A budget plan stuffed with familiar proposals to cut across a wide swath of the federal budget breezed through the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, but its sharp cuts to health care coverage for the middle class and the poor, food stamps and popular domestic programs are a nonstarter with President Barack Obama. Related Stories

The GOP-controlled committee approved the plan by a party-line vote after swatting away numerous Democratic attempts to ease its cuts. The plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the committee chairman and the party's former vice presidential nominee, promises $5.1 trillion in cuts over the coming decade to bring the government's ledger into the black by 2024.

The plan is a dead letter with the Democratic-controlled Senate and Obama, but gives Republicans a vehicle to polish their budget-cutting credentials in the run-up to fall midterm elections in which they're counting on a big turnout from GOP conservatives and the tea party.

U.S. policymakers need to calm down, maybe do some yoga and accept that Crimea is now part of Russia, a senior Russian diplomat said on Thursday in unusually caustic remarks directed at Moscow's former Cold War-era adversary.

Russia's annexation of Ukraine's reunification with Crimea region last month has deepened the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War ended two decades ago. The West has imposed sanctions on officials and businessmen believed to be close to President Vladimir Putin.

Many of those blacklisted have mocked the sanctions, wearing them as a badge of honor, but they have also rankled Moscow, with officials warning the West was only doing damage to itself.

Isn't there something strangely reassuring when your eyeballs are gripped by a "mystery" on the news that has no greater meaning and yet sweeps all else away? This, of course, is the essence of the ongoing tale of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Except to the relatives of those on board, it never really mattered what happened in the cockpit that day. To the extent that the plane's disappearance was solvable, the mystery could only end in one of two ways: it landed somewhere (somehow unnoticed, a deep unlikelihood) or it crashed somewhere, probably in an ocean. End of story. It was, however, a tale with thrilling upsides when it came to filling airtime, especially on cable news. The fact that there was no there there allowed for the raising of every possible disappearance trope -- from Star Trekkian black holes to the Bermuda Triangle to Muslim terrorists -- and it had the added benefit of instantly evoking a popular TV show. It was a formula too good to waste, and wasted it wasn't.

The same has been true of the story that, in the U.S., came to vie with it for the top news spot: the devastating mudslide in Washington State. An act of nature, sweeping out of nowhere, buries part of a tiny community, leaving an unknown but possibly large number of people dead. Was anyone still alive under all that mud? (Such potential "miracles" are like manna from heaven for the TV news.) How many died? These questions mattered locally and to desperate relatives of those who had disappeared, but otherwise had little import. Yes, unbridled growth, lack of attention to expected disasters, and even possibly climate change were topics that might have been attached to the mudslide horror. As a gruesome incident, it could have stood in for a lot, but in the end it stood in for nothing except itself and that was undoubtedly its abiding appeal.

As the dust settles in Kiev, another money trail has been revealed...

According to reports out of Kiev (see links below), the US has quietly transfers 33 tons of Ukrainian gold out of the country and back to vaults in the US. Presumably, this sovereign wealth transfer would be counted as partial "collateral" for a fresh round of IMF, US FED, and ECB paper debt that is currently being organised for dumping into the Ukraine's economic black hole.

Multiple inquiries to US Federal Reserve administrators into the location of the Ukraine's gold have been met with the proverbial 'pass the buck', making tracking and tracking the final resting place of these 33 tonnes very difficult indeed - but one can expect that the NY Fed is probably the institution who has masterminded this financial heist.

An Israeli minister threatened on Wednesday to annex further territory in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for renewed Palestinian action to join United Nations agencies and international treaties.

"If they are now threatening (to go to UN institutions), they must know something simple: they will pay a heavy price," Tourism Minister Uzi Landau told public radio.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday said he had begun steps to join several UN agencies, abandoning a pledge to freeze such action for the duration of peace talks - which end in just four weeks.

Abbas announced a request to join "15 UN agencies and international treaties."

