United States

Defense Secretary James Mattis told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that Pakistan might be dropped by the United States as a NATO ally due to its support for the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. Currently, Pakistan is formally designated as a major non-NATO ally (MNNA) - a defense relationship which confers military and financial benefits but does not automatically imply a mutual defense pact.

Authored by Julia Conley via TheAntiMedia.org,

“We have so much wind and wave power that it is retrograde in the extreme to lend any support to the fracking industry.”

Environmental groups from around the world applauded Scotland on Tuesday for its decision to ban fracking, following an overwhelming public outcry against the practice - and called for the United States and the rest of the United Kingdom to follow suit.

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

This latest mass shooting in Las Vegas that left more than 50 people dead and more than 500 injured is as obscure as they come: a 64-year-old retiree with no apparent criminal history, no military training, and no obvious axe to grind opens fire on a country music concert crowd from a hotel room 32 floors up using a semi-automatic gun that may have been rigged to fire up to 700 rounds a minute, then kills himself.

Authored by Chris Hedges via TruthDig.com,

As various institutions continue to publish very detailed estimates of how Trump's tax plan will impact the federal budget, which is somewhat amazing since income brackets haven't even been assigned yet, Moody's published a note today threatening to finally strip the U.S. of its AAA credit rating if the tax plan is ultimately passed as currently contemplated.

President Donald Trump’s tax proposal would probably weigh on the U.S. government’s credit outlook, on concerns that it would cause the federal deficit to swell, according to Moody’s Investors Service.