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Jihadis in Syria are using Facebook as a marketplace to buy, sell and barter a wide variety of American-made weapons and munitions ranging from rocket launchers to machine guns. A Facebook page called "The first weapons market in the Idleb countryside" showcases posts with photographs of weapons, claimed to be CIA-supplied, inviting buyers to contact page administrators privately using popular messaging application Whatsapp to discuss sales and transactions. An AGS-17 Soviet-era grenade launcher is listed for $3,800 and below that a thermal camera made by Oregon-based company FLIR, is listed alongside posts advertising the sale of 105mm cannon shells.

OPEC recognizes role of shale. El-Badri largely admitted OPEC’s waning influence due to the rise of U.S. shale. "Shale oil in the United States, I don’t know how we are going to live together," he said in Houston on Feb. 22. “Any increase in price, shale will come immediately and cover any reduction.” The IEA’s report mostly backed up that sentiment. Although the Paris-based energy agency predicted shale would decline substantially in 2016 and 2017, the IEA also said that shale would bring back 1.3 mb/d of liquids production by the end of the decade. Low prices now, but high...

Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vucic says Americans apparently ‘were not aware that foreign citizens’ were being held at Isis camp

When Barack Obama meets this week with Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s first state visit to America, one item probably won’t be on their agenda: the possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war in the next decade. In policy circles, this appears as unlikely as it would be unwise. And yet 100 years on, World War I offers a sobering reminder of man’s capacity for folly. When we say that war is “inconceivable,” is this a statement about what is possible in the world—or only about what our limited minds can conceive? In 1914,...

The proposed major military assault into Syria holds considerable risk for Turkey, not the least of that being a possible accidental escalation of hostilities with Russia, but it now seems unavoidable if Ankara is not to see a major disaster, not only wasting more than five years of intense effort to overthrow the Syrian Gov-ernment of President Bashar al-Assad, but also to avert the unfettered escalation of the Kurdish war to wrench a large part of Turkey away from Ankara to create a new Kurdish state which would link with Iraqi and Syrian Kurds. Already, Turkey has paid an enormous...

It looks like summer camp with the bonfires, the obstacle courses, the young children running around the park grounds; except its jihadi training set up by Iran's regime to prepare young children for the "conquering of Tel Aviv." New alarming images are emerging from Iran's 'Sixth National Children's Memorial,' in which children appearing to be as young as 6 are holding weapons and dressed in military apparel. The gathering, held in a park in the country's southern Fars province in the county of Lamerd, called for the "conquering of Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," with a set goal to disseminate "holy...

CIA Director John Brennan on Sunday said in an interview broadcast late Sunday that it is "inevitable" that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will try to carry out attacks in the United States. "I'm expecting them to try to put in place - the operatives, the material or whatever else that they need to do or to incite people to carry out these attacks, clearly," Brennan said on CBS's "60 Minutes." "So, I believe that there attempts are inevitable," he added. "I don't think their successes necessarily are." Brennan said the intelligence agency knew in the days...

Before Donald Trump’s blowout win in New Hampshire he shocked the world by saying he would allow the Russians to do the "dirty work" and would “Let them beat the shit out of ISIS also.”. Trump went further, “I have always felt that Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other towards defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from mutual respect,” Putin, responded by saying: "He (Trump) says that he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of...

During celebrations of the anniversary of Iran's Revolution, mock reenactments of the recent capture of ten U.S. sailors by the IRGC Navy were held throughout Iran. In footage of one reenactment, from Qazvin Province, shouts of "Death to America" are heard in the background, while U.S. "sailors" lie on the ground or kneel down, the U.S. and Israeli flags placed next to them.

As the 2016 presidential race starts to heat up it is time to take a look at the remaining serious candidates and what each one might mean for energy policies and energy companies in the U.S. While a lot can happen in the next couple of months, the current leaders for the Republican Party are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. For the Democrats, the race will likely come down to a long brawl between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. As a bonus, it’s also worth looking at what Michael Bloomberg might do for energy if he enters the...

