As I write, with over 75% of all yesterday's English local election results in, Labour has a net gain of 55 councillors compared to the high water mark of the 2014 result in these wards, while the Tories have a net gain of one seat against a 2014 result which was regarded at the time as disastrous for them, and led the Daily Telegraph to editoralise "David Cameron Must Now Assuage the Voters' Rage".

Yet both the BBC and Sky News, have all night and this morning, treated these results, in which the Labour Party has increased by 3% an already record number of councillors in this election cycle, as a disaster. What is more, they have used that false analysis to plug again and again the "anti-Semitism in the Labour Party" witch-hunt. It was of course the continuous exacerbation of this mostly false accusation by Blairite MP's which - deliberately on their part - stopped the Labour Party doing still better. The Blairites are all over the airwaves plugging this meme again today.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is finally starting to release portions of the footage from the body cameras worn by the officers who responded to reports of a mass shooting on 1 October, and the footage that has been made public is showing that officers' accounts differ from the official narrative.

Suspect Stephen Paddock is alleged to have transported dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition to his adjoining hotel rooms on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel where he broke the windows and used his perch to open fire on a nearby music festival.

In the body camera footage, LVMPD officers can be seen clearing the rooms on the floor, and waking up other hotel patrons who were in bed near where the massacre was said to have been launched and were apparently unaware that any gunfire had taken place. Following entry into their room, an officer informed the patrons in their beds that there was someone shooting inside the casino.

In fact, one of the patrons who sounded like a female seemed shocked a shooting was taking place. She said, "Oh, ok." The tone of her voice seemed to indicate that she had no idea a shooting was reportedly taking place just feet from their room. Also interesting was the officer's order for them to "lock the door." Who were these patrons and why were they not interviews by the press?

This is the moment when a newspaper claiming to uphold that most essential function in a liberal democracy - acting as a watchdog on power - formally abandons the task. This is the moment when it positively embraces the role of serving as a mouthpiece for the government. The tell is in one small word in a headline on today's Guardian's front page: "Revealed".

When I trained as a journalist, we reserved a "Revealed" or an "Exposed" for those special occasions when we were able to bring to the reader information those in power did not want known. These were the rare moments when as journalists we could hold our heads high and claim to be monitoring the centres of power, to be fulfilling our sacred duty as the fourth estate.

But today's Guardian's "exclusive" story "Revealed: UK's push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance" is doing none of this. Nothing the powerful would want hidden from us is being "revealed". No one had to seek out classified documents or speak to a whistleblower to bring us this "revelation". Everyone in this story - the journalist Patrick Wintour, an anonymous "Whitehall official", and the named politicians and think-tank wonks - is safely in the same self-congratulatory club, promoting a barely veiled government policy: to renew the Cold War against Russia.

It is no accident that the government chose the Guardian as the place to publish this "exclusive" press release. That single word "Revealed" in the headline serves two functions that reverse the very rationale for liberal, watchdog-style journalism.

The Illinois Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would require public schools in the state to teach lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) history, as well as use inclusive and "non-discriminatory" textbooks.

The bill, which passed with a 34-18 vote, would require "all elementary and high schools to teach a unit studying 'the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State,'" The Associated Press reported.

Supporters of the legislation, such as Democratic Sen. Heather Steans, who sponsored the measure, told Fox News that teaching LGBT history in schools is important to "increase compassion and understanding as well as to provide historical role models for LGBT students."

A British teacher is out on bail Friday after being accused of having a sexual relationship with her 16-year-old male student.

Ellie Wilson, 29, of Dursley, pleaded not guilty Friday to four charges of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of responsibility or trust.

Wilson, a physics teacher at a Bristol secondary school, was accused of having sexual activity with the student in August 2015, the Bristol Post reported.

Cambridge Analytica, the data firm at the centre of this year's Facebook privacy row, is closing and starting insolvency proceedings.

The company has been plagued by scandal since the Observer reported that the personal data of about 50 million Americans and at least a million Britons had been harvested from Facebook and improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica denies any wrongdoing, but says that the negative media coverage has left it with no clients and mounting legal fees.

LA is filing a lawsuit against opioid drugmakers for engaging in "reckless and irresponsible business practices" for the sake of sales, contributing to the city's opioid epidemic.

Los Angeles is filing a formal lawsuit against several opioid drugmakers and distributors saying they have engaged in "reckless and irresponsible business practices" for the sake of a sale, contributing heavily to the city's opioid epidemic.

Speaking for the city, L.A. city attorney Mike Feuer said in a press conference today that he has filed a 165-page suit in a federal court against opioid producers - Purdue Pharma, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Cephalon, Insys Therapeutics and Mallinckrodt - for allegedly violating federal anti-racketeering laws and for implementing deceptive marketing to boost sales of their top opioid painkillers - OxyContin, Methadone and fentanyl.

I sometimes try to get establishment loyalists to explain to me exactly why we're all meant to be terrified of this "Russian propaganda" thing they keep carrying on about. What is the threat, specifically? That it makes the public less willing to go to war with Russia and its allies? That it makes us less trusting of lying, torturing, coup-staging intelligence agencies? Does accidentally catching a glimpse of that green RT logo turn you to stone like Medusa, or melt your face like in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

"Well, it makes us lose trust in our institutions," is the most common reply.

Okay. So? Where's the threat there? We know for a fact that we've been lied to by those institutions. Iraq isn't just something we imagined. We should be skeptical of claims made by western governments, intelligence agencies and mass media. How specifically is that skepticism dangerous?
Trying to get answers to such questions from rank-and-file empire loyalists is like pulling teeth, and they are equally lacking in the mass media who are constantly sounding the alarm about Russian propaganda. All I see are stories about Russia funding environmentalists (the horror!), giving a voice to civil rights activists (oh noes!), and retweeting articles supportive of Jeremy Corbyn (think of the children!). At its very most dramatic, this horrifying, dangerous epidemic of Russian propaganda is telling westerners to be skeptical of what they're being told about the Skripal poisoning and the alleged Douma gas attack, both of which do happen to have some very significant causes for skepticism.

When you try to get down to the brass tacks of the actual argument being made and demand specific details about the specific threats we're meant to be worried about, there aren't any to be found. Nobody's been able to tell me what specifically is so dangerous about westerners being exposed to the Russian side of international debates, or of Russians giving a platform to one or both sides of an American domestic debate. Even if every single one of the allegations about Russian bots and disinformation are true (and they aren't), where is the actual clear and present danger? No one can say.

Two teachers union presidents suspended after undercover videos reveal cover-up of child abuse at schools

O'Keefe strikes again!

Project Veritas gets results.

Two teachers union presidents have been suspended after O'Keefe's undercover videos exposed they protected teachers who were abusing students.

Saudi Arabia will no longer be the only Gulf state with no public Christian places of worship, after an agreement was signed between local Wahhabi leaders and a Vatican cardinal to establish a cooperative relationship.

"This is the beginning of a rapprochement... It is a sign that the Saudi authorities are now ready to give a new image to the country," one of the most senior Catholic officials, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, told the Vatican News website after returning from Riyadh.

Tauran was in Saudi Arabia for a week in the middle of last month, in a visit that was widely covered by local media, and mostly ignored by the English-language press. He met with the de-facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and with multiple spiritual leaders.