PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S December 18 announcement that he intends to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria produced some isolated support in the anti-war wings of both parties, but largely provoked bipartisan outrage among in Washington's reflexively pro-war establishment.

Both GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the country's most reliable war supporters, and Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama for insufficient hawkishness, condemned Trump's decision in very similar terms, invoking standard war on terror jargon.

But while official Washington united in opposition, new polling data from Morning Consult/Politico shows that a large plurality of Americans support Trump's Syria withdrawal announcement: 49 percent support to 33 percent opposition.

That's not surprising given that Americans by a similarly large plurality agree with the proposition that "the U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for too long and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm's way" far more than they agree with the pro-war view that "the U.S. needs to keep troops in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to help support our allies fight terrorism and maintain our foreign policy interests in the region."

Creator of the online video game Fortnite, Tim Sweeney, has been captivating audiences for decades by developing intricate and interactive digital worlds for players. However, it is his work away from the screen that is currently grabbing attention from gamers and non-gamers alike.

Sweeney is best known for founding the video and 3-D software company Epic Games in the 1990's. Epic Games has given us popular video game titles such as Unreal Tournament, Gears of War and, most recently, the massively popular game Fortnite. In addition to these popular gaming titles, the billionaire philanthropist has made good on his promise to protect undeveloped and bio-diverse land in the picturesque western Carolina mountains for future generations.

Since 2008, Sweeney has spent millions on conservation projects in his home state of North Carolina to protect and preserve its forest land. He has purchased nearly 40,000 acres over the last decade, making him one of the largest private land owners in the state. Sweeney has also donated money to several conservation parcel projects, including a 1,500 acre expansion to Mount Mitchell State Park.

In November 2016, Sweeney donated $15 million for a conservation easement to protect 7,000 acres of the The Box Creek Wilderness. The forest, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, had been targeted by a company that wanted to carve up the land and run power lines through it.

Two years after she signed with the network amid much fanfare, Megyn Kelly and NBC have officially parted ways.

The split was announced on Friday ending a drawn-out and acrimonious exit that was put in motion in the fall after Kelly defended Halloween costumes that incorporate blackface during a segment on her 9 a.m. talk show.

"The parties have resolved their differences, and Megyn Kelly is no longer an employee of NBC," the network said Friday night.

Talks about ending "Megyn Kelly Today" started before the blackface remarks, due to underperforming ratings and growing tensions between Kelly and NBC executives. But the Halloween controversy sealed her fate, according to sources familiar with the matter. Her talk show was cancelled within days, and her lawyer began negotiating the terms of her exit.

Kelly is halfway through a three-year contract worth a total of $69 million -- an eye-popping sum even by the inflated standards of television news.

The Brits seem to have fallen in love with the French Yellow Vest fashion, but unlike in France where many protesters lean left, the iconic symbol has been claimed by both sides of the UK debate.

The Yellow Vests ceased to be a uniquely French phenomenon after British protesters started donning the distinctive high-visibility jackets to make their own (very different) points. In the UK, an array of left-wing movements vowed to use the yellow vest during their protests in favor of bringing down the Tory government and abandoning austerity. RT's Polly Boiko explains. But this is where the similarities between the French and British fashions end.

Right-wing activists, some of whom belong to hardcore far-right groups like the English Defence League, are also trying to capitalize on the iconic vests. They vent their anger at the Brexit deal stalemate, heckle politicians, and harass Muslim believers both online and offline. Such groups "who are trying to use anger and mobilize it against refugees and migrants and ethnic minorities are not welcomed in our demonstrations," said Shabbir Lakha, spokesman for the anti-austerity People's Assembly.

Watch more on this below.

Ottawa police say there are "some fatalities" and at least 17 injured following a bus crash at the Westboro Station.

Ottawa police are responding to a serious crash involving a bus at the Westboro Station, which has left at least 17 people injured and an unspecified number of people dead.

The incident occurred just before 4 p.m. on Friday, according to Ottawa police. Paramedics tell CTV News' Annie Bergeron Oliver that the double-decker bus struck a bus shelter.

Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau confirmed that there are "some fatalities."

The Ottawa Hospital said in a tweet that its trauma centre is treating nine patients in critical condition.

OC Transpo, which runs Ottawa's public transit system, said in a tweet that buses are being detoured from the area.

