The head of Russia's Security Council has said that US military aid to the Kiev regime was very unlikely as Washington is not interested in its success. It only intended to use the conflict in Ukraine as leverage for US influence on the European Union.

"As for military aid to Ukraine, I think this is not something to count on. Washington has no need of Ukraine's military success just as it is not interested in the economic prosperity of this country," Nikolai Patrushev told reporters on Tuesday.

He also noted that the United States were directly influencing top Ukrainian politicians and had used the crisis situation in the country, including the military conflict in Donbass, for its own geopolitical ends.

"It depends on the Department of State if the Minsk agreements will be observed. The White House emphasizes Europe's dependence when decisions on international relations are made. It also uses sanctions in attempts to break Russia, which carries out independent internal and external policies," Interfax quoted the security official as saying.

"The war started by Kiev gives Washington an opportunity to radically influence the policies of EU nations and demonstrate their 'exceptionalism' in solving any issues in any region of the world," Patrushev told reporters.

International isolation of Russia is impossible and the price of all statements that suggest the opposite is very relative, Dmitry Peskov has said in comments on the latest White House press briefing.

The Russian President's press secretary noted that over the past year the Kremlin officials have repeatedly witnessed such rhetoric, but it had proved to be completely groundless.

"Active international activity by the head of the Russian State demonstrates that such rhetoric is completely non-viable. Russia has always been and will always remain responsible, active and very important member of the international community," TASS quoted Peskov as saying.

The official also added that he would not exclude the possibility of direct dialogue between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Barak Obama.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to meet in Moscow next week to discuss the Kremlin's expanding role in Syria's civil war.

The Prime Minister's Office announced the trip Wednesday and said Mr. Netanyahu plans to tell the Russian leader that the delivery of warheads and troops to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad could have grave repercussions.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu will present the threats posed to Israel as a result of the increased flow of advanced war material to the Syrian arena and the transfer of deadly weapons to Hezbollah and other terror organizations," his office said in a statement.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, told Russian media that "a short working visit and talks" will take place Monday between the two leaders.

Addressing the worsening security situation in Jerusalem, the Israeli PM has vowed to tackle violence by "all means necessary," including live ammo and harsher prison terms, after an Israeli citizen was killed in a car accident allegedly caused by a rock-throwing attack.

"We will fight through all means necessary against rock throwers, firebomb and pipe bomb throwers, and those who shoot fireworks to harm citizens and police officers," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after holding an emergency security meeting following a spate of attacks in Jerusalem during Jewish New Years (Rosh Hashana) celebrations.

A 64-year-old Jewish man, Alexander Levlovich, was killed in a car accident on Sunday night while returning home from a dinner celebrating Rosh Hashana. His car was allegedly pelted by unidentified stone-throwers between a Palestinian and Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

The death of the Israeli came amid ongoing clashes between Palestinians rioters and security forces in Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, as tensions during visits by Jews to Temple Mount intensified around New Year.

Hungarian police have deployed tear gas and water cannon against asylum seekers, who broke through razor wire fence at the border crossing with Serbia, media reports say.

Police have been reportedly trying to control the crowd, who were throwing plastic bottles, stones and concrete at them. Thick black smoke is covering the area, as seen in the videos.

Hungarian police told Reuters that several "aggressive" people had managed to break through the border gates.

"Police are taking lawful and proportionate measures to protect the Hungarian state border and the external frontier of the European Union," law enforcers said in a statement.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has asked Serbia to act against asylum seekers on the Hungarian-Serbian border, Reuters said citing local TV.

Whom Do You Trust? Mom Bloggers? Scientists?

Unfortunately, the information you get from either group may be paid for by Monsanto.

Major news outlets reported this week that emails released through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests prove for certain what many of us already knew: Monsanto has enlisted "independent" scientists to deliver their messaging for them, in an effort to overcome the public's mistrust of GMO propaganda.

This follows reports from last year that Monsanto was similarly trying to recruit "mommy" bloggers to disseminate their GMO messaging.

In a rare interview with Russian media outlets, RT among them, Syrian leader Bashar Assad spoke about global and domestic terrorism threats, the need for a united front against jihadism, Western propaganda about the refugee crisis and ways to bring peace to his war-torn nation.

Question 1: Mr. President, thank you from the Russian media, from RT, from Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Channel 1, Russia 24, RIA Novosti, and NTV channel, for giving us all the opportunity to talk to you during this very critical phase of the crisis in Syria, where there are many questions that need to be addressed on where exactly the political process to achieve peace in Syria is heading, what's the latest developments on the fight against ISIL, and the status of the Russian and Syrian partnership, and of course the enormous exodus of Syrian refugees that has been dominating headlines in Europe.

