Gabor Steingart, the the publisher of Germany's leading financial newspaper Handelsblatt, just let loose with an editorial directly challenging Washington's idiotic anti-Russian policies.

The appearance of this document is very timely: just yesterday Russia unleashed the first round of counter-sanctions, banning the import of foodstuffs from the US and the EU. These counter-sanctions are cleverly designed to cause pain in proportion to the level of anti-Russian activity of the country in question; thus, the three Baltic countries, which are virulently anti-Russian in spite of having large Russian populations and surviving largely through trade with Russia, face staggering losses, followed by equally anti-Russian Poland, followed by the rest of the EU, including poor Greece, which is friendly to Russia and should be considered collateral damage.

The greatest beneficiaries of these sanctions are all those countries that opposed (11) or abstained (58) when the UN voted to condemn Russia's annexation of Crimea: they get to leapfrog over EU and US economically by exporting foodstuffs to Russia. Russia's consumers and Russia's agricultural sector are also among the winners: Russians will eat healthier food, with no GMO contamination, while profits that used to flow to the US and the EU will now be invested in domestic agriculture, making Russia more self-sufficient in food and aiding in the development of rural districts. Another clever element to these sanctions is that farmers tend to be politically vocal and influential. I see tractors clogging the streets of Europe's capitals and dumptruck-loads of manure decorating the steps of government buildings before too long.

As to his diagnosis of Obama's true motivation, I think he has it wrong. It's not all about pleasing the Tea Party. They, and American voters in general, are irrelevant, it makes no difference who gets elected, and Obama's policies are not Obama's. There is a deeper reason why the oligarchs who own and operate the country formerly known as America are currently attempting to enlarge every problem they see, be it stoking civil war in Ukraine or provoking ISIS into attacking Americans: they are desperate to avoid a scenario where the US collapses on its own, with no external enemy to blame. Not only would it be just too humiliating, but also the population, suddenly brought out of its stupor, might turn on those actually responsible rather than helplessly blame some foreign scapegoat. Putin has to fit the bill, reality be damned.

Five people from the same family were killed on Thursday in Lugansk as the basement they were taking refuge in, was shelled by Kiev government forces. Meanwhile in the center of the city, an Orthodox Church suffered bomb damage.

While Gaza grabs most of the world's headlines, the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk is suffering its own tragedy. Shelling by the Kiev government is becoming a daily routine for the petrified local residents, in a city, which was once the industrial heartland of Ukraine.

A family of five has been killed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk after the basement they were sheltering in was reportedly shelled by Kiev government forces.

Grown men were in tears, as the fierce fire burned, others pleaded to try and help the family, which was trapped. However, there was little that anyone could do and eventually five charred bodies were dragged out of the ruins as the flames began to ease.

Warning: The following item contains images that some people may find disturbing. It is not recommended for minors. It's worth bearing in mind though, that many minors and their families cannot avoid viewing this on a regular basis.

Our goal in sharing these images is not to cause offence, but rather as a call out to all people of conscience, to denounce these war crimes; to refuse to remain silent in the face of these brutal actions and to wake up to the fact that one holocaust does not, under any circumstances, justify another.

Lebanese former prime minister Saad Hariri arrived in the Lebanese capital of Beirut Friday after a three-year self-imposed exile. His surprise move followed growing calls for his return as Lebanon's Sunnis confront a leadership gap.

Footage broadcast by local television stations showed Hariri arriving at government headquarters in Beirut, where he was due to meet Prime Minister Tammam Salam.

Hariri, Lebanon's most influential Sunni politician, has been in self-imposed exile between France and Saudi Arabia since 2011. He left the country after his government was toppled by a coalition including the Iranian-backed Shiite group Hezbollah.

Hariri's surprise return comes days after he announced Saudi financial backing for the fight against jihadists on the Lebanese-Syrian border.

Speaking to reporters in the Saudi port city of Jeddah on Wednesday, Hariri said Saudi King Abdullah had pledged $1 billion to strengthen the capacity of the Lebanese armed forces "to preserve Lebanon's security".

Israel's deputy ambassador in Dublin proposed to her superiors a plan to personally smear Palestine solidarity activists - especially Israelis - to "humiliate and shame them" as suffering from psychological and sexual problems and imply that they work for Israel's spy agency Mossad.

Deputy Ambassador Nurit Tinari-Modai, who is also the wife of Ambassador Boaz Modai, made the suggestions in a memo to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs that was exposed by Israel's Channel 10.

The full text of the Channel 10 report has been translated from Hebrew by Dena Shunra, with emphasis added:

A government audit has revealed that roughly $619 billion in federal grants and loans given out in fiscal year 2012 have not been properly accounted for.