The campaign was on the cusp of reaching $20 million on Thursday. Brian Kolfage/GoFundMe

• The GoFundMe campaign that was raising money to build a wall along the US-Mexico border did not meet its $1 billion goal, meaning the platform will begin refunding donors.
• On Friday, Brian Kolfage, who created the fundraiser, updated its GoFundMe page to urge donors to redirect their money to a new "501(c)(4) non-profit Florida Corporation named 'We Build the Wall, Inc.'"
• The campaign, created in December, raised $20 million.

The GoFundMe campaign that aimed to raise $1 billion for a border wall is shutting down, and the $20 million raised will be refunded to donors.

João Teixeira de Faria, known as "John of God," was arrested in December, and faces accusations from dozens of women, who allege he sexually abused them while they were seeking spiritual guidance and treatment.

On Wednesday, Rosângela Rodrigues dos Santos, a judge in Abadiânia, the small town in central Brazil where Faria's spiritual center is located, accepted the charges brought against him by four women, and said he must face trial.

Prosecutors allege that Faria raped two of the women, and used fraudulent means to sexually abuse the other two.

Faria, who became internationally famous when Winfrey broadcast a report on his psychic healing methods in 2013, has said he is innocent, and denied the accusations.

The most dire diplomatic crisis of the Trump administration, or maybe just the weirdest, began without much notice in November 2016, some three weeks after the new president was elected. An American working at the U.S. Embassy in Havana-some call him Patient Zero-complained that he had heard strange noises outside his home. "It was annoying to the point where you had to go in the house and close all the windows and doors and turn up the TV," the diplomat told ProPublica. Zero discussed the sound with his next-door neighbor, who also worked at the embassy. The neighbor said, yeah, he too had heard noises, which he described as "mechanical-sounding."

Several months later, a third staffer at the embassy described suffering from hearing loss he associated with a strange sound. Before long, more and more people at the embassy were talking about it. They, too, started to get sick. The symptoms were as diverse as they were terrifying-memory loss, mental stupor, hearing problems, headaches. In all, some two dozen people were eventually evacuated for testing and treatment.

The outbreak at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba wasn't the only mysterious illness to pop up in the headlines. Around the same time that embassy officials were preparing to fly home, more than 20 students at an Oklahoma high school suddenly came down with baffling symptoms-uncontrollable muscle spasms, even paralysis. A few years before, a similar incident at a school in upstate New York had caught the attention of the local Fox News affiliate, which sent parents into a panic over the possibility that their children had been stricken by an unidentified immune disorder. But the Cuban mystery, the Trump administration insisted, was different. It was not some environmental mishap, but something far more diabolical.

Encouraged by U.S. officials, the media quickly unfurled a story that the mysterious sound was an "attack"-an act of war. Some kind of "acoustic weapon" had been secretly aimed at the diplomats, in an effort to reduce them to brain-damaged zombies. The story got told with a side helping of Cold War envy. Private contractors and the Pentagon's own hip military lab, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, had long been working to develop an arsenal of sound weapons. There had been some limited success with cumbersome devices like MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) and LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), designed to cause excruciating ear pain to disperse mobs on the ground and pirates at sea. The dream, of course, was to get past such giant blunderbusses to something more portable and powerful, like a Flash Gordon ray gun. But the air force, after some experiments, concluded that any such effort using sound waves would be "unlikely" to succeed due to "basic physical principles." If someone had developed a portable acoustic weapon, they had leapfrogged well beyond the skill set of a Raytheon or Navistar and into the arsenal of Q Branch from the Bond movies.

Trump was right!
The #FakeNews media is the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE...

The Washington Post has a guest contributor who ordered the deaths of 26 journalists in Yemen.

The Islamist contributor Mohammed al-Houthi likes to carry an AK47 with him even to interviews.And now this...
Mohammed al-Houthi was recently filmed launching a shoulder-fired missile while chanting "Death to Israel!... Death to America!"

A race row has broken out in South Africa after health officials advertised for 100 new doctors, but did not allow white medics to apply for specialist roles.

The health department in the KwaZulu-Natal province expanded its registrar programme for 2019 from 314 to 414, but aimed to fill the new posts with only black candidates.

Health bosses said the move was implemented to redress the country's historical racial imbalance of Apartheid that saw most high-ranking positions filed by white doctors.

Campaigners and human rights activists have branded the recruitment policy 'discriminatory, unconstitutional and racist'.

Leaked documents show the department wanted to train a total of 366 black doctors and had already recruited 32 Indian, 12 white and four mixed race registrars, but need a further 100 black medics to meet employment equity targets.