BREAKING WORLDWIDE

Tom Hanks is disheartened by America’s presidential election — but the Oscar-winning actor is particularly dismayed by Republican hopeful Donald Trump. Hanks was in Rome to accept the lifetime achievement award at the Rome Film Festival this week when he weighed in on U.S. politics with reporters ahead of the event, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “It strikes me as ‘crapfest 2016,’” the two-time Oscar-winning actor told reporters, according to THR. “Every four years the circus comes to town in the United States. Every four years we decide who’s going to be the leader. Sometimes we’re in an era when it seems that the country is at a crossroads. It’s always at some form of crossroads. Oftentimes there is a fever pitch of fear and anxiety. Sometimes it’s warranted, and other times it’s manufactured.” Despite the seemingly more-contentious-than-usual presidential race, Hanks said he has faith that the American people will make the right decision in November. “I think without a doub...

In this video, Rachel Blevins looks at how the mainstream media has used recent stories about Donald Trump to coverup bombshell stories about Hillary Clinton.

DETECTIVES INVESTIGATING CREEPY CLOWN SIGHTINGS        

The suspect in the killing of two police officers Saturday afternoon allegedly told his father he wanted to kill cops moments before the gunfire began. Frances Serrano, who lives directly across the street from where the shooting took place, spoke to the father of the suspected shooter moments before the incident. The father told Serrano that his son, who has mental issues, had a gun and wanted to shoot police officers. “He came over and asked for help,” she said. Serrano called the police and the father walked back toward his house. Soon after, Serrano heard gunshots. 2 Officers Killed, 1 Wounded In Palm Springs Shooting; Suspect At Large Update from Associated Press: PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — The Latest on the shooting of three police officers in Palm Springs. (all times local): 6:45 p.m. Police Chief Bryan Reyes says SWAT officers have surrounded a house in Palm Springs, California where the man who fatally shot two officers may still be inside. Reyes says h...

A group of activists discovered a mass grave with more than 600 human remains in Mexico's Coahuila region, local media reported on Sunday. MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) — The activists who searched for their missing relatives handed over the bodies to local human remains to local authorities for identification. Coahuila region is destabilized by skirmishes between numerous criminal groups trying to gain control over regional drug traffic. With nearly 1,800 people gone missing in the region, over 455 bodies have been discovered buried in mass graves for the last five years .

The US military is reportedly in talks with Boeing Defense, Space & Security over the terms of a $3.3 billion contract to purchase 275 AH-64E Apache helicopters. This comes a month after US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter approved the Army’s proposed multiyear procurement plan. Col. Jeffrey Hager, the Apache program manager, told Inside Defense that a signed agreement can be expected by early 2017. The Senate and House versions of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act have both been approved, but concerns over the cost efficiency of production and procurement programs has kept any bill from being passed. Loading... The director of defense pricing for the Pentagon's acquisition directorate, Shay Assad, approved the Apache proposal. Assad told Politico in April that his years spent as an executive at Raytheon showed him how companies often overpay for multi-year defense contracts. As a result, Assad claims th...

NATO has rejected air-safety proposals made by Russia which would have ensured all military planes flying in the Baltic region would operate with their transponders switched on. This makes no sense. According to the Wall Street Journal, NATO officials said the proposals “would do little to improve” air safety — a strange response, given that NATO has repeatedly scolded Russia for allegedly flying its military jets over the Baltic with transponders switched off. Headlines about ‘dangerous’ and ‘unsafe’ Russian military flights have been ten-a-penny over the last couple of years. Such stories have become so ubiquitous — and the media so obsessed with blowing them out of proportion — that at one point a woman in Cornwall became convinced that she saw Russian bombers overhead one day when she was out for a driving lesson. One would imagine then, given NATO’s repeated criticisms and concerns over safety in the Baltic region, that they would have welcomed any kind of common-sense prop...

