Submitted by Jason Ditz via TheAntiMedia.org,
Adding to concerns about the civilian toll of the US air war against ISIS targets, the Pentagon yesterday admitted that they carried out an airstrike against the parking lot of a Mosul hospital, conceding that they “may have killed civilians” in the attack.
Authorities in the U.S. are now accusing Russia of attempting to infiltrate the electrical grid, in a claim that threatens to destroy Russian-US relations even further. A Vermont electric company claims that it was alerted to the presence of malicious malware on a company laptop, apparently originating from Russia, by the Department of Homeland Security. CNN reports: The company, which serves 19,600 customers in Vermont, said the malware was on a laptop that is not connected to the organization’s power grid systems.
US-made munitions worth millions of dollars have been found in former terrorist positions in the city of Aleppo. According to media reports, Syrian government forces discovered a number of depots in recently liberated districts of Aleppo city with a large volume of arms and ammunition that were mostly US-made. Hundreds of boxes loaded with US-manufactured ammunition were found in the eastern quarters of Aleppo as the forces combed various neighborhoods of the recently liberated city for ordnance and military equipment left behind by terrorists.
Goldman Sachs is relatively optimistic about growth in 2017, for three reasons: first, despite the lack of spare capacity, US recession risk remains below the historical average; second, financial conditions should remain a growth tailwind - at least in the first half of 2017; and third, we expect a fiscal easing accumulating to 1% of GDP by 2018. However, uncertainty remains and here is what Jan Hatzius and his team believe are the ten most important questions for 2017.
1. Will growth remain above trend?
Two days after the DHS and FBI released a report revealing what the US agencies alleged was the government-controlled Russian operation behind the "hacking of the US election" which they dubbed "Grizzly Steppe", and which had a peculiar disclaimer according to which nothing contained in the report should be taken at face value or was even credible after the DHS said it "does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within"...