Accusations that the Syrian government is either wholly or mainly responsible for breaches of the United Nations' ceasefire are meant to provide a pretext for military intervention by the imperialist powers and their proxies.

The US and European media, meanwhile, is acting as a barely concealed propaganda instrument tasked with preparing public opinion for the latest criminal adventure in the Middle East - a war for regime change in Syria to follow those waged in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Saturation coverage was given to an explosion in Hama, with "opposition" sources cited to claim that a Scud missile attack had destroyed a building, accompanied by the usual inflated casualty figures. The more believable explanation that the explosion was due to an accident at a building used as a bomb factory was relegated to an aside.

The same holds true of the widespread reporting of "shock footage" of a journalist supposedly being "buried alive" by Syrian troops - a video so obviously staged and badly scripted that even supporters of the opposition have deemed it as a fake.

In contrast, a campaign by the opposition to create the conditions for a military intervention through systematic violations of the cease-fire has been downplayed or portrayed as staged provocations by the regime of Bashir al-Assad.

Military marskmen are being trained to combat any potential terrorist threats from the air during the tournament

Military snipers are to be deployed in helicopters during the London Olympics and if required will shoot pilots of low-flying aircraft that might be involved in terrorist attacks, it emerged on Monday.

A team of seven snipers is being given "comprehensive on-the-ground and in-the-air training" as part of the all encompassing security operation being undertaken by the police and the army.

General Sir Nick Parker, who is in charge of co-ordinating the armed forces during the 2012 Games, described the role of the snipers as he revealed the six sites where anti-aircraft missiles may be based as part of the security operation.

London residents were startled to discover that their housing complex was to be used as a military base to lodge a missile system. The UK Defense Ministry says it's all part of an effort to counter a terror threat during the London Olympics.
Coming to a neighborhood near you

Instead of their morning mail, residents of the upscale Bow Quarter residential complex received leaflets from the Defense Ministry. It was a worthy read: a high-velocity missile (HVM) battery is to be installed on the rooftop of the Lexington Building Water Tower. The surface-to-air rockets are capable of shooting down airplanes within a five kilometer range, and are aimed at preventing a terrorist strike during the London Olympics.

Why did the military select a residential block as the location for the missile battery?

Their killing power is immense and the surveillance possibilities are endless. Perhaps it's no wonder that the awesome potential of unmanned aerial vehicles is now being so energetically explored - from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the London Olympics.

The world's first glimpse of a killer drone in action was over the English Channel: a Royal Navy patrol boat reported "a bright horizontal flame" in the sky. The device emitting the flame had stubby wings and was shaped like a rocket, and was travelling from the French coast at more than 200mph. Too small and too fast to be intercepted, it arrived in England's Home Counties without warning; as it plunged earthwards the low drone of the motor cut out and there were three seconds of silence before the massive explosion. Where it exploded, the human beings at the epicentre simply disappeared, vaporised.

Of course, for all the similarities, this was not a Reaper or a Predator, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) used in action by British and US militaries today. The most glaring difference is that modern drones don't self-destruct, except by mistake. This was the Vergeltungswaffe, the V-1, known affectionately to its German makers as the Maybug and to its terrorised British targets as the "doodlebug". The Nazis had experimented with making it radio-controlled, but in the end its navigation system was crude. Yet this PAC (pilotless aircraft) - Hitler's last, desperate throw of the dice as the Allies swarmed towards Berlin - marked the start of a new era in warfare as decisively as did "Fat Man" and "Little Boy", which plummeted towards Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few months later.

The Predator and the Reaper and their rivals and relatives, some developed at Cranfield Aerospace ("Innovation at its Best") in Bedford, are crucially different from the Maybug because they target their victims so precisely. The 186 men, women and children vaporised by a doodlebug in the New Cross branch of Woolworth's in London's East End one November Saturday in 1944 had no idea what was coming their way, and no reason to feel more than normally apprehensive. By contrast, many of the intended victims of today's drones experience the very specific fear of being killed by them. In US Department of Defense videos with titles such as "UAV Kills Heavily Armed Criminals" and posted on YouTube, the visceral terror of the turbaned figures about to die is palpable. (Drone pilots call the moment of the kill a "bug splat" because of the way it looks on their screens.)

For what the US authorities call "personality strikes" - high-value targets - that specific fear can last for months, even years. Friends and relatives of the Islamist militant and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had such strong grounds to fear his assassination by drone that the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in August 2010 on behalf of his father, Nasser al-Awlaki, to try to stop it happening. The judge eventually dismissed the case, arguing that Nasser al-Awlaki would have no grounds to pursue it unless and until his son was actually killed. And so it came to pass: on 30 September 2011 in southern Yemen, the bearded American became one of at least four US citizens, to date, to be deliberately assassinated by US drones.

European leaders will seek to restore market calm this week after Spain was cut by Standard & Poor's and a German-led austerity agenda to resolve the debt crisis came under fire ahead of elections in France and Greece.

