Russia

The Syrian war is on the verge of the biggest shift in the balance of power since 2011, with the Assad regime - with support from Russian forces - having retaken Aleppo. And, as Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin notes, an arrangement has been reached for militants to leave the besieged areas of eastern Aleppo “within hours”, confirming earlier media reports that Assad is about to have full reign of the hotly contested city - a symbolic center of the anti-Assad insurgency.

When the WaPo posted last Friday's story about a "secret" CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, the readers of the Bezos-owned publication took it as gospel, despite, as we promptly noted, there being no evidence provided by the CIA, and as we learned today, the FBI openly resisting the CIA's assessment. It now appears that once again the WaPo may have been engaging in "partial fake news", as it did with its Nov. 24 story about "Russian propaganda fake media."

Via DaisyLuther.com,

Enough with “the Russians” already. This “Russian Disinformation” and “Russian Hacking” stuff is getting more ridiculous by the day.

After days of speculation and strawmen, and following Mitt Romney's statement earlier, AP is reporting that President-elect Donald Trump has selected Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department, according to two people close to Trump's transition team.

The decision caps a lengthy process that often played out In public and exposed rifts within Trump's transition team. But Tillerson's close ties to Russia could still complicate his Senate confirmation hearings.

 

“In my view, the Trump election has made a large Chinese devaluation more likely. Mainland Chinese investors are desperately trying to get out of the Yuan, and the People’s Bank of China is trying to defend the value of the Yuan. They are doing this by selling treasuries.”

       - Russell Clark, Horseman Global