Medical authorities in al-Anbar province in Western Iraq report a sharp rise in the number of registered cases of cancer diagnosis as a result of the US military's use of banned munitions at the time of occupation.

"The radiation of prohibited ammunition used during the US occupation of Iraq is the most important cause for the heightened number of cancer patients in al-Anbar province," an oncologist in the province was quoted as saying by the Arabic-language Afaq news channel on Wednesday.

He noted that people in al-Anbar are facing different problems risen from the Americans' use of banned weapons and munitions, and said that cancer is a disease whose treatment is much costly, while people in the province cannot afford it, and even the few that could bear the huge expenses are facing shortage of cancer drugs.

The US troops used white phosphorus in the offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja in 2004, the US said.

For years, reformers have been pushing for changes to the Italian government structure that would, among other changes, reduce the number of seats held by lawmakers. Back in October, Giuseppe Conte's coalition government voted in favor of a plan to reduce the number of lower house members from 630 to 400, and the number of senators from 315 to 200.

Throughout modern political history, examples of legislative bodies voluntarily accepting reforms that would knowingly curtail the powers and privileges of its members are few and far between, and Italy is no exception. Not long after the vote, a group of mostly opposition members tried to crash the government and hold a new snap election to save their seats. I mean, what other choice did they have? They're politicians...do you really expect them to go out and get a real job?

Of course not.

Prince Charles is scheduled to visit the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel for the first time in January, Clarence House announced in a statement yesterday.

On behalf of the British government, the Prince of Wales will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, where the heir to the throne will “undertake engagements”.

His five-day trip will begin in Amman, the capital of Jordan, at the end of January and end in Jerusalem.

Canada voted in favour of a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution supporting the Palestinian right to self-determination yesterday, in a defeat for pro-Israel groups.

The General Assembly adopted the resolution by 167 votes to five, with 11 abstentions, with only Israel, the United States, in addition to US-dependent Pacific island states Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Nauru, voting against the text.

The resolution reaffirms “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including to their independent State of Palestine”, urging states and UN agencies “to continue to support and assist Palestinians in the early realization of their right to self-determination”, stated the UN press release.

With the increase in the frequency of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, there is Palestinian and Israeli increased Israeli and Palestinian talk of the resistance’s “target banks” against Israel. This is for the resistance to go beyond launching rockets at Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope, which it has done in the past years, and targeting Israeli gas platforms off the shores of the Gaza Strip. This would cause Israel significant economic losses, as it earns $18 billion annually from the gas in the Mediterranean Sea.

The following lines identify the capabilities of the Palestinian resistance to attack Israeli oil installations in the Mediterranean, instead of attacking Israeli cities with rockets, although Hamas fired rockets towards these platforms in the 2014 war, how Israel will respond, what means Hamas will use to target the platforms: missiles, Drones, or sea mines, and whether Hamas aspires to get a share of the gas off the coast of Gaza?

I first met Ibrahim al-Dabous when he came to paint my home.

It was about a year ago. I was introduced to him by my cousin Muhammad Ashour, an interior decorator.

Ibrahim was reticent. It wasn’t until his second day working in my home that I heard him speak.

Despite how quiet he was, Ibrahim could be very funny. When he cracked a joke, everyone in the room would laugh.

It took Ibrahim and my cousin approximately a week to paint my home. During their last day doing that job, we had a conversation about Israel’s major offensive against Gaza in the summer of 2014.

I was taken aback when Ibrahim told me that Israel had destroyed his newly built home that summer.

Chris Williamson announced on Tuesday he would launch a fighting fund for left-wingers smeared and harassed by false allegations of anti-Semitism.

A former Labour member of the UK’s Parliament, Williamson was pushed out of the party earlier this year.

The legal fighting fund is being established thanks to a crowdfunding campaign and a legal victory by Williamson and his supporters.

“We’ll keep defending our comrades by any means necessary,” Williamson promised in a video posted to social media on Tuesday.

In June of this year we examined why the United States will not attack Iran subsequent to raised tensions in the region. Six months later on the cusp of 2020, the United States has not attacked Iran militarily … yet. However, Defense Secretary Esper just threatened to deploy 14K more US mercenary* troops to the Middle East. So, let’s examine current US / Israeli intent regarding Iran again by looking at individual tactical elements which may contribute to an overall strategic picture.

