Over the past two days the intensity of shelling has decreased. The 207 incidents of shelling reported by the DPR Defense Ministry are a less terrifying experience than the roughly 800 incidents of shelling before. Nevertheless they still threaten the lives of civilians and cause a considerable damage to their homes. According to the Ministry, the latest shelling resulted in two civilians being wounded in a suburb of Donetsk and a 10-year-old boy suffering shell-shock in Gorlovka, a city to the north of the capital of the DPR.

The heavy shelling forced the DPR Ministry of Transport to suspend repair works on the segment of the railway that had been damaged by a Ukrainian sabotage group several days ago. This part of the railway is the main line for transporting coal mined in the DPR, in particular to Ukraine. Due to the explosion, coal supplies to Ukraine were stopped. However, Kiev seems more interested in destruction of the DPR infrastructure than in the unencumbered functioning of Ukrainian industry.

The threat posed to civilian life and property forces the DPR Army to return fire. Over the past two days the Ukrainian military authorities have reported receiving 102 incidents of shelling on their positions by the DPR Armed Forces, indicating that both sides are not observing the ceasefire.

The United States and Russia are hoping that the partial Syrian cease-fire agreement they reached Monday to take effect February 27 will begin a new phase of the war. The cease-fire will not apply to operations against al-Qaeda's franchise in Syria (al-Nusra Front), and the two powers have apparently agreed to try to split off a significant number of armed opposition groups from their cooperation with al-Nusra Front.

Along with continued Russian, Syrian and Iranian operations against al-Nusra Front, that split could further weaken the al-Qaeda franchise and begin a process of winding down the war between the Assad regime and military forces other than ISIS.

It is by no means certain that the US-Russian agreement will have that effect. The two powers, as co-chairs of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) have said they have gotten the assent of their allies in the group as well as Russia's Syrian government ally. But Turkey and Saudi Arabia are known to be unhappy with US policy, and it is unclear whether they would seek to undermine the agreement by encouraging armed groups not to give up the fight.

It wasn't so long ago that London was accusing Russia of plotting to partition Syria. The context of the allegation was that supposedly Russia has begun to see it will not be able to win in Syria and had now settled for carving out an Alawite mini state for Assad.

Yet three weeks later and one Turkey-rebel supply route less and it's Washington which is talking up partition instead. And furthermore doing so from a position of weakness that UK's Philip Hammond had been earlier deluding himself that the Russians were working from.

What was specifically notable about Kerry bringing up partition was that he explicitly said this is "plan B" if "if a genuine shift to a transitional government does not take place".

Washington has set a trap for impulsive Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, US journalist Mike Whitney notes, adding that a 'color revolution' in Turkey may one day become a reality.

On February 19 Washington dismissed a draft resolution by Russia aimed at preventing a Turkish invasion of Syria at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC); by making move the Obama administration is in fact giving the green light to Ankara's ground operation in Syria, US independent journalist Mike Whitney believes.

"It suggests that the Obama administration thinks that Turkish ground troops could play an important role in shaping the outcome of a conflict that the US is still determined to win. Keep in mind, if the resolution had passed, the threat of a Turkish invasion would have vanished immediately," Whitney writes in his analysis for CounterPunch.org, adding that the quashing of the resolution clearly signals that Washington does not want peace in Syria.

The United States and Europe, along with many willing collaborators have waged a series of wars and proxy wars stretching across much of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

What the West was pursuing in reordering the post-Soviet world through conventional military means in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq beginning in 2003, it continued through somewhat less-conventional means - the so-called "Arab Spring" and the series of proxy wars that erupted afterward beginning in 2011.

Today, Western-fueled wars continue to consume Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, while violence and political instability plague other nations the West has either recently meddled in or is currently occupying or undermining.

France alone - in addition to conducting military operations in Libya in 2011, and currently carrying out military operations in Syria and Iraq - has troops stationed in African nations including the Central African Republic (2,000), Chad (950), Ivory Coast (450), Djibouti (2,470), Gabon (1,000), Mali (2,000), and Senegal (430).

Eritrea and Somalia during this 15 year period have been subjected to invasions from neighboring Ethiopia - who despite being plagued by widespread poverty - has been the benefactor of US military support and encouraged to carry out proxy war upon its neighbors not unlike Saudi Arabia is now doing in Yemen.

Predictably, the result is an arc of chaos stretching halfway around the world. Also predictably, from this arc of chaos refugees flee, and they are fleeing to Europe, the only place they can go to escape the chaos.
For Africa, perhaps the most ironic aspect of the current refugee crisis besetting Europe is the fact that Libya - whom Europe conspired to destroy - had been absorbing refugees from across Africa for years, putting them to work and giving them a stable nation to live their lives in. When Libya was set upon by the US and Europe in 2011, it was predicted that Libya would go from serving as a destination for refugees, to a gateway for them, onward to Europe. And that is precisely what has happened.

