The US destroyer is equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles and is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles launched from enemy submarines.

The US Navy's guided-missile destroyer the USS Ross (DDG-71) arrived at the port of Batumi on Sunday, a statement by the US Embassy in Georgia said. This is the first visit by the vessel to Georgia.

"Our allies in Europe still contribute greatly to the Black Sea region's security. The crew and I are looking forward to see the improvement of military compatibility in a dynamic environment and to get familiar with the region's history and culture", the destroyer's commander, Dave Coles, said, as quoted by the US Embassy's press service.

While London almost immediately blamed Moscow for being behind the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK city of Salisbury in March 2018, Russia has strongly rejected its involvement, stressing it's been denied access both to the investigation into the incident and the Russian nationals affected.

On 16th April, the New York Times published a glowing profile of Gina Haspel, who in May 2018 became the seventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The article referred to Haspel — the former head of a CIA 'black site' in Thailand at which an indeterminate number of suspected terrorists were viciously tortured — as an "adept tactician" blessed with "good listening, empathy and an ability to connect", and discussed the difficulties the intelligence chief faced in ensuring "her voice is heard at the White House", due to the intransigence of President Donald Trump, whose administration treats national security professionals "with deep skepticism".

Thirteen suspects have been arrested as the death toll from the horrific church and hotel attacks in Sri Lanka climbed to 290 people, with no group claiming responsibility. RT sums up what we know so far of the tragedy.

As early results show West-backed President Petro Poroshenko looks certain to be defeated by comic Volodymyr Zelensky, US and EU officials have queued up to congratulate the political rookie, all looking for “strong partnership.”

The US embassy in Ukraine was apparently the first western mission that rushed to address Zelensky as exit polls showed the comedian leading with 72-74 percent of the vote.

“We congratulate President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky,” the American diplomats tweeted. “We look forward to continuing the strong U.S.-Ukraine partnership with President-elect Zelenskyy.”

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport on Sunday night, after a brief stop-over in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, on his first-ever official visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

At the airport, the Pakistani premier and his entourage were welcomed by Iranian Minister of Health and Medical Education Saeid Namaki.

Khan will be officially welcomed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at Sa'adabad Palace, north of Tehran, on Monday.

Following the ceremony, the Iranian and Pakistani delegations are expected to start their bilateral talks on expansion of Tehran-Islamabad ties in various political, economic, security, and cultural fields.

The prime minister is also expected to meet with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei during his stay in Tehran.

Steven Sahiounie, author and political commentator, says Google’s refusal to explain why it shuts Press TV’s account proves the move was not based on legal basis, indicating a censorship policy pursued by the American tech giant.
In an exclusive interview with FNA, Sahiounie outlined the Goolge’s motive, saying “The Google ban seems to be in line with the US government’s stepped-up pressure on Iran and an all-out propaganda campaign against the country, which includes targeting Iranian media.”

Steven Sahiounie is an independent Syrian American political analyst and writer based in Lebanon. He has been covering the Middle East cruises since 2011 and has published several articles in numerous media outlets.

Below is the full text of the interview:

Voting has begun in Egypt, in a referendum that could extend President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's rule until 2030. Sisi came to power after a 2013 military coup, against Egypt’s first freely–elected President Mohamed Morsi.

Over one hundred Israeli settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday, under the protection of heavily armed Israeli soldiers and police, for the Jewish holiday of Passover, also known as “Pesach”.

Head of the public relations office at the Islamic Endowment Department, Firas al-Dibs, confirmed that some 167 Israeli settlers stormed the compound, through the Moroccan Gate, from the early hours of Sunday and throughout the afternoon.

Armed Israeli soldiers and police provided protection to settlers as they provocatively toured the compound.

French police said they arrested more than 200 "yellow vest" demonstrators in Paris on Saturday as clashes broke out with demonstrators turning out for a 23rd week of anti-government protests.

AFP journalists reported scuffles between police and protesters in the afternoon, after hours of calm, as police used stun grenades and tear gas to disperse marchers in the centre of the French capital.

Some protesters threw bottles and other objects at police and set fire to vehicles, safety barriers and bins.

Between the two major squares of Bastille and Republique the damage done had been considerable, said Emmanuel Gregoire, deputy mayor of Paris, told AFP.

Former CIA director and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has long accused WikiLeaks of being a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”, usually manipulated by Russia. Since Pompeo first made this claim as CIA Director in April 2017, countless major US news sources from NPR to CNN to the Washington Post have uncritically repeated the line, smearing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as "Russian agents," and more broadly using the narrative to stifle independent journalism and government whistleblowers.