Now, the crisis in Syria is entering its fifth year. You have defied all predictions by Western leaders that you would be ousted imminently, and continue to serve today as the President of the Syrian Arab Republic. Now, there has been a lot of speculation recently caused by reports that officials from your government met with officials from your adversary Saudi Arabia that caused speculation that the political process in Syria has entered a new phase, but then statements from Saudi Arabia that continue to insist on your departure suggest that in fact very little has changed despite the grave threat that groups like ISIL pose far beyond Syria's borders.

So, what is your position on the political process? How do you feel about power sharing and working with those groups in the opposition that continue to say publically that there can be no political solution in Syria unless that includes your immediate departure? Have they sent you any signal that they are willing to team up with you and your government? In addition to that, since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, many of those groups were calling to you to carry out reforms and political change. But is such change even possible now under the current circumstances with the war and the ongoing spread of terror in Syria?

In the mind of State Department spokesman John Kirby, Russia should not back Syria against the terrorists, president Assad is to blame for ISIS, Iraq is much better off because of the US invasion, and it's 'absolutely astounding' anyone would dare to disagree.

That is what the press briefing at the State Department on Tuesday amounted to in a nutshell. The retired US Navy admiral, now speaking on behalf of the US foreign ministry, repeatedly blamed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the very existence of Islamic State terrorists.

"He is the reason ISIL, and other terrorist groups, have been allowed to fester and grow and sustain themselves inside Syria," Kirby said. "Assad regime has allowed groups like ISIL to fester and grow inside the country."

Yes, you read that headline correctly; motivated to impress his engineering teacher, 14 year old Ahmed Mohamed from Irving, Texas, made a clock by wiring a circuit board and power supply to a digital display and carried it to school inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front. His teacher thought Ahmed's clock was "really nice", but advised him not to show it to anyone else.

Ahmed kept the clock in his bag during English class but when the alarm kept going off his teacher demanded to see it. "It looks like a bomb" said the teacher. "It doesn't look like a bomb to me" replied Ahmed. The teacher kept the clock and soon the school principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of class and taken to a room where he was interrogated by 5 officers and arrested for a 'bomb hoax'.

During his interrogation in the school room Ahmed said an officer he'd never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: "Yup. That's who I thought it was."

"They were like, 'So you tried to make a bomb?'" Ahmed said.

"I told them no, I was trying to make a clock."

"He said, 'It looks like a movie bomb to me.'"

Over the past couple of years we in the media have, by and large, risen to the challenge and the need for publishing a good variety of Russian scare stories. That is all well and good, but it is my belief that unless we continue to publish pieces which adhere to the same journalistic standards, the narrative we have been working so hard to maintain might be lost and the general public might begin to suspect that we've been taking them for a ride. That won't do, of course, and so in the interests of keeping the narrative flowing, here is a basic primer on the art of writing Russian scare stories for public consumption:

1. It may be that many of you feel that the old rules of journalism — such as including verifiable sources and adhering to credible standards of evidence Russians and the Russian President as much as to other subjects. Let me assure you from the outset that this is not the case. Thanks to the hard work of those who have gone before you to convince many in the public that "the Russians are coming", piffling matters such as verifiable sources and credible evidence are really non issues and, providing you are careful, you can pretty much make up whatever you like and get away with it.

2. Further to point number one, the recent story concerning the military intervention of the Russian army in Syria, which first appeared in the Israeli online news site, Ynetnews.com, provides a textbook example of how these pieces should be written and I strongly advise anyone interested in becoming a real expert in Russian scare stories to go and study that piece. It started by claiming that "Russia had begun its military intervention in Syria", went on to cite "Western diplomats" as its source, and then accompanied the article with some nice pictures of Russian MiGs. However, regardless of the credibility gap, the piece was then picked up by the Council on Foreign Relations, before going all the way up to the White House itself, where the claims were taken as credible. This is a brilliant example of just how much you can get away with and I would advise you to let Churchill's great line give you comfort as you set about penning your scare piece: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on".

3. For those who still find themselves a little queasy, fearing that writing unsourced and frankly outrageous claims might land you in hot water, let me encourage you to dabble in that little scribe's device, the quotation mark. Take this from the BBC earlier this year: 'Russian submarine' suspected of damaging UK trawler in Irish Sea.What those quotation marks do is give you the best of both worlds. On the one hand, they give you the opportunity to write all sorts of unsourced and incredible claims to scare your readers that the Russians are up to evil tricks (including damaging fishing boats). Yet at the same time, they absolve you from any responsibility should the 'Russian submarine' turn out to be a 'Swedish civilian boat' or a 'British Navy submarine', since you can just claim that you were quoting rather than asserting. Provided you begin your article with something like "Experts believe that the Irish/Swedish fishing boat which capsized 'may have been hit by a Russian submarine,'" you have all you need to scare the willies out of your readers whilst at the same time ensuring immunity.