Politics

Armenia and Azerbaijan have started hostilities in the disputed Caucausus region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Overnight fighting saw Azeri and Armenian forces clash with tanks, mortar and artillery, resulting in casualties on both sides. Defense ministries of both nations have accused each other of provocation. Russia Today reports: Azerbaijan said Armenian troops opened fire 127 times over 24 hours along the border. They were using mortars and heavy machine guns, the statement released on Saturday morning said.

Building on the worst two week-period of his campaign, Donald Trump took to Twitter overnight to implore his Tennessean supporters to rise up, raging that the state’s Republican Party was "trying to steal" his delegates and urging them to crash a party meeting on Saturday morning to stop them - "We won the votes. They are trying to steal them. I can’t believe I am writing this.

Submitted by Peter Diekmeyer via Sprott Money

Bill Morneau took centre stage last week in the Canadian Parliament and didn’t disappoint. The new Liberal finance minister’s first budget jacked up program spending across the board, to be paid for by borrowing and, eventually, presumably, money printing. His rhetoric was coated with suggestions that “economic growth” would solve the country’s problems. The only folks left out were taxpayers and savers.

The US is training “dozens” of  Syrian rebels to fight ISIS  in Syria, despite the failure of the Pentagons previous multi million dollar effort. Washington previously struggled to define which fighters ‘deserved’ to get US funds and equipment, with most of the equipment and recruits somehow getting lost or ending up on the side of terrorists. RT reports: “Dozens of people are now being trained,” US Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US-led coalition, confirmed to reporters.

The North Korean ambassador to the UN told reporters that a semi-state of war exists in the divided Korean peninsula. Pyongyang remains defiant in the face of threats of a nuclear first strike and will pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs as a deterrence measure against US and South Korea, according to top Pyongyang envoy So Se Pyong.