With Spain's largest unions leading marches involving thousands of protesters in 55 cities yesterday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government battled to prevent Spain from becoming the next country to seek bailout aid. In France, the final round of presidential elections on May 6 and the prospect of victory for Socialist candidate Francois Hollande steered debate toward whether a focus on budget cuts worsens the crisis.

"Watching Spain now is exactly like watching Ireland around October 2010 before Ireland was forced into its bailout," Megan Greene, a senior economist at Roubini Global Economics LLC, told Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart" on April 27. "The government can't win no matter what it does."

London - U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday there was no agreement between him and Rupert Murdoch, or his son James Murdoch, to support News Corp.'s NWSA -0.15% business interests in return for the media company's support of Mr. Cameron's Conservative Party.

"The idea there was some grand bargain between me and Rupert Murdoch - that is not true," he said in an interview with BBC television, in which he also defended the government's austerity measures after economic data last week showed the U.K. slipped back into a recession in the previous two quarters.

The government's links with media groups, in particular News Corp., have come under renewed scrutiny this week after the special adviser to the culture minister resigned over his close contacts with the Murdoch-run company during its efforts to take full control of pay-television operator British Sky Broadcasting Group BSY.LN +0.90% PLC last year.

Opposition lawmakers have called for Jeremy Hunt, the minister for culture, media and sport, to also resign over the allegations he was too close to News Corp. while he handled the regulatory process over the BSkyB bid.

Mr. Hunt has said he acted with "scrupulous fairness throughout" the process and pledged to give evidence on the matter before Brian Leveson, a government-appointed judge who is conducting a public inquiry into British media practices.

The body of former Libyan Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem was found in Danube river near the Austrian capital Vienna on Sunday.

Media reports quoting police spokesman Roman Hahslinger said Ghanem's body was found floating in the river on Sunday morning and it bore no external signs of violence. The cause of death could be determined only after a post-mortem examination, he added.

Ghanem, 69, was last seen by his daughter on Saturday night in their apartment in a Vienna suburb. She went to bed and when she woke up he was not in the apartment. She alerted the police who told her the body of her father was found in the Danube, 20 meters from the shore, close to the apartment in Copa Cagrana, a popular waterfront dotted with bars and restaurants.

Daughter of Ukraine's imprisoned opposition leader calls on Germany to 'save the life' of her mother

Angela Merkel is planning to boycott next month's Euro 2012 football tournament in Ukraine unless imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is released, according to newspaper reports.

The German chancellor's decision came as the former Ukrainian prime minister's daughter made an impassioned plea to the German government to "save the life" of her mother, who is has spent 10 days on hunger strike.

"Save my mother's life before it's too late," Eugenia Tymoshenko urged the German leadership in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung newspaper. "The fate of my mother and that of my country are now one and the same thing: if she dies, democracy dies with her".

Tymoshenko, 52, a former leader of Ukraine's Orange Revolution who is serving a seven-year prison sentence on charges that she abused her powers in a Russian energy deal, went on hunger strike to protest against alleged abuse in custody.

She claimed last week that prison guards punched her in the stomach and twisted her limbs while taking her to hospital against her will to be treated for a chronic back problem. Bruises on her right arm, elbow, hand and stomach have been documented in photographs.

In a political development with global implications, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday signaled he soon might call early elections - a decision that could put Mideast peace efforts on hold for months and cast more uncertainty on Israel's deliberations over whether to attack Iran's nuclear program.

Netanyahu has presided over an awkwardly diverse yet unusually resilient coalition for three years and is suddenly beset by challenges. But while he is increasingly under fire for his handling of Iran and the Palestinians, it is more mundane domestic complications that appear to be driving the coalition unrest.

The Supreme Court has ordered the government to dismantle illegal West Bank settlement outposts - a move that faces tough opposition from hard-line coalition allies who have a history of toppling even right-leaning governments like Netanyahu's over such issues.

A Supreme Court-ordered Aug. 1 deadline to scrap draft exemptions for tens of thousands of religious seminary students - an issue dividing the country's Jews into increasingly antagonistic camps - also threatens the coalition.

Mass protests also are expected for the second summer in a row over Israel's high cost of living.

© Reuters
Richard Prasquier, center, with President Nicolas Sarkozy, left, and Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande.

Political analysts says in Haaretz op-ed that Sarkozy is expected to lose, but the head of the French-Jewish umbrella group wrote he was worried by a possible victory by his opponent.

The leader of the French-Jewish umbrella group CRIF has attracted critical headlines following a piece he wrote in Haaretz apparently endorsing France's incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"Richard Prasquier lost his honor" was just one of a dozen headlines attacking or quoting the CRIF leader after his piece appeared, explaining why he thinks Sarkozy is still the best candidate for the presidency. "He has a deep knowledge of Israel and a deep sympathy for this country," wrote Prasquier.