The CIA drew a hail of ridicule and incomprehension when it unexpectedly posted a Twitter thread dedicated to the hit superhero film Black Panther. Some Twitter users even suspected the spy agency had been hacked.

The Central Intelligence Agency's Twitter account launched into the bizarre thread during Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony, quizzing their 2.5 million followers on all things Wakanda - the fictional, high-tech, African country in the Marvel movie.

The agency announced that they had enlisted the help of a mysterious "top CIA scientist" named "Rebecca" to discuss Wakanada's technological advances and the feasibility of translating them to real life.

The Debt Settlement Fund has announced that Dh361 million worth of loans of 3,310 Emiratis have been waived off in cooperation with 13 banks.

Jaber Mohammad Ganem Al Suwaidi, general-director of the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi and chairman of the Supreme Committee of the Debt Settlement Fund, said that the gesture is part of the UAE leadership's keenness to ensure a decent life for all Emiratis and the highest possible level of social stability.

The national banks that waived the debts included Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank, RAKBANK, Al Hilal Bank, Union National Bank, Noor Bank, Emirates Islamic, Commercial Bank of Dubai, Sharjah Islamic Bank, and Arab Bank for Investment & Foreign Trade (Al Masraf).

Al Suwaidi noted that the initiative is especially important as it coincides with the 'Year of Tolerance' announced by President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, pointing out that it aims to make tolerance a sustainable institutional work expressed through practical initiatives.

The Venezuela 'regime change' bandwagon rolls on, with the Western media doing its best to create the 'reality' where millions of Venezuelans are starving or fleeing the country, no one supports the Maduro government because he is a 'brutal dictator', and everyone loves the new US-appointed leader Juan Guaido. This is 'Iraqi WMDs' redux, it's Qaddafi 'bombing his own people' rehashed, Assad 'using chemical weapons against his own people', all revisited and retooled for Venezuela.

The first physical salvos in this latest chapter of the globalists' war on normal human beings were fired yesterday when US stooges set fire to 3 trucks carrying 'humanitarian aid' at the Colombia-Venezuela border crossing. For good measure, a handful of 'defectors' from the Venezuelan Gendarmerie rammed border barriers with armored vehicles, seriously injuring several people. Western media outlets tried to claim that the trucks were set on fire by Venezuelan security forces firing tear gas canisters, but the culprits were undoubtedly US/Guaido agents tasked with creating the right 'optics' to support the bogus narrative that the Western media has been pushing for months. In the southeast of the country, near the border with Brazil, clashes broke out between opposing factions and 4 people were killed as 'unknown gunmen' fired on the crowds. In short, for anyone familiar with the details of the previous 68 coups carried out by US governments around the world, the situation in Venezuela is following the worn-out playbook, line for line.

Meanwhile in France, the 15th consecutive weekend of Yellow Vest protests took place with no sign of diminishing numbers. The much-hated Macron government has repeatedly tried and failed to tarnish the image of the protestors. First they were labeled 'far-right extremists', then they were denounced as 'Russian agents', but now the 'big guns' have been brought out and, according to much of the Western media, the Yellow Vest protestors are, to a man and woman, 'dirty anti-semites'. Someone should tell Macron that when you have to resort to such discredited canards, you really should cut your losses and admit defeat. There's little chance of the 'Princes of Paris' doing that, however; they (and most of the Western elite) have spent many years increasing and consolidating their power, and the very last thing they will do at this stage is relinquish even a small part of it.

On this week's NewsReal podcast, Joe & Niall discuss the 'revolutions' in Venezuela (1st hour) and France (last 20 minutes).


Running Time: 01:19:17

Download: MP3

A police force which rejected a potential star recruit because he is a white heterosexual male has been found guilty of discrimination.

Matthew Furlong, 25, whose father is a serving detective inspector in Cheshire Police, had hoped to follow in his footsteps when he applied to join the force in 2017.

After making it through to the interview stage, he said he was told "it was refreshing to meet someone as well prepared as yourself" and that he "could not have done any more".

But he was later told he had lost out to other candidates, leading his father to lodge a complaint.

Someone has published the decryption key for the third layer of allegedly 9/11-linked documents from The Dark Overlord hacking group.

