Politics

Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria, have beheaded four teenagers accused of “spying” for the West. The young boys and men were butchered after being accused of supplying information to the US-led “crusader coalition.” The Telegraph reports: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said that Isil had accused the young men of “photographing sites and handing information to the crusader coalition causing bombing and the death of Muslims”.

China and Russia have both successfully tested their offset hypersonic gliders which they claim are capable of penetrating the American THAAD system (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense). The U.S. plans to deploy the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea to counter threats from North Korea.

Ahead of the Indiana primary on Tuesday, Donald Trump holds a 15 point lead in the polls according to the Wall Street Journal, and it is starting to become inevitable (at least for those not named Cruz and Kasich) that The Donald will be the Republican's choice to run against Hillary in the fall.

“After the Acela primary, there is an aura of inevitability surrounding the Trump and Clinton candidacies,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

Submitted by George Friedman via MauldinEconomics.com,

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently announced that he would take command of all of China’s armed forces, including the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Xi is already chairman of the Central Military Commission that oversees the army. He is now taking a more direct role as head of the new Joint Operations Command Center, which puts him in operational command of the PLA in times of war.

Hundreds of demonstrators in Iraq stormed and are now occupying the country’s parliament. Iraqi officials declared a state of emergency in Baghdad on Saturday after protesters loyal to popular Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr breached the heavily fortified Green Zone which houses government buildings and foreign embassies, including the American one. Video from inside the building showed jubilant crowds waving Iraqi flags and shouting “peaceful, peaceful” and there were no immediate reports of major violence.