United States

B-1B Lancer bombers covering operations in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State/ISIS are to return to the U.S. for scheduled cockpit upgrades, according to the USAF Central Command. Russia Today reports: With the B-1 taking a back seat, the campaign may lose a “little flexibility,” but the USAF has plenty of other aircraft to compensate for the deficit, Lt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who heads the command, told journalists from his HQ in Qatar. Brown said the bombers would return to Iraq and Syria, but didn’t provide any timetable.

Of all the indicators that the Fed has presented to justify its rate hike mentality and to validate that the US economy remains on a growth path despite clear recessionary signals from both the manufacturing sector and the dramatic tightening in financial conditions in recent months, Yellen's preferred metric also happens to be the most lagging one: nonfarm payrolls and the unemployment rate, both of which supposedly signal the collapsing slack in the labor market and a jump in wages that has been "just around the corner" for years.

As you might have noticed, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is about to lose his mind with the situation in Syria.

To be sure, the effort to usurp the Bashar al-Assad government wasn’t exactly going as planned in the first place. Regime change always takes time, but the conflict in Syria was dragging into its fifth year by the time the Russians got directly involved and although it did indeed look as though the SAA was on the verge of defeat, the future of the rebellion was far from certain.

In order to avoid an accidental conflict The Pentagon has revealed the location of its Special Forces in Syria to the Russian military. Sputnik reports: The disclosure was made beyond the scope of the existing memorandum of understanding (MOU) which was signed between the US and Russia in October 2015 in order to regulate safety protocols for their respective warplanes in the region. “We provided a geographical area that we asked them to stay out of it because of the risk to US forces,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told journalists, according to Military Times.

One of the original members of The Jackson 5 and the brother of the late music legend Michael Jackson, has come out and criticized the U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump for mentioning his brother during his campaign. The Donald who is currently leading the polls for the Republicans was interviewed in a CNN town-hall and discussed his relationship with Michael Jackson, saying that the superstar had lost all his confidence prior to his death due to botch surgery jobs.