Britain is allowing a "culture of impunity" to flourish across the globe by planning to scrap the Human Rights Act, a damning report from Amnesty International has warned.

In its annual report on the worldwide state of human rights, the campaign group criticizes the Tory plan to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, excluding the UK from European jurisdiction.

As well as the British Bill of Rights, the report also examines the British government's breach of privacy and undertaking of mass surveillance.

"The UK is setting a dangerous precedent to the world on human rights. There's no doubt that the downgrading of human rights by this government is a gift to dictators the world over and fatally undermines our ability to call on other countries to uphold rights and laws," Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen, said.

The BBC missed numerous opportunities to stop sexual abuse perpetrated by now-deceased DJ and television star Jimmy Savile, a report into his crimes has revealed.

Published on Thursday, The Dame Janet Smith Review criticized the broadcaster for letting the star continue to commit offenses with impunity.

The former BBC presenter and charity figurehead died in 2011, but allegations of sexual abuse emerged after his death. By October 2012, complaints about Savile had been made to 13 different police forces across Britain.

The star is alleged to have sexually abused roughly 450 victims who came forward as part of Operation Yewtree, a police investigation into widespread abuse by Savile and other high-profile figures.

Sexual assaults took place at six hospitals and on BBC premises, with victims' ages ranging from five to 75. Police described the abuse as being on an "unprecedented scale."

The report found there had been "serious failings" at the BBC, which had neglected to stop Savile from sexually abusing 72 women on its premises.

Press TV has interviewed Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor-in-chief of Zuerst in Berlin, to discuss a US plan aimed at boosting Navy patrols in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Does the US have the right to rebut Beijing's assertions of sovereignty?

Ochsenreiter: Out of the perspective of Washington, the US for sure thing they have the right to do that because in Washington we find the philosophy of international politics as world inner-politics. Terms like sovereignty, just as one example, do not really exist in the original meaning in the Washington narrative of international politics anymore. We have to see the American actions in the Pacific as the actions of an extra-territorial power there, violating the sovereignty of China.

We see in Washington the plan or will of the establishment of a unipolar world order. Unipolar world order means, one world, one center of the world, one government maybe at the end, and every conflict has to be solved on the basis of the so-called Western values. We have in China, the contradiction we have there, the idea of a multi-polar world with; this is a world with centers of power distributed all over the Continent China, India, the Russian Federation, Europe, Latin America, North America, Africa of course, the Islamic World would be such centers. So we see there the confrontation between these two ideas.

At a time when the international community is looking forward to the possibility of putting an end to the bloody conflict in Syria that has dragged on for years, while putting their hopes behind the agreement that was achieved between the US and Russia on February 22 regarding the cessation of all hostile activities in Syria, certain forces in the United States carry on banging the war drum.

As it has been pointed out by the The Wall Street Journal:

Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan have voiced increasingly hawkish views toward Moscow in recent White House meetings, calling for new measures to "inflict real pain on the Russians," a senior administration official said.

Moreover, those gentlemen are somehow convinced that Moscow will break the ceasefire, so they have formulated a "Plan B," that will imply the strengthening of their support to extremists and the introduction of new sanctions against Russia.

Of course, one could only be amazed by such behavior from Washington's "hawks" if one did not take into consideration the evidence exposing their direct involvement in the continuous aggravation of the situation in Syria, which makes them directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. Those actions would for sure present the perfect subject for a careful investigation of an international tribunal.

On Friday, the United States rejected a draft resolution by Russia that was intended to prevent a Turkish invasion of Syria. Moscow had called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to address its growing concern that Turkey is planning to send thousands of ground troops and armored vehicles it has massed on its southern border, into Syria to protect Turkish-backed militants and to block the Kurdish militia, the YPG, from establishing a contiguous state in northern Syria. Moscow's one-page resolution was a thoroughly-straightforward document aimed at preventing a massive escalation in a conflict that has already claimed the lives of 250, 000 and left the country in ruins.

According to Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, "The main elements of this Russian draft resolution are to demand that all parties refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, that they fully respect Syria's sovereignty and independence, stop incursions, and abandon plans for ground operations." The resolution also expressed Moscow's "grave alarm at the reports of military buildup and preparatory activities aimed at launching foreign ground intervention into the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic."

There was nothing controversial about the resolution, no tricks and no hidden meaning. The delegates were simply asked to support Syrian sovereignty and oppose armed aggression. These are the very principles upon which the United Nations was founded. The US and its allies rejected these principles because they failed to jibe with Washington's geopolitical ambitions in Syria.

Quashing the resolution confirms in the clearest terms that Washington doesn't want peace in Syria. Also, it suggests that the Obama administration thinks that Turkish ground troops could play an important role in shaping the outcome of a conflict that the US is still determined to win. Keep in mind, if the resolution had passed, the threat of a Turkish invasion would have vanished immediately. Why? Because the Turkish "military has publicly stated that it is not willing to send troops across the border without U.N. Security Council approval."