The so-called "Implementation Day" in the nuclear agreement sealed between the international community and Iran had a number of side-effects, with the release of four Iranian-Americans signaling the most important. These four innocent people were swapped for 7 Iranian regime elements held in detention in America. While this made a lot of noise in the United States and raised major criticism against the Obama administration, it is actually nothing new to those familiar with Iran's "hostage industry". The names of these four prisoners released on Saturday are Christian convert Pastor Saeed Abedini, former U.S. marine interpreter Amir Hekmati, Washington...

Jimmy Carter says his body is responding well to treatments, but the former U.S. President says he's not entirely free from cancer. Speaking exclusively with ET's Brooke Anderson in Plains, Georgia, during the Painting, Paula [Deen] and a President fundraiser, Carter opened up about the struggle he still faces. "They haven't detected any cancer, but sometimes the cancer spots [return]," Carter said, "including in my brain."

Why Did Iran Take Captive and Release U.S. Sailors So Quickly? The capture of American sailors in Persian Gulf waters by Iran should have provided the regime in Tehran a desperately needed opportunity to flex its muscles. However, the entire incident ended in the utmost humiliation for the regime. The times have changed, and Iran can no longer take on such adventures, such as the capture of over a dozen British sailors and hold them for long periods. Iran has suffered strategic defeats in many different aspects, from the nuclear dossier, to Syria , Yemen , Iraq .While Iran...

The EIA has just published its latest update to the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR), and soon we will get their update to the Short Term Energy Outlook. These are the two documents in which the EIA take a stab at estimating where US production is going, as opposed to where it has been. Weakness in the Chinese economy has hung like a pall on the oil market since the turn of the year and there is nothing putting a floor under the oil price just yet, but to my eyes the decline of US shale production is now well established...

An Iraqi volunteer forces commander has revealed US plans to evacuate Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) leaders from the central Iraqi city of Ramadi, according to the Iranian Fars Iranian News Agency. Fars reported: A commander of volunteer forces (Hashd al-Shaabi) disclosed the US plots to evacuate ISIL leaders from the city of Ramadi as Iraqi army and popular troops are completing victory over the terrorist group. “The delay in operations to liberate Ramadi and Fallujah cities in al-Anbar province is the result of the US interference,” Commander of Imam Khamenei Battalion Haidar al-Hosseini al-Ardavi told FNA on Thursday.

Thanks to our federal government, the American people remain in peril. Terrorists continue to take advantage of Barack Obama’s fraudulent refugee program by infiltrating an unknown number of Islamic extremists into our country. Coupled with unrestricted border entry, the rising tide of illegal immigrants represents a growing danger to the American public. And this is precisely what Obama wants. The ongoing invasion of the nation by America-hating, inferior stock is an important part of the “fundamental transformation” of the United States that Obama has spoken of throughout his years in the White House. Of course, White House press secretary Josh...

A major conference held in New York on Friday, December 19th raised hopes for the future of the deadly civil war in Syria coming to a final end. However, Iran is the only party left out actually concerned over its interests gone with the wind after such extensive strategic capitalization and secret war in the Levant and its vicious dictator Bashar Assad. Seeking to find a solution for the crisis in Syria, various parties involved in this conflict - including the Syrian opposition - joined the top diplomats of 20 different countries in this third international meeting on Syria, after...

Barack Obamas repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office and that there are moderate rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagons Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administrations fixation on Assads primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasnt adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washingtons anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and...

The George Washington University Center on Extremism recently published a study on Islam-based extremism by sympathizers of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, Daesh, or as the Obama administration says, ISIL). The study's executive summary noted that this recent trend of "ISIS-related mobilization in the United States has been unprecedented." Some of the major findings from their report were the following: ~ 250 Americans have traveled to Syria or Iraq to join ISIS, or have tried to. ~ 900 active investigations against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states. ~ 71 individuals have been charged with ISIS-related activities since March...

In an email this week to students, University of Maryland President Wallace Loh, outlining the reasons behind his request to the Board of Regents to rename the school's football stadium, due to the racist past of a previous president for which the stadium is named, managed to quote the wrong official motto of the United States: "Our national motto engraved on our coins is E Pluribus Unum, one formed from many. The Founders of our Republic got it right. We are a diverse people, but we are united by common values and ideals. We are of many different backgrounds but...