Most of Colorado also is under severe drought and almost all of the Texas Panhandle is seeing extreme drought or worse conditions. The federal drought map shows dry conditions have intensified across northern New Mexico and expanded in Arizona.

Nearly half of New Mexico and Arizona are facing extreme drought or worse conditions while about 60 percent of Utah is under severe drought, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. Along the Rio Grande in New Mexico, the irrigation allotment will be less than half of what farmers received last year due to subpar snowmelt from the mountains.

Like other states, Utah's drought can be traced to a 12-week stretch of low precipitation this winter, when the mountains saw some of the lowest snow totals in recent history — also an ominous sign for the state's renowned skiing sites.

European Council president Donald Tusk said the European Union would stand with its allies “on the side of justice”. He added: “Strikes by US, France and UK make it clear the Syrian regime, together with Russia and Iran, cannot continue this human tragedy, at least not without cost.” Backing the strikes NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said it would “reduce the regime’s ability to further attack the people of Syria with chemical weapons”.

He added: “NATO has consistently condemned Syria’s continued use of chemical weapons as a clear breach of international norms and agreements. Their use is unacceptable, and those responsible must be held accountable.”

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the strikes sent a message to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. He said: “With the joint operation by the US, UK and France, the Syrian regime received the message that its massacres wouldn’t be left unanswered. The innocent Syrian people should have been defended long ago.” 

Israel said the attack sent an important signal to the “axis of evil” of Iran, Syria and the militant group Hezbollah. Yoav Gallant, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said: “The use of chemical weapons crosses a red line that humanity can no longer tolerate.”

Writer Alex Christoforou went as far as to say the US president knows the chemical attack in Syria, which left dozens dead and more than 500 injured, is a “hoax and false flag”. But he said Mr Trump was happy to exploit it for his own gain.

Mr Christoforou suggested the real reason why the United States wanted to begin World War Three could be down to the Petrodollar, which is seen as a threat to the US economy.

He said: “The last two nations that tried to introduce a currency to compete against the petrodollar were Libya and Iraq.”

Another possible motive, Mr Christoforou suggested, was the military-industrial complex, in which a country ensures a war takes place in order to provide funding for its arms industries. Regardless of the motive, Mr Trump seems intent on bringing the world to the brink of World War 3.

However today the US president appeared to backtrack slightly. He posted: “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our ‘Thank you America?’”

US accusations and threats of war come at a pivotal moment in Syria’s now 7 year conflict in which the Syrian government has finally liberated all territory around the capital from foreign-sponsored militants.

To date, all supposed evidence comes from Western-funded militants and their auxiliaries including the US-European government-funded front, the so-called “Syria Civil Defense,” better known at the “White Helmets.” Unverified photographs and video of apparent victims have been the sole sources cited by the US. The White Helmets have been repeatedly caught in the past fabricating evidence and staging scenes for propaganda value.

In fact, all evidence suggests the entire purpose of the White Helmets is the production of propaganda.

Syria and its allies have attempted to provide the US with multiple, graceful exits from its failed proxy war. However, it is not the need to save face that now drives US persistence in Syria – it is the fact that withdrawing from Syria now will signify to the world an accelerated, irreversible decline of the American Empire.

“Physically backed: The issuer uses the proceeds from the issue of Xetra-Gold to purchase gold. The physical gold is held in custody for the issuer in the Frankfurt vaults of Clearstream Banking AG, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Börse. In order to facilitate the delivery of physical gold, the issuer holds a further limited amount of gold on an unallocated weight account with Umicore AG & Co,” says Xetra-Gold.

However, despite claims that every virtual gram of gold is backed by the same amount of physical gold, clients have been refused the precious metal upon demand.

According to Godmode Trader, its reader “sought physical delivery of his holdings of Xetra-Gold. For this he approached, as instructed by the German Börse document, his principal bank, Deutsche Bank." However, he was told that “the service” was no longer available for "reasons of business policy". The article went on to say it’s not yet clear whether other banks are still delivering gold through Xetra.

It began early on Sunday morning with claims of a gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus. Although the BBC were careful to state that the reports were unverified, my heart sank.  The prominence being given to the story suggested that it didn’t much matter that they were not verified. Why lead a news bulletin on a main national broadcast with unverified material, if you think verification matters a lot? Surely the old rule was ‘verify first’, then publish’?

I wearily resigned myself to the fact that at some point I would have to write what I am now writing, a warning that these claims have not been proven, may not be proven, and serve the end of those who desire to draw this country into a war. What sort of war? Well, I am horribly reminded of the summer of 1914.

Two major powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are irreconcilably hostile to each other. One of them, by aggressive diplomacy in proxy states, has created a state of grave tension between them which, if it goes much further, threatens to draw the great powers into open conflict.

A single incident, by providing the basis for aggressive diplomacy, unacceptable demands and perhaps actual warlike violence, could trigger that war. If so, it will not be confined to the Middle East, because of the involvement of Russia in the dispute. Indeed, it may be Russia’s involvement in Syria, where it has frustrated Saudi Arabian designs and those of Saudi Arabia’s allies, such as the USA, this country and France, which triggered the considerable increase in tension in Ukraine which began to heat up in 2013. 

A single incident could trigger war...

There are organizations whose purpose is to save us from impending catastrophes.  I’m not talking about the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Red Cross.  I’m thinking of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the World Wildlife Fund, the National Geographic Society, The National Audubon Society, The Environmental Defense Fund, The Population Connection, and many more.  

These organizations depend on impending catastrophes for their lifeblood, to say nothing of their revenue.  So a shortage of real impending catastrophes is a problem.  The solution has been to manufacture impending catastrophes.

A catastrophe is not manufactured out of thin air.  Rather, one starts with a more or less scientific finding and inflates it into an impending catastrophe.  The best made up catastrophes are speculative and resistant to clear analysis.  Global warming is a catastrophe that happens 50 or 100 years in the future.  You can’t argue decisively against it without waiting for 50 years.

Flawed research claims sexuality is a “spectrum” and no one is 100% “straight”. It’s a common tactic in the fake science community to take studies and manipulate them to say whatever the liberal media wants them to say. In this case, the agenda seems to be one of trying to convince the general populace that heterosexuality doesn’t exist, and that everyone is secretly “gay,” whether they realize it or not.

What this all illustrates, of course, is the fact that gender “science” is often completely made-up nonsense that mainstream media outlets like VICE are willing to run with, so long as it pushes the agenda in question. In this case, that agenda is to further deconstruct normal human sexuality in the name of “science.”

This isn’t the first time this happened where the timing was questionable... In 2017 Trump faced his first test of a chemical weapons attack in Syria and his response was bombarding Syria with missiles over unverified information. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) expert, Theodore Postol, claimed that the US government’s report does not provide any “concrete” evidence that Assad was responsible…

Postol said: I have reviewed the White House’s document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria at roughly 6 am to 7 am on 4 April, 2017.