But whether Pompeo or any other current or former CIA director makes such a bombastic claim without offering evidence — such as more recently asserting that China and Russia have "helped destroy" Venezuela through faltering investments, should anyone ever believe a high CIA official? Certainly the mainstream media routinely takes intelligence officials simply at their word, but Pompeo himself recently admitted the CIA is in the business of lying, cheating, and stealing.

The entire world remains confronted with the horrors that unfolded yesterday throughout Sri Lanka. Whilst the country remains under curfew, the authorities have pinned the blame for the attack on an obscure group called National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ). NTJ is reportedly an Islamist terror group that as noted by Sri Lankan authorities, has multiple links to foreign countries. The links to foreign countries appears to hold the key to determining who is really behind the attacks. Notably, it has been reported by journalists that the group trains in Chennai in Tamil Nadu – the same location where LTTE had previously trained. Others yet claim that NTJ is such a small and obscure group that even if it wanted to pull off such an attack, it did not have the capacity to do so.

In the last 20 years, Wikilieaks has done more worthwhile reporting than ALL over other news outlets COMBINED.

Armed Mexican troops disarmed two United States soldiers while they were on the American side of the border, U.S. defense officials have said.

U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that "five to six Mexican military personnel questioned two U.S. Army soldiers who were conducting border support operations" this month. The U.S. soldiers were in an unmarked Customs and Border Protection [CBP] vehicle near the southwest border near Clint, Texas.

Officials confirmed that the Mexican troops were armed with what seemed to be rifles. They raised their weapons when they saw the two U.S. soldiers, and then took a pistol from one and put it in the CBP vehicle. According to officials talking to CNN, the two Americans obliged "in an attempt to de-escalate a potential volatile situation."

Hemerd King hasn’t seen his five children for two years. The New York City government broke up his family due to a string of allegations that, upon basic scrutiny, appear unsubstantiated.

The Epoch Times previously explored the twisted incentives in the system that keeps more than 400,000 children in foster homes and shelters, and de facto encourages social workers and administrators to keep families apart.

Homeschooling families like the Kings are especially at risk. The nonprofit Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has defended thousands of such families that have faced investigations by Child Protective Services (CPS).

China consistently opposes unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday amid reports that Washington is expected to announce that buyers of Iranian oil must halt imports soon or face sanctions.

Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, speaking at a daily news briefing, said China’s bilateral cooperation with Iran was in accordance with the law.

China is a major importer of Iranian oil and was one of eight buyers who were granted a waiver by the United States to continue buying Iranian oil.

The United States has largely carved out exceptions so that foreign governments, firms and NGOs do not automatically face U.S. sanctions for dealing with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards after the group’s designation by Washington as a foreign terrorist group, according to three current and three former U.S. officials.

Last Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a meeting with a group of “community leaders” during which he said that the US was not seeking to impose regime change in Iran through direct military intervention.

Though the US has been threatening Iran pretty regularly for years, and particularly since President Trump took office, Pompeo claimed that he was “careful not to use the language of regime change” because they didn’t intend to force the issue militarily if it didn’t happen on its own from sanctions and US pressure.

That said, Pompeo said that the administration would’ve handed the 2009 Green Movement “differently” from the Obama Administration, without specifying how. He also joked with the audience about a possible Iran coup, saying even if the US was planning one, they wouldn’t admit it.

Sources from within Hezbollah have denied the report, saying that all of it is a “fabric of the writer’s imagination,” according to Lebanon 24 news. Nasrallah will speak on Monday.

If Zelensky is sworn in as president, his prime minister will be Volodymyr Groysman, a Jewish politician who was the mayor of the city of Vinnytsia.

Amid the threats of war with Iran, the U.S. Air Force has forward deployed Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets to the Middle East, reported Air Force Times.

Air Force Central Command (AFCENT) announced last week that F-35s from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, have arrived at Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates to continue air superiority missions across the region.

It's the first time Air Force F-35s have been sent to the Middle East.

"We are adding a cutting-edge weapons system to our arsenal that significantly enhances the capability of the coalition," Lt. Gen. Joseph T. Guastella, commander of AFCENT, said in the release. "The sensor fusion and survivability this aircraft provides to the joint force will enhance security and stability across the theater and deter aggressors."