One case in point is al Tanf in southeast Syria which lies near the Jordanian and Iraqi borders. The US illegally occupies al Tanf in its claim to prevent resurgence of the ‘caliphate’ – an ISIS construct indirectly created by the United States by proxy – and the truth is quite otherwise.

London has the highest concentration of homeless people according to Shelter who also says that "wider definitions of homelessness would result in far more people being counted".

Homelessness in England continues to rise according to the latest information gathered by one of the UK’s leading charities. Shelter says that their “analysis of government data” shows the number of homeless people has increased by 23,000 to 280,000 homeless people since 2016. This reflects a 9% overall increase in homelessness and an 11% increase in "rough sleepers" specifically.

The Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency said that employees of Sputnik Estonia received letters from the Baltic country’s Police and Border Guard Board with a warning of possible criminal prosecution unless they stopped working for the news agency by 1 January 2020.

Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) should be dismantled if the employees of Sputnik Estonia were jailed.

“Estonia officially threatens to jail our journalists unless they resign. If the authorities of this country were not stopped, the OSCE, the ECHR and any other European organization responsible for [protecting] the freedom of expression should dissolve themselves”, Simonyan wrote in her Telegram channel.

An identified gunman opened fire in Central Moscow near the headquarters of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on Thursday evening. As a result of the incident, at least one person has been killed.

The FSB said that a suspected perpetrator who opened fire in central Moscow has been eliminated, his identity is currently being determined. The shootout has reportedly resulted in the deaths of three persons.

A pro-NATO Czech think tank has another piece of unsolicited advice for Western governments. Now they should refuse to give access or interviews to Russian media, who are ”not real journalists”, according to the ”wise censor”.
At first blush, the ‘Kremlin Watch Strategy’ paper published last week by the Prague-based ‘European Values Center for Security Policy’ sounds like another self-serving attempt to cash in on the anti-Russian hysteria that has gripped many a Western capital for the past several years.

There are some two dozen mentions of “funding,” mostly in the context of urging the European Union to spend more money on “independent” NGOs – such as themselves, obviously – to battle “hostile Russian interference” the authors see under every bed.

Thousands of pro-Catalan independence protesters gathered at Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium for a heated demonstration amid the highly anticipated El Clasico match of La Liga. It ended in clashes and a tough police response.
The crowd of demonstrators filled the streets around the stadium on Wednesday, blocking a major avenue and disrupting traffic as they shouted pro-independence slogans and waved banners, despite a heavy police presence in the area.

The International Association of Exorcists (AIE) took the rare step of warning parents about ‘A Children’s Book of Demons,’ a book teaching kids as young as five how to summon demons to help with problems like bullies and chores.

The bizarre book, published earlier this year, shows children aged five to 10 how to summon various multi-limbed, razor-toothed evil spirits to solve their problems using a series of simple symbols (easy to draw for little hands!).

Dinner unappealing? Summon a demon to turn it into cookies. Don’t want to go to school? Summon a demon to make you sick. The exorcists are livid.

If the prophets of technology are to be believed, the best hope for solving the climate crisis is ever more efficient batteries. But the race to produce enough materials for this energy-storage revolution is creating a host of other environmental problems, as cobalt-producing nations like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia and Cuba are discovering.

Lung disease and heart failure have been linked to high levels of this element, while the mines that produce it are blamed for devastated landscapes, water pollution, contaminated crops and a loss of soil fertility. Scientists are also investigating a possible link to cancer.

A landmark legal case has been launched against the world’s largest tech companies by Congolese families who say their children were killed or maimed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops and electric cars, the Guardian can reveal.

Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by human rights firm International Rights Advocates on behalf of 14 parents and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The lawsuit accuses the companies of aiding and abetting in the death and serious injury of children who they claim were working in cobalt mines in their supply chain.

The families and injured children are seeking damages for forced labour and further compensation for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell addressed the House voting to impeach President Donald Trump from the Senate floor and said the effort is “rushed” and unlike any other in history.

Speaking from the Senate floor on Thursday morning, McConnell blasted the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump as “the most rushed, least thorough and most unfair” in American history.

House Dems were celebratory on Wednesday night after passing articles of impeachment against Trump. The charges are abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. McConnell said the standard for the charges are based on a “pandora’s box of subjective political impeachment” and they set a “toxic” precedent.