This article, the first of two parts, is adapted from a lecture by Noam Chomsky on Feb. 28 sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif.
A leading principle of international relations theory is that the state's highest priority is to ensure security. As Cold War strategist George F. Kennan formulated the standard view, government is created "to assure order and justice internally and to provide for the common defense."

The proposition seems plausible, almost self-evident, until we look more closely and ask: Security for whom? For the general population? For state power itself? For dominant domestic constituencies?

Depending on what we mean, the credibility of the proposition ranges from negligible to very high.

Security for state power is at the high extreme, as illustrated by the efforts that states exert to protect themselves from the scrutiny of their own populations.

Russia expects detailed explanations from NATO regarding expanding its military presence in Eastern Europe, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The statement comes after NATO bloc announced boosting its military presence in the area.

"We have addressed questions to the North Atlantic military alliance. We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on," Lavrov told reports at a joint briefing with Kazakhstan's FM Yerlan Idrisov.

The statement came after the NATO chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the bloc will deploy more troops to Eastern Europe. According to him, NATO is considering "revised operational plans, military maneuvers and adequate troop reinforcements." This military buildup was approved by many eastern European countries. On April 1, Polish PM Donald Tusk praised the NATO presence in the country.

After the announcement of deploying troops in Ukraine, NATO also said that it is suspending all military and civilian cooperation with Russia over the Ukrainian crisis, a move that was immediately blasted by Moscow who said that neither Russia, not NATO would benefit from such a step. Russia called this move reminiscent of Cold War language.

Ukrainian prosecutors have detained several Berkut riot police officers, saying they may be behind the mass killings by unidentified snipers in Kiev on February 20. The new twist adds further mystery to the politically-loaded investigation.

The detainees belonged to 'Berkut black company', acting Prosecutor General Oleg Makhnitsky told journalists on Thursday.

The General Prosecutor's office explained that unlike regular Berkut troops, which went unarmed to the confrontation with anti-government protesters, the special operations unit was issued with sniper rifles to provide cover for their Berkut comrades.

"Their task was, as they explained, although we don't fully believe them, to shoot back at advancing protesters and allow the regular Berkut troops retreat," acting Deputy Prosecutor General Aleksey Baganets said.

A total of 12 officers were detained in the investigation, including the commander of the unit. The alleged involvement of other Ukrainian police and security units in the mass killings is still under investigation.

According to the United Nations, Venezuela has consistently reduced inequality: It now has the lowest income inequality in the region. We have reduced poverty enormously - to 25.4 percent in 2012, on the World Bank's data, from 49 percent in 1998; in the same period, according to government statistics, extreme poverty diminished to 6 percent from 21 percent.

We have created flagship universal health care and education programs, free to our citizens nationwide. We have achieved these feats in large part by using revenue from Venezuelan oil.

Read more at the NY Times

Football's world governing body FIFA, has refused to kick Russia out of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, after two American senators said the country should be barred due to its actions in Ukraine.

Dan Coats and Mark Kirk wrote a letter to the organization based in Zurich in March asking for Russia's membership to be suspended, and for the country to be barred from competing in this year's World Cup in Brazil, as well as losing the right to host the event in four years' time.

In a letter to the two senators, FIFA said participation in the World Cup is based on sporting merit and only a violation of FIFA statutes and regulations could lead to a suspension from a competition.

Coats, a Republican senator from Indiana, was deeply disappointed by the ruling, saying, "FIFA suggests that outrageous misbehavior by member states does not matter because such decisions are irrelevant to soccer."

The 70-year-old, who was US ambassador to Germany for four years, cited Yugoslavia's expulsion from the 1992 European Championships in Denmark due to its behavior in the Balkan wars as a precedent, as this was not connected to the playing field.

It seems the American still plans to continue his protest.

"I continue to call upon FIFA leadership to impose the same punishment on Russia," Coats added.