monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

One network does propaganda.

A lawyer representing women who say they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein has urged Prince Andrew to co-operate with an investigation into the financier.

Lisa Bloom said the alleged victims were "outraged" by the Duke of York not assisting the US authorities.

It comes after the prosecutor in charge of the US investigation said the duke had provided "zero co-operation".

The prince has said he did not witness or suspect any suspicious behaviour during visits to Epstein's homes.

He told the BBC last November that he was willing to help the authorities into the investigation of Epstein, a convicted sex offender who took his own life in a jail cell in August, aged 66, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.

However, US attorney Geoffrey Berman said prosecutors and the FBI have received no reply after contacting the duke's lawyers.

Israeli citizens are not welcome to visit Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's foreign minister said, after Israel gave its citizens the green light to visit.

Israel's Minister of the Interior Aryeh Deri said on Sunday said Israeli citizens, both Muslims and Jews, have the right to travel to Saudi Arabia for religious and business visits.

But Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told a US network on Monday that Israelis are not welcome at the moment in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites.

Like most Arab countries, Saudi Arabia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

"Our policy is constant. We don't have relations with Israel and holders of Israeli passports cannot visit the kingdom for now," he said, according to CNN's Arabic website.

Deri said Israelis would be allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia under two circumstances: for religious reasons such as a pilgrimage for the Hajj, or for up to 90 days for business reasons.

Travellers would still need permission from Saudi authorities, Deri said.

Israel has peace deals with only two Arab countries - Jordan and Egypt - but its occupation of Palestinian territory has long served as a major factor preventing similar accords with the rest of the Arab world.

Israel has, however, been seeking to build ties with Gulf nations in recent months.

"We strongly encourage the reaching of a solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, said bin Farhan.

"When a peace treaty between the Palestinians and Israel is reached, the question of Israel's integration in the region will be on the table [for negotiations] I believe."

His comments came as US President Donald Trump said in Washington his "Deal of the Century" plan for the Palestinians and Israelis - already rejected by the Palestinians - has a "chance" and will be unveiled on Tuesday.

(...)

There are no moral or intellectual comparisons between Sanders and Trump, but there are structural similarities between the Sanders campaign and the one Trump ran in 2016. Trump thrilled conservatives with his unembarrassed embrace of far-right figures disdained by mainstream Republicans. He inspired alienated men on the internet to mobilize behind him. Party elites wanted to stop him, but his solid core of support allowed him to romp through a fractured field.

The parallels with Sanders are obvious. He’s running a campaign steeped in the ethos of an anti-establishment left, and benefiting from elite Democrats’ failure to coalesce around someone else. He has an enormous online following, with legions of trolls intimidating Democrats who seem to stand in their way. An outsider who long refused to join the party whose nomination he’s seeking, he appeals to people who distrust most political institutions, the mainstream media very much included.

Obviously, Trump won, so there’s something to be said for aping some of his strategies. But the Sanders juggernaut still scares me. As Ezra Klein recently pointed out in The New York Times, the brute demographics of American politics make Democrats more electorally dependent on centrists than Republicans are.

Right now, several polls show Sanders beating Trump, and a few show him beating Trump in some swing states by more than anyone else. Still, I’m terrified that those numbers won’t survive endless attack ads about Sanders’s radical past.

There will most likely be spots showing the 1985 Sandinista rally Sanders attended in Nicaragua, with the crowd chanting, “Here There and Everywhere/ The Yankee Will Die.” The country will see Sanders, speaking after a trip to the Soviet Union, effusively praising its state-sponsored culture.

The economic inequities that Sanders rails against are very real, but most Americans — including most Democrats — say the economy is good, and a fortune would be spent to convince them that Sanders would crash it. Socialism may be newly current among the young, but polls suggest that it’s still anathema to the old.

But Sanders supporters have plenty of reasons to discount these anxieties. Polls are on their side. Their movement feels exhilarating, the fulfillment of their most fervent political hopes in view. Centrist predictions about which candidates are viable have failed over and over again.

(...)

This is the paradox helping to fuel Sanders’s rise: The more he attracts people who are heedless of traditional electability concerns, the more electable he looks.

I'll paraphrase your alarmist article for the slow learners...

You're seriously delusional.

You might have missed how she destroyed her running mate Sanders, decimated the internal leadership of the DNC, and knowingly consorted with paedophiles in her campaign chief Podesta.

Anyone who thinks they landed that thing on the moon, and then dropped it back in the ocean of Earth, isn't too bright.

The US military has confirmed one of its planes crashed in the eastern Afghan province of Ghazni on Monday, but disputed claim that the aircraft had been brought down by the enemy fire.

"While the cause of crash is under investigation, there are no indications the crash was caused by enemy fire," US military spokesman Colonel Sonny Leggett said in a statement.

Leggett gave no information on casualties in the crash.