Bowing to demands for greater transparency into the circumstances surrounding a fatal shooting that sparked protests in Charlotte, North Carolina this week, the city’s police department on Saturday released video of the deadly encounter recorded by its officers. Kerr Putney, chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, told reporters that the video was recored on two police cameras — one mounted on the dashboard of a police car and another on the uniform of an officer — after an undercover unit observed Keith Lamont Scott sitting in his car on Tuesday afternoon with marijuana and a gun. “When you are in possession of marijuana and then you have a gun, that’s a public safety issue that our officers were going to address,” Putney said. Neither of the video clips makes it clear if Scott was, in fact, holding a gun when he was shot, but it does appear to cast doubt on previous statements from the police that he posed an imminent threat to their safety, since he appears to have ...

Our day job is to read about Russia-related stuff and then write about it. So imagine our surprise when we learned that "a NATO air chief says he's concerned by Russia's increasing deployment of surface-to-air missile systems in and around Europe." That's huge! Russia deployed the S-400 to Prague? When did this happen? And what is Russia hoping to gain by deploying surface-to-air systems into the heart of NATO-controlled Europe? We had so many questions in need of answers. Originally appeared at russia-insider. loading... In recent years, the Russian military has deployed S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems not only within Russia and Kaliningrad, the Russian city in a territory between Poland and Lithuania, but Crimea and areas encircling the Ukraine, and even Latakia, Syria. A lot of redundant information here. Let's help our friends at Military.com: After editing out the decorative bullshit, we get: In recent years, ...

She's BEAUTIFUL! Introducing Dusty Rose Levine! Adam and wife Behati Prinsloo welcomed their first kid this week -- and just shared the ADORABLE first photo!

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has vetoed a bill that would have allowed the families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia. The move sets Obama up for a possible first veto override by Congress. Both chambers passed the bill by voice vote. The House sent Obama the bill just before the 15th anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. Obama says the bill would “upset longstanding international principles regarding sovereign immunity.” The bill would have given 9/11 families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the attacks. Fifteen of the 19 men who carried out the attacks were Saudi nationals.

What, precisely, is the US military for, and what, precisely, can it do? In practical terms, how powerful is it? On paper, it is formidable, huge, with carrier battle groups, advanced technology, remarkable submarines, satellites, and so on. What does this translate to? Military power does not exist independently, but only in relation to specific circumstances. Comparing technical specifications of the T-14 to those of the M1A2, or Su-34 to F-15, or numbers of this to numbers of that, is an interesting intellectual exercise. It means little without reference to specific circumstances. For example, America is vastly superior militarily to North Korea in every category of arms–but the North has nuclear bombs. It can’t deliver them to the US, but probably can to Seoul. Even without nuclear weapons, it has a large army and large numbers of artillery tubes within range of Seoul. It has an unpredictable government. As Gordon Liddy said, if your responses to provocation are wildly out ...

The September parliamentary elections in Russia resulted in a big win for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ruling United Russia party gained an absolute majority of seats. All other parties represented in the parliament back the national leader. With the broad support he enjoys at home, the Russian president is becoming more and more popular abroad. For instance, US GOP candidate Donald Trump consistently says kind words for Vladimir V. Putin, who is often demonized by American media. Contrary to all predictions, this stance only fuelled the Trump’s popularity among American voters. According to an August 2016 YouGov / Economist poll, only 27 per cent of registered Republicans have a negative view of the Russian president, compared with 66 per cent two years ago. Eighty-five per cent of Republicans say they view Mr. Putin to be a strong leader, while just 18 per cent of Republicans say the same of Barack Obama. Among voters backing Mr. Trump, the Russian president’s approval ra...

Yahoo has confirmed rumors of a data breach compromising the account information of “at least 500 million user[s]” in what appears to be the largest hack of all time, surpassing the Myspace hack of 2013 . Tech site Recode first reported the hack Thursday morning after being tipped off by “several sources close to the situation.” They predicted an official announcement from the company would be released sometime this week.The statement , posted at 2:28 EST Thursday, speculates the information was stolen by a “state-sponsored actor,” a term used to describe an unidentified person or entity working on behalf of a government to allegedly “gain information about their targets, or access to their targets through trusted relationships with the third party company.” Yahoo’s claim has not been confirmed, but an investigation is underway. According to their press release: “A recent investigation by Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has confirmed that a copy of certain user account information ...

