After several posts about President Donald Trump from government agency Twitter accounts were deleted, a number of "rogue" parody accounts were created.

After Trump's inauguration, the official Twitter account for the National Park Service (NPS) retweeted two posts, one that showed the difference in crowd size between former US President Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009 and Trump's, and another that linked to an article on webpages removed from the White House website.

The retweets from the NPS account were quickly taken down, along with similar tweets from other government accounts. Badlands National Park also had tweets taken down after they posted statistics on climate change. Meanwhile, several government Twitter accounts stopped tweeting all together.

The Flemish Father Daniël Maes (78) lives in Syria in the sixth-century-old Mar Yakub monastery in the city of Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus. Father Daniel has been a witness to the "civil war" and according to him, Western reports on the conflict in Syria are very misleading. In short: "the Americans and their allies want to completely ruin the country."

Interviewer: You are very critical of the media coverage on Syria. What is bothering you?

"The idea that a popular uprising took place against President Assad is completely false. I've been in Qara since 2010 and I have seen with my own eyes how agitators from outside Syria organized protests against the government and recruited young people. That was filmed and aired by Al Jazeera to give the impression that a rebellion was taking place. Murders were committed by foreign terrorists, against the Sunni and Christian communities, in an effort to sow religious and ethnic discord among the Syrian people. While in my experience, the Syrian people were actually very united.


Before the war, this was a harmonious country: a secular state in which different religious communities lived side by side peacefully. There was hardly any poverty, education was free, and health care was good. It was only not possible to freely express your political views. But most people did not care about that."

Bowing to the God of Political Correctness, Macquarie Dictionary has just named "Fake News" as Word of the Year.

In real English, "Fake news" is two words, otherwise known as a phrase. Separately both words have real and easy-to-understand meanings.

Together they have become the the latest meaningless slur as the mainstream media realize they are losing power and influence to the real news on blogs and in the alt-media.

The old-media is trying to stop the bleed by labeling the new media as "fake". Instead of namecalling, the old-media could win easily if it just reported the real news.

When a word that isn't a word wins Word of the Year prize, we know Macquarie has lost it. If any Macquarie products are on your back-to-school booklists, buy something else. Who wants to teach our kids fake English?

This is the latest attempt by wordsmiths to destroy the language honest people use. We need accurate words to slice and dice arguments of parasites, freeloaders, and self-serving fools. "News" used to mean the whole story and all the facts that matter. Fake news is what happens when a reporter hides half the story from their audience.

h/t and thanks to David B.

A group of young Kurds living in the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Erbil, decided to change the stereotypical image of Iraq, as a country devastated by terrorism and serious social problems. One needs to dig a little deeper to see that Iraq is so much more than that.

According to Turkish media reports, a group of 30 young people have created their own fashion movement on social media, or as they call themselves a "gentleman's club," which is aimed at improving the image of their country and carry out a kind of social reform.

The official name of the group on Instagram is "Mr. Erbil" and its primary focus is on fashion in Erbil.

The movement is becoming quite popular on social media as the group has 33 thousand followers to date.

As much of Washington prepared for the inauguration of President Donald Trump, I spent last week on a fact-finding mission in Syria and Lebanon to see and hear directly from the Syrian people. Their lives have been consumed by a horrific war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians and forced millions to flee their homeland in search of peace.

It is clear now more than ever: this regime change war does not serve America's interest, and it certainly isn't in the interest of the Syrian people.

A majority of Americans approve of the "America First" message President Trump conveyed in his inaugural address, according to a new poll.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll finds 65 percent of Americans had a positive reaction to the president's message.

The poll also finds 49 percent of those who watched or heard the president's inauguration speech said it was excellent or good. Only 39 percent thought the speech was fair or poor.

Fifty-one percent of voters thought the speech was "optimistic," 46 percent said it was "presidential" and 44 percent said it was "inspiring."

Sixty-one percent of respondents said they agreed with the president's plan to "buy American and hire American."

After his first few days in office, Trump has an approval rating of 46 percent and a disapproval rating of 37 percent. Another 38 percent say the country is on the right track, and 62 percent say it's on the wrong track.

Native Americans and environmental activists voiced their alarm over President Donald Trump's decision to advance work on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Both projects were reluctantly halted by the Obama administration after many protests.

Keystone XL was intended to speed up the flow of oil from Canada's Alberta tar sands to US refineries, but in November 2015 President Barack Obama declined to approve it, calling it politically controversial.

A social media post went viral after the owner of a knitting shop in Franklin, Tennessee banned shoppers from buying yarn for any project "relating to the recent women's movement," and instructing them "to go elsewhere."

"The vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable. That kind of behavior is unacceptable and is not welcomed at The Joy of Knitting," Elizabeth Poe, the owner of the yarn store, wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. "I will never need that kind of business to remain open. Two wrongs will never, ever make it right."

As a Christian, Poe has a duty to promote "values of mutual respect, love, compassion, understanding, and integrity," she said, but the woman's movement is "counterproductive to unity of family, friends, community and nation."

"I do pray for these women. May God work out His love in their hearts and continue to heal and unite Americans," wrote Poe.

An Ohio father and son facing multiple charges of rape, endangering children and kidnapping have told a court they'll use the bible to defend their case as it's "the only law book that truly matters."

Timothy and Esten Ciboro, who are representing themselves, explained to the judge that they intend to "use God's holy word to ask questions, questions that we believe are absolutely vital to our case," according to the Toledo Blade.

"There's a great deal of strategy in Scripture and I use those strategies in everything I do," Esten Ciboro, 28, told the judge, adding that "it's a vital part of everything I do."

While the court in Toledo, Ohio, accepted the pair may reference the Bible in their defense, the judge refused the use of it for questioning witnesses as it "is not a law book in a court of law."

Russian two-time Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva took to social media to expressed her thoughts on ongoing doping scandal around Russian sport and the way informants choosing to act trying to solve the issues.

Dear friends and colleagues! I would like to express my point of view on the recently appeared doping story video from another informant. I have a question: why don't the informants contact investigating authorities instead of filming material on a hidden camera and then selling it? Why don't they go to the Ministry of sports or anti-doping agency to declare the violations? Why are ALL athletes accused again with no evidence? All around the world the facts of anti-doping violations by certain athletes and their staff are considered as their own personal responsibility. In my opinion, in order to declare "state support of doping", it is necessary to define what the word "state" means: is it the president and his subordinates or is it any citizen of the Russian Federation?!

I AM, BY ALL MEANS, AGAINST DOPING, against those people who violate anti-doping rules, but also I am against those, who with no evidence and reasons it brings together the guilty and the innocent athletes making him/herself a fighter for justice and blaming everybody around, question the existence of clean sports and clean athletes in Russia. And what is typical is that our country and our clean athletes are denigrated exactly by those sportsmen who failed in sports. I declare that clean sport was, is and will be in Russia, and my career is its confirmation. We with my coach had never thought of violations, unlike many western athletes we had never turned to therapeutic exceptions, as even this was considered to be dishonest to our rivals. For us, our health and our reputation are more important than "dirty medals". In our country, there is a huge number of honest professional athletes who will tell about their cleanness themselves. Unfortunately, those sportsmen who have no relation to doping, are suffering because of people who failed in sports, violated anti-doping rules and wanted to earn money in such way.

Now retired from professional sport, Isinbayeva is obviously referring to the latest documentary on alleged state-sponsored doping in Russia, aired by German TV channel ARD, in which a little-known Russian track and field athlete named Andrey Dmitriev accused coach Vladimir Kazarin of secretly working despite being suspended, while claiming most Russian athletes still use performance-enhancing drugs.