An outspoken American author and Islamic studies expert says the Takfiri ISIL terrorist group is advancing the agenda of the Israeli regime. ● Dr. Kevin Barrett told Press TV from Madison that the ISIL is a “mercenary army,” which has been organized by the Zionists. The ISIL has been fighting on behalf of Zionism in order to “destabilize Syria” and “cripple the anti-Israeli resistance” across the region, Barrett said. He also said that the ISIL ideology is similar to the Israeli forces committing crimes against the Palestinians in East Jerusalem al-Quds and elsewhere across the occupied Palestinian territories. He strongly criticized the “Zionist-dominated” Western media for demonizing Muslims by attributing the ISIL atrocities to Islam. The analyst said that the Saudi-backed Wahhabi fanatics and ISIL terrorists were contributing to the Zionists’ global war against Islam.

The United Nations harshly criticized the United States on Friday for torturing detainees in prison, the militarization of police and "numerous reports" of police brutality against minorities. ● A report by the UN Committee against Torture concluded that the US has failed to comply with international anti-torture treaties, citing police shootings of unarmed black youth, military interrogations, maximum security prisons and extensive use of solitary confinement among areas of concern. The UN Convention's first review of the US record on preventing torture since 2006 came amid high tensions and violent protests in the US against a grand jury's decision to exonerate a white police officer after he shot dead a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer. The UN committee cited deep concern about the frequent sexual assault of inmates, shackling of pregnant women in some prisons, racial profiling, as well as the "excruciating pain and prolonged suffering” of prisoners during "botched executions."

On the heels of US Vice President Joseph Biden's trip to Ukraine this week, NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Gen. Philip Breedlove, is in Kiev today pledging increased military assistance to the US-backed government there. As the Kiev regime readies another assault on breakaway regions in the east of the country, General Breedlove announced today that: "We are going to help Ukraine's military to increase its capacities ... [to] make them ever more interoperable with our forces." Breedlove again repeated NATO's assertion that the Russian military is operating in east Ukraine, claiming the Russians are providing the "backbone" for the forces seeking independence from rule by Kiev. This latest NATO assertion of Russian involvement in east Ukraine is in addition to 36 -- count them -- prior claims of a Russian invasion of Ukraine since February. Thirty-six invasions of Ukraine but NATO has yet to produce a definitive photograph of a Russian military presence. Either Russia's is the most stealth army in the history of warfare or NATO operatives are misleading those they are paid to serve.

King World News has published an interview with expert Steve Quayle who said he believed that China and Russia were going to publicly demand that the US show its gold reserve "Less than a year ago I was given access to information about intended economic war plans that indicated that a time is coming very soon when both Russia and China will announce to the world that they don’t believe the United States has all [8,100 tons of ] the gold it claims to possess," Quayle said. He added that "China already possesses more physical gold than anyone in the world." Earlier, Germany and Switzerland announced their intention to take their gold back from abroad. Quayle said that his efforts sparked an intense debate over German gold repatriation in the German media. When a country filed a request with the FRS to repatriate its gold, the request was denied or a country only received a token amount back. Officially, Germany was told that its gold would be safer where it is. Unofficially, it is believed that there it did not seem possible to repatriate the gold reserve from America. This has led Quayle to believe that the FRS does not have gold in its vaults.