Pictures and a video on social media purportedly from the crash site showed what could be the remains of a Bombardier E-11A aircraft. The Reuters news agency could not verify the images.

Afghan forces were sent to the site immediately after receiving the report of the crash in the Deh Yak district, but were ambushed by Taliban fighters, Ghazni provincial police chief Khalid Wardak told Reuters.

Wardak said the forces subsequently received an order to retreat and airborne action is to be taken instead.

Confirming the reports of clashes, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said Afghan forces backed by US military had tried to capture the area around the crashed aircraft.

He told Reuters that the Taliban would allow a rescue team access to recover bodies from the crash site.

"Taliban fighters on the ground counted six bodies at the site of the US plane crash," Mujahid said.

The United Nations special envoy to Yemen has called for immediate de-escalation as a drastic surge in fighting threatens to exacerbate the country's long-running war and further complicate a fragile peace process.

The renewed violence between a Saudi-UAE-led military coalition and Houthi rebels has reportedly caused hundreds of casualties since it erupted almost two weeks ago. The coalition backing the internationally recognised government has stepped up air raids on rebel targets northeast of the capital, Sanaa, following a period of relative calm, while the Houthis targeted government-held areas.

"The parties in Yemen must de-escalate violence and renew their commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict," UN envoy Martin Griffiths wrote on Monday on Twitter.

"The Yemeni people deserve better than a life of perpetual war," he said.

Griffiths said the warring sides must fulfil promises and "build a conducive environment for the peace process".

The UN Security Council called emergency consultations for Tuesday at the United Kingdom's request following the escalation of violence. Karen Pierce, the UK's ambassador at the world body, said the council would receive a closed-door video briefing from Griffiths.

The warring factions have concentrated their forces in three main areas: Nehm, a half-hour drive from Sanaa; Jawf, a mountainous northern district; and Marib, a western province that saw one of the deadliest incidents earlier this month when a missile attack on a government military camp killed more than 100 people.

Houthis blamed after scores of Yemen soldiers killed in attack (1:28)
Fighting this week was the most intense those provinces had seen in three years, according to observers.

A wave of more than 40 coalition air raids hit rebel targets, destroying many of their tanks and armoured vehicles, Houthi officials told The Associated Press news agency. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Despite heavy losses on both sides, the Houthis are gaining ground, officials told the AP. Rebels seized a key supply line linking Marib with Jawf and were approaching the capital of the northwestern province.

Fighting also flared up on Monday in the large government-controlled city of Taiz, where a mortar shell fired by Houthis struck a busy market, killing three civilians and wounding 10, according to the AP. Meanwhile, heavy clashes in the central province of Bayda killed 13 fighters on both sides.

For months, back-channel negotiations in Oman between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis stirred modest hopes for reconciliation. But sharply escalating violence has put the political process on shaky ground.

Peter Salisbury, the Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG), said the Houthis may be using their military successes to gain leverage before talks resume next week in Oman.

"Both sides seem to want some sort of truce," Salisbury said. "But the danger is that if the Houthis feel they're on the front foot, they'll keep pressing advances and that will make these negotiations very difficult."

In a report published on Friday, the ICG said the Houthis "appeared to be making the biggest gains on the battlefield".

The think-tank warned that if the renewed fighting spread, it would be "a devastating blow to current efforts to end the war".

Yemen's conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead, mainly civilians, and triggered what the UN has said is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Israeli citizens are not welcome to visit Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's foreign minister said, after Israel gave its citizens the green light to visit.

Still, I’m terrified that those numbers won’t survive endless attack ads about Sanders’s radical past.

Sanders hasn't had to face anything like what will come at him if he's the nominee.

Even if X is true, the President remains unimpeachable.

Take heart! The Repukes are going to try and character-assassinate any dem candidate.

...So Mr. Bolton’s motives for potentially undermining the president position may, at first blush, seem confusing. But there may be a method to the madness — four of them, in fact.

...But there’s one more motive: personal ambition. This is not a man known for his humility. Don’t forget that Mr. Bolton harbors presidential dreams; he came close to a run in 2015, and he maintains a political action committee, through which he doles out money to Republican politicians. And even if Mr. Bolton has let that particular dream die, it’s unlikely that he has hung up his government spurs — instead, he may judge that the Trump ship is sinking and figure that Mr. Bolton might as well accelerate the process and try to position himself for a post in the next administration

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was formally indicted on corruption charges Tuesday, just hours before he was set to meet President Donald Trump for the unveiling of the US administration's long-anticipated Middle East plan.

Netanyahu has been charged with bribery and fraud and breach of trust in three separate corruption cases. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit submitted the indictment in Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday shortly after Netanyahu withdrew his request for parliamentary immunity, a request he was almost certain to lose.
Netanyahu has insisted he is innocent, calling the investigations an "attempted coup" driven by the left and the media.

And the neoconservative camp which includes many very senior Republicans mostly abandoned Trump long ago for reasons which Bolton will share.