The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court yesterday opened a "preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine," with the possibility of a full-blown investigation of Israeli war crimes during last summer's Gaza onslaught; and the US is standing steadfastly behind Israel.

The New York Times says Israelis have responded in fury to the announcement by prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman... said Israel would seek to disband the court, which he described as an anti-Israel institution that "embodies hypocrisy and grants a tailwind to terrorism."

... the investigation, infused with internationally recognized legality and credibility, was one that the Israelis had sought to prevent. "It's like she turned the key in the ignition of the judicial vehicle," Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said of Ms. Bensouda.

Things look very bad today and very intensive combat operations, in particular artillery strikes, are reported everywhere in Novorussia. At the very least, in the following locations:

1) Donetsk Airport: the Ukrainians attacked with a fairly large concentration of armor and under heavy artillery fire. As for tonight (local time) all of these attacks have been successfully repelled but intelligences sources are reporting a sharp rise in the number of tanks and armored vehicles all around the Donestk airport. The Novorussians are expecting attacks from Peski and Avdeevka.

2) The Ukrainian artillery has opened for almost everywhere along the front. The Ukrainian airforce has also dropped several 500kg bombs from high altitude on the city of Gorlovka.

3) Novorussian units are returning fire and the outskirts of Mariupol have come under Novorussian artillery attacks.

More than 90 per cent of the recent campaign contributions collected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came from the US, official records show. In previous campaigns, around half of his campaign funding has come from just three American families.

Mr Netanyahu last week easily won his Likud Party's election to select a prime ministerial candidate - easily overcoming his nearest challenger, former deputy defence minister Danny Danon. The 65-year-old Mr Netanyahu is now gearing up for the general election, due to be held on March 17.

Records from Israel's State Comptroller Office and collated by Buzzfeed.com show that Mr Netanyahu raised around 1m shekels (roughly £166,000), for his primary campaign. Around 90 per cent of this came from the US.

At least 200 Ukrainian soldiers and eight eastern Ukrainian independence supporters, as well as numerous civilians, have been killed in the last 24 hours of heavy fighting, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic's (DPR) militia headquarters reported Monday.

"Approximately 200 people were killed and injured. Losses among the militia are eight killed and 37 injured," Donetsk headquarters commander Eduard Basurin said.

At least nine civilians were killed and another 44 were injured in battles between Kiev forces and the independence supporters, Basurin added. One 4-year-old girl is dead and four other children injured in the fighting.

In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, an aggressive brand of policing called "highway interdiction," which involves authorities seizing money and property during traffic stops, has grown in popularity. Thousands of people not charged with crimes are left fighting legal battles to regain their money.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges. Holder's action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs. Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them "adopted" by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. It allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies. "With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons," Holder said in a statement.

It may sound like an ironic joke, but it isn't. Less than a week after the massive rallies in defense of "free expression," following the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, French authorities have jailed a youth for irony.

The arrest is part of a harsh crackdown on free speech in the country that has prompted criticism from national and international human rights organizations.

A 16-year-old high school student was taken into police custody on Thursday and indicted for "defending terrorism," national broadcaster France 3 reports.

His alleged crime? He posted on Facebook a cartoon "representing a person holding the magazine Charlie Hebdo, being hit by bullets, and accompanied by an 'ironic' comment," France 3 states.

Former White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama and the current Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel once said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

Der Spiegel's report on Syria's alleged nuclear weapons program titled 'Assad's Secret: Evidence Points to Syrian Push for Nuclear Weapons' is a true testimony to what Emanuel meant. The terror attacks in the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo took place on January 7th; two days later Der Spiegel's report is published. The timing is perfect. Israeli media is running with it. The Tel-Aviv based www.ynetnews.com published an article titled 'Syrian rebels: Iranian officers spotted near site of reported nuclear facility' which confirms Der Spiegel's accusations:

Following reports Syrian President Bashar Assad was building an underground nuclear facility, a senior Syrian rebel official told Saudi paper Okaz on Sunday that the Free Syrian Army has noted suspicious Syrian and Iranian movements in the town of Qusayr on the outskirts of Homs, where the facility is said to be.

According to the official, Abu Muhammad al-Bitar, the Free Syrian Army noted the presence of Iranian officers and "unprecedented" Hezbollah security in the area. Al-Bitar said the Friday report on Der Spiegel has been discussed at length in command meetings of rebel factions in the Kalamoon area. He went on to say that "what can be confirmed is that what's going on there is happening under direct Iranian supervision and the Syrian regime is only a cover-up for this."

Now the Free Syrian Army is a trusted source of information? Why would the editors of Der Spiegel release their findings regarding "Assad's Secret" nuclear weapons program right after the terrorist attack in Paris? Officials in Iran and Syria reject Der Spiegel's claims. According to ynetnews:

Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. rejected the Der Spiegel report on Sunday as "ridiculous," saying "the magazine's allegation is one of the attempts made by those circles whose life has been based on violence and fear to cloud the international community with illusion and create imaginary concerns about the Islamic Republic," according to the FARS news agency.

Would Iran jeopardize the upcoming summit with U.S. officials concerning its nuclear program by assisting the Syrian government in developing nuclear weapons? A media source told the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA):

that Syria refutes these allegations in their entirety, asserting that the allegations, which were made by a magazine that often publishes preposterous allegations devoid of credibility, contradict the most basic rules of journalism ethics, and that they are part of the conspiracy and media misdirection campaign targeting Syria.

Whatever you believe actually happened in Paris, one thing is very clear: the powers that be are going to try to use this event to expand wars, intensify domestic surveillance, and legislate away more of our rights.

This is not speculation. They have already started in France, in the U.K. (see this document), at the E.U. level, in the United States and they are going to attempt to push this on a global scale (also see this). All nicely coordinated to ride the wave of outrage that followed the attacks.

Harbinger of what's to become of US "rebel army" it plans to stand up in spring.

Reported along the peripheries of the Western media, it was reported recently that some 3,000 so-called "moderate rebels" of the "Free Syrian Army" had defected to the "Islamic State" (ISIS). While not the first time so-called "moderates" have crossed over openly to Al Qaeda or ISIS, it is one of the largest crossovers that has occurred.

With them, these 3,000 fighters will bring weapons, cash, equipment, and training provided to them by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, the UK, and perhaps most ironic of all in the wake of the recent terror attack in Paris, France. Indeed, ISIS and Al Qaeda's ranks continue to swell amid this insidious network of "terror laundering" that is only set to grow.

The Charlie Hebdo massacre may have been the work of an "intelligence agency", working with the connivance of French authorities, according to Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far right Front National.

In an interview with a virulently anti-Western Russian newspaper, Mr Le Pen, 86, gave credence to conspiracy theories circulating on the internet suggesting that the attack was the work of American or Israeli agents seeking to foment a civil war between Islam and the West.

His comments - only partially retracted in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde today - provoked outrage amongst French politicians. They will also infuriate Marine Le Pen, his daughter, and successor as leader of the FN, who has been trying to distance the party from her father's extreme and provocative remarks.