"As a result of the Jewish lobby's recommendations, the Young Turks government removed Armenians from Anatolia in 1915. Hence, the economy of the country was left in the hands of Jewish capital." - Ekrem Bu?ra Ekinci of The Daily Sabah Turkish newspaper, October 13th 2017.

Richard Branson has congratulated Prime Minister Theresa May for “standing up” to the “extreme right-wing” of her party by stopping a clean Brexit, saying he would “dearly love” a second referendum.

The billionaire businessman who lives on a private island told Reuters, “I take my hat off to Theresa May for standing up to her extreme right-wing and not allowing a no-deal Brexit to happen because I think that would have done irreparable damage to Great Britain and a lot of damage to Europe, as well.”

“Obviously I just dearly would love to see another referendum,” he added, explaining that the largest democratic mandate in British history should be overturned — even before it has been implemented — because many Brexit voters “are no longer” and because “a lot of young people now can vote.”

The damage to Notre Dame cathedral is massive: The roof was destroyed, a spire collapsed and the stone was exposed to immense heat. What will efforts to rebuild look like? We asked one of the engineers behind the reconstruction of Dresden's Frauenkirche church.

A wave of bombings that killed 290 people in Sri Lanka on Sunday was carried out with the support of an international network, officials said.

The government has blamed a little-known local jihadist group, National Thowheed Jamath, although no-one has yet admitted carrying out the bombings.

Another 500 people were injured in the suicide attacks on churches and hotels.

Police arrested 24 people in a series of raids and the president's office declared a state of national emergency.

The emergency declaration, which comes into effect from midnight (18:30 GMT) on Monday, will give police and military extensive powers to detain and interrogate suspects without court orders.

Lord Ahmed of Rotherham has been charged with another alleged historic child sex offence at Sheffield Crown Court.

A former Labour councillor and magistrate elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer by Tony Blair in the 1990s, Pakistan-born Nazir Ahmed had already been charged with two counts of attempting to rape a girl under 16 and one count of indecently assaulting a boy under 14, between 1971 and 1974, at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court.

An additional charge of buggery against a boy under 11 has been added to his charge sheet at the higher Sheffield Crown Court, the Rotherham Advertiser reports.

Ahmed, of East Bawtry Road, Rotherham, has not entered any pleas during his hearings, but the BBC reports his lawyer, Haroon Shah, as saying he will be pleading not guilty to all of the charges against him.

Panmunjom, South Korea – Patrick Gauchat’s workspace literally is a minefield – a thin swath of isolated territory, crowded with tanks, artillery, and thousands of tense soldiers separating North and South Korea.

The Swiss major general’s mission here is to make sure the two countries comply with the 66-year-old armistice that ended the bloody Korean War. In his spare time, Gauchat tunes in to the topsy-turvey negotiations between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un – and waits for peace to make his job obsolete.

“I think Trump’s trying something new. He can surprise even his staff,” Gauchat said over lunch in the squat building that serves as a dining hall for the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission.

In an interview that was broadcasted Sunday on the Fox News Channel, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a 2020 presidential hopeful, said now that the Mueller report has shown “no collusion took place” with President Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, it is time to move on from impeachment.

Gabbard, who admitted she supported the Mueller investigation into interference, said if the people want to remove Trump from office then it needs to be done in the 2020 presidential election.

“Now, I don’t think we should defeat Donald Trump through impeachment,” stated Gabbard. “I think it’s really important for us in this country to come together and have the American people vote to take Donald Trump out of office in 2020.”

No group has yet to take credit for the Easter Sunday bombings that killed nearly 300 people in Sri Lanka, though authorities have pinned the attacks on a home-grown jihadist group called the National Thowheeth Jama’th, which was likely aided by an international jihadist network. But according to early unconfirmed reports, the alleged mastermind of the attack was NTJ Imam and prolific lecturer Moulvi Zahran Hashim. Reports alternatively identified him as the mastermind of the bombings, and as one of the suicide bombers who carried them out.

The video shows what appears to be security footage of a white Tesla that starts with smoke pouring out of the bottom of it. As people can be heard in the background talking in Mandarin, the car simply appears to spontaneously combust.

Before the video is written off as big oil conspiracy FUD, we should note that the Twitter user also has his own YouTube channel, which appears to mostly be positive content toward the brand.

The same user went on to post video of what appears to be the aftermath of the fire:

Update 3: Oil prices have erased their earlier gains and fallen below a key technical level after a State Department official revealed that the wind-down period for removing the waivers on Iranian crude exports would be a year.

