country successfully, ensuring a war of perhaps 23 years (without, of course, a victory in sight). To add to the cheery news, just about everyone's on board with the plan, except perhaps for one recalcitrant individual. As the New York Times recently reported:

"So far, the plan has been met with broad acceptance in Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels. But American officials warned that Mr. Trump could upend the new plan at any time."

In other words, when it comes to setting records in Afghanistan (USA! USA!), the news couldn't be more upbeat if the president doesn't interfere (and his administration's peace talks with the Taliban don't somehow get in the way). In fact, there might be even better news lurking just offstage. The Pentagon's "plan," after all, looks strangely like an effort to simply outlast the Trump era in hopes that a future president might be far more intent on record-setting than the present one. General Joseph Votel, who heads U.S. Central Command, which oversees Washington's never-ending wars across the Greater Middle East, may be typical of top U.S. commanders when it comes to such matters. He's not just against the president's urge to withdraw American troops from Syria but envisions a permanent war with ISIS into the distant future -- and he imagines something similar in Afghanistan. As he told the House Armed Services Committee early this month, speaking of a possible U.S. withdrawal from that country, "The political conditions, where we are in the reconciliation right now, don't merit that."

Israeli authorities entered a French culture center in Jerusalem on Thursday to cancel an event, alleging it was to involve an association supported by the Palestinian Authority, a diplomatic source said.

In a rare move, police entered the center in East Jerusalem, the source with the French consulate said. An order posted on the door of the building said that the center, which is connected to the French foreign ministry, intended to host an event organized with a women's association "sponsored or financed by the Palestinian Authority" and "without authorization."

The center remained open after the police operation.

Israel banned the Palestinian Authority from carrying out official business in East Jerusalem in 2001, in accordance with the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that prohibits the PA from operating in Israeli territory.

The consulate could not confirm if the association was indeed financed by the PA, but Palestinians who were to participate in the event said the allegation was false.