After passing extremely restrictive anti-gun legislation in early 2020, Virginia has a plan to deploy roadblocks at both the county and state levels to confiscate firearms from law-abiding citizens (at gunpoint, of course) as part of a deliberate effort to spark a shooting war with citizens, sources are now telling Natural News.

Some might choose to dismiss such claims as speculation, but these sources now say that Virginia has been chosen as the deliberate flashpoint to ignite the civil war that’s being engineered by globalists. Their end game is to unleash a sufficient amount of violence to call for UN occupation of America and the overthrow of President Trump and the republic. Such action will, of course, also result in the attempted nationwide confiscation of all firearms from private citizens, since all gun owners will be labeled “domestic terrorists” if they resist. Such language is already being used by Democrat legislators in the state of Virginia.

Last night the Speaker of the House of Representatives declared: “We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side, and I would hope that that will be soon,” Pelosi said.

“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us, so hopefully it will be fairer and when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”

In other words, Pelosi will not do her constitutional duty in passing the articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate unless she is convinced the process will go the way her Democrat colleagues want it to.

Two Floridians have been charged with starving their 18-month-old son to death.

The child weighed only 17 pounds, according to a Cape Coral police report. Experts said that's in line with what a 7-month-old should weigh.

On Wednesday, a Lee County Grand Jury indicted Ryan Patrick O'Leary, 30, and Sheila O'Leary, 35, on charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, child abuse and two counts of child neglect.

A federal judge Monday night allowed Georgia to move ahead with a purge of over 300,000 voters deemed "inactive" by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, sparking outrage from rights advocates who accused the GOP of an illegal voter suppression effort ahead of the 2020 elections.

"Georgians should not lose their right to vote simply because they have not expressed that right in recent elections, and Georgia's practice of removing voters who have declined to participate in recent elections violates the United States Constitution," said Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

Abrams lost to Republican Brian Kemp, the former Georgia Secretary of State who was widely accused of spearheading a mass voter suppression scheme before the 2018 election.

The Syrian Army has finalized military preparations and is awaiting orders to launch a large-scale ground operation in Greater Idlib, according to reports by Syrian media. The operation will allegedly be aimed at liberating the militant-held part of the M5 highway.

Together with the separation of terrorists from the so-called “moderate opposition”, the reopening of the highway is one the key terms of the Idlib de-escalation agreement. Nonetheless, diplomatic efforts and peaceful measures did not achieve enough progress and Greater Idlib remained the hotbed of the terrorism in the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that a global arms race is inevitable if the US and Russia do not agree to extend the ten-year Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which is due to expire in early 2021.
Speaking at a Q&A session with reporters in Moscow on Thursday, Putin said that Russia stands ready “to simply renew the existing New START agreement,” even if it happens as fast as by the end of this year.

They can send us the [agreement] tomorrow, or we can sign and send it to Washington. Let their designated official sign it too, including the president, if they’re ready to do so.

“But so far our proposals have been left unanswered” by the US, Putin stressed.

If the New START ceases to exist, nothing in the world will hold back an arms race. I believe this is bad.

Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the three lying Administrations. They were part of the big lie, falsely presenting to the American people as “expert” witnesses only those bought-and-paid-for Beltway neocon think tankers.

What is even more shocking than the release of this “smoking gun” evidence that the US government wasted two trillion dollars and killed more than three thousand Americans and more than 150,000 Afghans while lying through its teeth about the war is that you could hear a pin drop in the mainstream media about it. Aside from the initial publication in the Washington Post, which has itself been a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan, the mainstream media has shown literally no interest in what should be the story of the century.

In order to bring home the significance of the Persian Gulf’s oil in the energy-starved industrialized world, here are a few stats from the OPEC data: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of 265 billion barrels and its daily oil production is 10 million barrels; Iran and Iraq each has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day each; while UAE and Kuwait each has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3 million barrels per day each; thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold 788 billion barrels, more than half of world’s 1477 billion barrels proven oil reserves.

A businessman who helped broker a meeting between an ally of President Donald Trump and an official of the Russian government has been indicted for allegedly funneling millions in illegal campaign contributions to support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

George Nader, who was charged in another case earlier this year with child trafficking and transporting child pornography, was one of seven people named in an indictment unsealed in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday night involving the campaign payments.

Nader, 60, is charged with funneling money to Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, 48, of Los Angeles in order to circumvent federal election laws that restrict the amount of donations from a specific individual and where that money is actually coming from, prosecutors say.

George Nader was charged earlier this year with child trafficking and transporting child pornography.