After United Russia's landslide election victory, rumors abound Putin now feels he has a mandate to create a single Ministry for State Security from the FSB (Federal Security Service), the FSO (Federal Protective Service) and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) The author is a popular and well informed Russian blogger. The Ministry for State Security (MGB) is set to be inaugurated before the Russian presidential elections in 2018, the newspaper Kommersant writes , referring to a confidential source. The new super-agency will be based at the Federal Security Service, which will take back the functions of the Committee for State Security (KGB) of the USSR. It will consist of the Foreign Intelligence Service and most of the units of the Federal Protective Service, which will continue as the Presidential Security Service, responsible for communication and transportation of high officials. The new ministry will not just investigate criminal cases initiated by the Investigative Com...

Modern medical technology has granted doctors the ability to transplant many of the body’s organs, extending the life of people suffering from chronic diseases. But what about replacing all the organs at once along with the body they are in? That’s science fiction right now, but Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero (pictured, top) says he plans to do the first human head transplant next year. This isn’t the first time he’s made this claim, but now he’s got a volunteer lined up and has explained in more detail how he thinks the procedure will go. If this sounds suspicious, there’s good reason. There’s plenty of reason to be skeptical. It’s easy to see the appeal of a head transplant in theory. If it were possible and reasonably safe, you could cure almost any disease, except for neurological ones. You’d be replacing a person’s entire complement of organs, their immune system, their joints, and everything else that causes problems as we age. Canavero’s first volunteer, Valery Spiridon...

The "blame Russia!" narrative is collapsing — again. We knew we were in for a real treat when the United States announced that Russia had bombed a U.N. aid convoy in Syria. What a terrible crime against humanity, timed perfectly to distract from the fact that, for lack of a better term, the U.S. was caught giving air support to ISIS . As always, Russia is guilty until proven deserving of more sanctions. Of course, even a casual news consumer will quickly recognize that the "Russia did it!" narrative is severely lacking. Let's see how Reuters frames this terrible (Russian) crime: Two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were in the skies above the aid convoy at the exact time it was struck late on Monday, two U.S. officials told Reuters, citing U.S. intelligence that led them to conclude Russia was to blame. Oh, and look what we have here. The BBC says it was a helicopter attack: But here's the best part of this terrible Russian helicopter/fight...

Bloomberg Politics correspondent  Jennifer Epstein is the bravest, most hard-hitting journalist since William Randolph Hearst; she's a fearless trailblazer who carves massive truth canyons into America's endless plains of bullshit and complacency. Watch her  grill Hillary Clinton without remorse: Are you concerned that this weekend's attack — or, potential incidents in the coming weeks — might be an attempt by ISIS, or ISIS sympathizers, or any other group, maybe Russian, um, to influence the presidential race in some way, and presumably to drive votes to Donald Trump [...]? Experience this historic moment for yourself, compliments of CNN:

Clinton has been using her "dehydration" story for years. This time it won't work. The media is already working around the clock to hush up questions about Hillary's rapidly deteriorating health. She overheated has allergies pneumonia! She'll be back on her feet soon, citizen. End of discussion. Anyone who says otherwise is a Looney Tune. (Remember that just a week ago the media shamed anyone who even suggested that Hillary Clinton might be sick.)  We don't buy it . Commenting on Clinton's latest "medical episode", Dr. Zuhdi Jasser M.D. observed : “What she had was a syncopal episode. She passed out. That’s either cardiovascular or neurologic. Now, her team wants us to believe it is dehydration. She didn’t appear to be dehydrated and that doesn’t get fixed in 90 minutes.” There's a very good reason why Bill has already replaced his wife on the campaign trail : Hillary Clinton is suffering from advanced stages of Parkinson's. And it...

"Reasonable people can — and will — have real questions about [Hillary Clinton's] health," writes the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, who just last week dismissed any and all speculations regarding Hillary's health as nutty conspiracy theories. What has changed? During a somber 9/11 memorial service in Lower Manhattan, Clinton suffered from what  her staffers described as "overheating". (We thought reptiles like the sun?) As she was escorted back to her armada of black vans, Clinton apparently lost consciousness (and a shoe): From a different angle: Slow motion: Three quick takeaways from this "medical episode": 1. As Cilliza grumpily points out , "reporters — or even a reporter — were not allowed to follow her" to her car. In other words: The press were told to stay in their press pen. They didn't have to. They did it because they're slobbering, obedient ingrates. Without the di...