Just days after the shenanigans of the Turkish central bank were exposed for the entire world to see, when as the FT reported - at great danger to its Turkish subscriptions and the freedom of its reporters in Turkey - that the country's real FX reserves of $12 billion were half of the $24 billion represented if one stripped $12 billion in short-term swap-based borrowings from local central banks...

A third lawsuit related to claims that Monsanto’s Roundup causes cancer has revealed new details about the cozy relationship between the biotech giant and U.S. regulators.

On Monday, Monsanto Co. corporate spokesman William Reeves admitted the corporation has regularly communicated with U.S. regulatory agencies regarding reviews of the controversial Roundup herbicide. Reeves denied that Monsanto had given the agencies orders to follow. Reeves’ testimony came about during the latest lawsuit against biotech giant Monsanto, as Alva and Alberta Pilliod fight to prove that Roundup caused their cancer.

For hundreds of years, rural poverty has driven people to urban areas: cities offer paying work and abundant opportunities to get ahead, and these financial incentives have transformed the human populace from largely rural to largely urban in the developed world.

Now a new set of financial pressures are forcing a migration of urban residents out of cities which are increasingly unaffordable and dysfunctional.As highly paid skilled workers and global capital have flooded into high-job-growth regions, living costs and the costs of doing business have skyrocketed: where not too long ago $1,000 a month would secure a modest one-bedroom apartment in major urban job centers, now it takes $2,000 or $3,000 a month to rent a modest flat.

With oil surging to a six month high after a now confirmed report that Trump will not reissue Iranian oil export waivers after they expire on May 2, removing up to 1 million barrels from the market...

THERESA May has been forced to abandoned plans for a major Cabinet reshuffle next month because of the Brexit delay.

The new blow to the PM’s survival hopes comes as it emerged that three out of five party members plan to refuse to vote Tory in the euro elections.

Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us know how evil and disgusting that person is? It’s true of the leader of every nation which refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it’s true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it’s true of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Robert Mueller's decision not to deliver a prosecutor's opinion on his investigation, instead leaving the issue up to Congress, is creating a lot of headaches for Nancy Pelosi.

In the days since the redacted Mueller report was released, many members of the Democrats' progressive wing have rebelled against Pelosi's decree that impeachment isn't on the table - a strategy devised to protect Democrats in swing districts whose mid-term triumphs effectively handed Dems control of the House (despite all the media coverage they've received, AOC and the three other members of her WoC clique had little to do with the Democrats' electoral triumph).

Now, Bloomberg reports that Pelosi is scrambling to suppress demands made by AOC, Elizabeth Warren that the House explore the possibility of impeaching Trump on attempted obstruction of justice. AOC tweeted after the report was released that she would be signing Rashida "Impeach the motherfucker" Tlaib's impeachment resolution.

US President Donald Trump appears to be experiencing something of a lover’s tiff, as Fox News increasingly calls the leader out for fringe opinions and factual errors.

Trump, according to reports, is claiming that actors operating deep within Fox News have switched sides and are aligned against him, according to a new report from Politico.

After twice tweeting his complaints following a highly-anticipated Bernie Sanders Town Hall program on Fox, the president accused the network of stocking a pro-Sanders audience managed by news anchors that were too polite to the Democratic firebrand, currently a front-runner in the upcoming US 2020 presidential elections.

One million alien children could reportedly enter the U.S. by the end of 2020. According to a recent Princeton Policy Advisors report, immigration officials could detain up to 1.3 million illegal migrants this year.

Out of these aliens at least 300,000 are children, who are expected to enroll in U.S. schools. The study found California will have to enroll 50,000 migrant students this school year, while 36,000 will go to school in Texas.

Armed Mexican troops disarmed two United States soldiers while they were on the American side of the border, U.S. defense officials have said.

U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that "five to six Mexican military personnel questioned two U.S. Army soldiers who were conducting border support operations" this month. The U.S. soldiers were in an unmarked Customs and Border Protection [CBP] vehicle near the southwest border near Clint, Texas.

Officials confirmed that the Mexican troops were armed with what seemed to be rifles. They raised their weapons when they saw the two U.S. soldiers, and then took a pistol from one and put it in the CBP vehicle. According to officials talking to CNN, the two Americans obliged "in an attempt to de-escalate a potential volatile situation."

Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 Rep. Tulsi Gabbard lashed out at Trump on Wednesday after the president vetoed the Yemen War Powers Resolution this week, which sought to end US support for the Sauid-led war in Yemen.