The latest figures come courtesy of the US Government Accountability Office, who on Friday published a report in which it warned that much-needed oversight is all too absent from a federal awards website after it discovered gross instances of "underreporting and inconsistencies" on USASpending.gov.

"Although agencies generally reported required contract information, they did not properly report information on assistance awards (e.g., grants or loans), totaling approximately $619 billion in fiscal year 2012," GAO researchers found while conducting the report. "Specifically, 33 of 37 agencies with a budget authority of at least $400 million reported at least one contract."

According to the study, hundreds of programs across dozens of agencies were not properly accounted for on USASpending.gov - a website created by federal mandate "[t]o provide the public with information about how their tax dollars are spent."

One of the Senate's top Democrats and a major author of the Intelligence Committee's historic report on the CIA's use of torture claims the White House is withholding important facts as it prepares to release the document to the public.

As a result, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she will not approve the release of the so-called "torture report" until the Obama administration works with her to smooth over their differences.

According to the Huffington Post, Feinstein claims the White House has redacted too much key information from the report's summary, including the proof needed to justify the Senate's reportedly critical findings.

"I have concluded the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report's findings and conclusions," she said in a statement on Tuesday. "Until these redactions are addressed to the committee's satisfaction, the report will not be made public."

She added that a letter has been sent to President Obama about the changes she wants to see regarding the redactions.

Lebanese Foreign Minister, Jebran Bassil, himself a Christian, gave a speech during a meeting for the Palestine Committee of the Non-Aligned Movement held in Tehran. He pointed out that the developments in the Gaza Strip, the Iraqi city of Mosul, and the Lebanese northeastern border town of Arsal are the same. Arsal had come under an attack by militants from ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) last weekend, and the Lebanese Army is still engaged in a battle against them.

He stated that the Jewish state of Israel and the Islamic State of ISIL share common principles such as killing in the name of religion, forcibly displacing people in the name of the project of their state, and eliminating the 'Other' in the name of monolithism. He also stated that this is done with Western support, while the Middle East disintegrates and pluralism disappears.

"The hospital became a nightmare," said a patient who survived after a major medical institution in Donetsk was shelled by Ukrainian troops in a series of attacks on residential neighborhoods that resulted in four casualties throughout the city.

"This is absurd," 37-year old Dmitry Kozhur told AP correspondent on the ground. "We came here to keep living, but now we are risking death."

One of the largest medical facilities in Donetsk, the Vishnevsky hospital №1, had its dentistry unit hit by a mortar shell on Thursday, with much of the second floor destroyed and burnt out as a result of the strike.

"There was a sudden explosion," witness Dr. Anna Kravtsova said. "A mortar round flew through the window."

Historically, the Levant is the birthplace of Christianity and the oldest Christian communities have lived in it and the entire Fertile Crescent since the start of Christian history. Early Christian called themselves followers or people of «the Way» before they adopted the term Christian; in Arabic their antiquated name would be «Ahl Al-Deen». [1] Traces of this original name are also available in the New Testament of the Bible and can be read in John 14:5-7, Acts 9:1-2, Acts 24:4 and 14. From the Fertile Crescent these Christian communities spread across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Since that time the ancient communities of Christians, many of which still use the Syriac dialects of Aramaic in their churches, have been an integral and important part of the social fabrics of the pluralistic societies of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Nevertheless, the Christians of the Levant and Iraq are now in the cross-hairs.

Deceit and mischief has been at play. It is no coincidence that Egyptian Christians were attacked at the same time as the South Sudan Referendum, which was supposed to signal a split between the Muslims in Khartoum and the Christians and animists in Juba. Nor is it an accident that Iraq's Christian, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, began to face a modern exodus, leaving their homes and ancestral homeland in Iraq in 2003. Mysterious groups targeted both them and Palestinian refugees... Coinciding with the exodus of Iraqi Christians, which occurred under the watchful eyes of US and British military forces, the neighborhoods in Baghdad became sectarian as Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims were forced by violence and death squads to form sectarian enclaves. This is all tied to US and Israeli project of redrawing the map.

The Christian communities of the Levant and Iraq have long distrusted the US government for its support of Israel, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and fanatical militants with anti-Christian leanings. Lebanon's Christians have also been weary of US support for Israeli expansion and ideas about resettling Palestinians into Lebanon. There is also a widely held belief that the US and Israel have been involved in a policy to remove or «purge» the Christians from Iraq and the Levant in some type of Zionist-linked resettlement plan. Since the US-supported anti-government fighters started targeting Christian Syrians, there has been renewed talk about a Christian exodus in the Middle East centering on Washington's war on Syria.