Politics

In an intraday update on the current status of pre-summit negotiations taking place Monday in Vienna, an OPEC delegate told Bloomberg that there have been "no big changes in the position of either Iran or Iraq" at the high-level committee talks, which began 8 hours ago, in Vienna. As a reminder, both Iran and Iraq have sought exemptions from cutting oil production and according to the Algiers agreement in late September, Iran had been granted just that, however since then Saudi Arabia appears to have reneged on its concession.

Coming on the sixth year anniversary of the infamous "Cablegate", when on this day in 2010 Wikileaks made global headlines when it unveiled classified cables sent to the US State Department, revealing assessments of countries and details of eavesdropping, this morning WikiLeaks released more than half a million US diplomatic cables from 1979, covering various diplomatic events and incidents such as the Iranian revolution, Osama bin Ladin's departure of his native Saudi Arabia for Pakistan to support the Mujahideen, the siege of Mecca, Saddam Hussein becoming president of Iraq and much more.

Donald Trump is reportedly planning to pressure foreign governments to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s financial dealings. During one of his campaign debates, Trump said that once he was in office he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server and her involvement in the Clinton Foundation. “You’d be in jail,” he warned his presidential rival if he were to win the election.

The IDF reportedly bombed an Islamic State held facility in the Syrian Golan Heights after an ISIS affiliated group opened small arms and mortar fire on an Israeli patrol on Sunday. This was the first encounter between ISIS and Israel.

Valdimir Putin
President of Russia
Moscow
28 November 2016

Dear President Putin,

Now that CIA agent Craig Timberg posing as a Washington Post reporter has blown my cover and exposed me as a Russian agent, I was wondering if I might ask you for a Russian passport and a bit of diplomatic cover, perhaps assistant press officer at the Russian embassy in Washington, until I can get out of the country. I saw that you gave a passport to Steven Seagal, so I am hopeful that being a Russian agent is as important as teaching martial arts to Russians.