Right at the tail end of 2018, Motherboard reported that a hacking group called The Dark Overlord had stolen files related to litigation around the 9/11 attacks, and dumped a selection of them online.

The release of the files was part of an extortion scheme against The Dark Overlord's hacking victims, and followed the group's established technique of stealing information and then approaching media outlets with the files in an attempt to exert further pressure on the group's targets. The Dark Overlord also distributed a set of encrypted folders, ready to be unlocked at a later date, and which they claimed contained more 9/11-linked material.

Now, around two months after the first data dump, someone has released another encryption key for the third layer of stolen material, which appears to contain thousands of emails, at least some of which are between different law firms.

• Two women who were formerly employed by Planned Parenthood and one woman who did work for the abortion organization shared their stories with The Daily Caller News Foundation in a series of interviews.
• Planned Parenthood schedules later abortions to make a profit, encourages sex, violates policies and does not keep young women safe, the former workers said.
• Planned Parenthood bars workers from speaking about traumatic events and fires workers who don't schedule enough abortions, according to the women.

Planned Parenthood employees and educators "celebrate" abortion and do not protect young women, former employees told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a series of interviews revealing graphic details about their tenures with the organization.

Myra Kincaid worked as a surgical assistant at a Planned Parenthood in Baltimore, Maryland, from February 2013 to February 2014, she said. Planned Parenthood called Kincaid shortly before she graduated college to recruit her, Kincaid told TheDCNF. She previously worked as a pharmacy technician and was in school to become a medical assistant.

Kincaid said Planned Parenthood didn't emphasize abortion at the beginning of her employment and told her the organization provided services for women like cancer screenings, but shortly thereafter, she was "thrown right into the surgical room where they perform the abortions, and that's because they were so short-staffed that they had to rush me through training."

NATO's propaganda wing suggests Russia is experiencing a "Putin exodus." Is it true or is the Atlantic Council just pushing a narrative?

The pressure group is currently advertising a US-government backed 'Disinfo Week', with seminars in Belgium, Greece and Spain next month. Ironically, at the same time its own lobbyists have decided to concoct some misleading headlines of their own.

This is the only explanation for a bizarre report which suggests Russia is currently suffering from an exceptional "brain drain."

A contention which flies in the face of facts, given the country has one of the lowest emigration rates in Europe. Indeed, Russians are around four times less likely to depart their homeland than Brits, for example.

More than $19 million worth of cocaine was found inside a shipment of pineapples that arrived at a Georgia port from Colombia, authorities said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Port of Savannah came across the shipment in November, the agency said in a statement released last week. They found 450 packages that weighed over 1,150 pounds hidden within the fresh produce.

"This was an outstanding interception of narcotics by our CBP officers, "said Lisa Beth Brown, Savannah Area Port Director for the agency. "This seizure is a positive enforcement action against drug smuggling organizations and highlights the important work our officers do each day to stop illegal activity at our borders and ports of entry."

The shipment originated in the coastal city of Cartagena. An investigation into the drugs is ongoing. No arrests have been made.

On a typical day, customs agents seize over 5,000 pounds of drugs, according to the agency.

Israel has approved some 4,000 new settlement units as part of a massive settlement project spanning across occupied East Jerusalem and into West Jerusalem, Israeli media reported.

Jerusalem's planning and construction committee approved the project earlier this week, paving the way for 4,416 housing new units in the city.

According to local reports, units will be built in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina, 464 in the Gilo settlement which is built on the lands of the Beit Jala town in Bethlehem, and 480 units in the West Jerusalem neighborhoods of Kiryat Yuval and Kiryat Menachem.

Update, 19 February

Israeli soldier Mor Ostrovski subsequently deleted his Instragram account after the global attention his image received. However we have now posted screen captures of his account below showing the main account page and the sniper photo in its original context.

Original Post

This disturbing image shows the back of the head of a child or young man as seen in the crosshairs of a rifle. The photo was posted on the personal Instagram account of Mor Ostrovski, a 20-year old Israeli soldier in a sniper unit.

The context - particularly the character of the buildings seen in the background of the image - strongly suggests the child could be Palestinian.

There are no other images to suggest that the photographer actually fired at the person in the image in this case. The image is simply tasteless and dehumanizing. It embodies the idea that Palestinian children are targets.