Today is the anniversary of the 1993 incineration of the Branch Davidean church at Waco Texas. The siege began when the BATF decided to raid the church, which supported itself financially with a gun repair and reselling business, to garner some favorable publicity in the wake of several BATF disasters involving raids at the wrong address and the killing of innocent Americans. But Waco turned into another disaster as the BATF invited the media along on the operation.

One of the media was a friend of David Koresh and called him to let him know the raid was on the way. When the BATf arrived, Koresh opened the front door intending to invite the BATF to inspect the dismantled weapons in their workshop (all the functioning weapons were out at a gun show that day). But as soon as Koresh opened the door he was shot in the groin by a BATF sniper and the situation deteriorated from there with BATF accidentally shooting each other (and claiming it was the Branch Davideans).

How much do Americans trust President Obama? Not much, according to a Fox News poll.

Sixty-one percent of respondents in the poll released Thursday said Obama lies at least some of the time on important issues. An additional 20 percent said he lies every now and then.

Only 15 percent believe the president is completely truthful.

Predictably, Republicans were more likely to believe Obama is a liar, with 85 percent saying he lies some or most of the time. Thirty-one percent of Democrats said the president is always truthful.

What's interesting is that independents were slightly more likely to believe Obama lies at least some of the time - 63 percent, compared with 61 percent for the total sample.

The Russian government this week canceled a planned U.S. surveillance flight over Russian territory in a bid to limit spying on massed troops facing off against Ukraine and Eastern Europe, according to U.S. officials.

The overflight mission was scheduled for April 14 to April 16 under the 1992 Open Skies Treaty, but Russia's government notified the State Department 72 hours before the scheduled flight that it would not be permitted.

The cancelation is unusual because the sole reason for putting off such treaty-approve surveillance is flight safety, such as bad weather.

Until this week, the United States and other European allies who are a party to the 34-nation treaty were conducting weekly overflights above Russia during the past month.

Combat teams, aircraft, tanks pulled from Europe

The Obama administration has removed all operational combat tanks from Europe and key strike aircraft, limiting the options for a show of force to bolster eastern NATO allies as Russia contemplates invading Ukraine.

Most analysts, and President Obama, say direct military aid to Kiev in the form of weapons, air power or ground troops is off the table.

That makes it a top priority to show Russian President Vladimir Putin that Washington stands militarily behind NATO members such as the Baltic states, Poland and other countries once under Soviet domination.

At least fifteen people, including those not specifically targeted, are killed or wounded in bombing
A Yemen military official on Saturday says that at least fifteen people were either killed or wounded when a missile from a U.S. drone struck vehicles traveling on a road in the central province of al-Bayda.

Among the dead, according reports, are what the official claimed were targeted al-Qaeda militants traveling in two vehicles and also non-targeted passers-by traveling on the same road when the powerful U.S. bomb hit.

According to Reuters, "tribal sources said a drone had been circling al-Bayda for days and on Saturday struck two cars the suspected militants were in. Three civilians who happened to be in a nearby car were also killed, they said."

A security source told Reuters that the missile "targeted cars that suspected al Qaeda militants were in and killed 13 of them."

The Associated Press, however, reports that a "Yemeni official" said nine of the victims in the attack were militants while at least six were "innocent civilians."

ALL Jewish people should leave Ukraine at once, a Holocaust survivor warned last night, after "grotesque" anti-Semitic leaflets were handed out in the country.

The pamphlets and posters, distributed in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk, demanded that the Jewish population register, pay a new tax or leave.

They are a terrifying echo of the anti-Jewish atrocities carried out by Ukrainians under Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

The leaflets, apparently signed by pro-Russian group the People's Republic of Donetsk, have enraged the world.


US Secretary of State John Kerry said last week: "After all of the miles travelled and all of the journey of history, this is not just intolerable, it is grotesque."

Sam Pivnik, 86, was only 14 when his family were rounded up in Bedzin, western Poland, and sent to the death camp at Auschwitz.

After his parents, brothers and a sister were chosen "with the flick of a glove" for extermination by "Angel of Death" Dr Josef Mengele, the teenager, tattooed with a prisoner number, was left to survive alone. Mr Pivnik, who now lives in Golders Green, north London, said he was not surprised by the literature's anti-Semitism.

The federal agency that backed down over the weekend in a tense standoff with a Nevada rancher is being accused of leaving a trail of wreckage behind.

Fox News toured the damage -- allegedly caused by the Bureau of Land Management -- which included holes in water tanks and destroyed water lines and fences. According to family friends, the bureau's hired "cowboys" also killed two prize bulls.

"They had total control of this land for one week, and look at the destruction they did in one week," said Corey Houston, friend of rancher Cliven Bundy and his family. "So why would you trust somebody like that? And how does that show that they're a better steward?"

The Pentagon may deploy more ground troops in Poland, although the number may be much smaller than what the eastern European NATO member wants to see. Washington is seeking to reassure allies amid fears of a Russian aggression.

Warsaw and Washington may announce the deployment of additional American troops in Poland next week, Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said following a meeting with his US counterpart, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon on Thursday.

He added that Poland would play a leading role in the NATO build-up of troops in Eastern Europe, "under US patronage," the Washington Post reported. He added that the US needs to "re-pivot" back to Europe from Asia to counter "Russian aggression" in Ukraine.

Siemoniak earlier called on the Pentagon to deploy as many as 10,000 American troops in his country. Poland already hosts some 100 to 150 US military servicing a battery of surface-to-air Patriot missiles, which was deployed in 2010 to give Warsaw more confidence for hosting elements of the NATO anti-ballistic missile shield in Europe.

The Polish minister's calls were mirrored by NATO's top military commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who said in an interview this month that one of the options the alliance has on the table is to move a 4,500-member combat brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, to Europe.

Senior Labour staffer says newly appointed senior strategist will focus on mobilising activists in 2015 election

David Axelrod, Labour's newly appointed senior strategist and Barack Obama's closest long-term political adviser, will make mobilisation of Labour's grassroots central to the election campaign, a senior Labour staffer who has worked for Obama has forecast.

Axelrod himself stressed on Friday that he could not help Labour succeed at the next election without the mobilisation of local communities, adding - in his first effort to energise Labour members - that the world would be watching the outcome of the 2015 vote. The Guardian revealed on Thursday that Axelrod was joining the Labour campaign team as a senior strategist.

Matthew McGregor, who is advising Labour on digital campaigning, worked on the Obama campaign in 2012 in Chicago. He told the Guardian: "Axelrod puts mobilisation of activists at the centre of all his campaigns. It is one way he views political empowerment. Obama said whether he won or lost the election, he wanted to leave politics better off at the end of the campaign by finding more ways to involve people in politics. He harnesses data, digital techniques and doorstep canvassers to create an effective movement online and offline."

In September 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vladimir Putin supported Washington's imminent invasion of Afghanistan in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War.

He agreed that U.S. planes carrying humanitarian aid could fly through Russian air space. He said the U.S. military could use airbases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. And he ordered his generals to brief their U.S. counterparts on their own ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan.

During Putin's visit to President George W. Bush's Texas ranch two months later, the U.S. leader, speaking at a local high school, declared his Russian counterpart "a new style of leader, a reformer..., a man who's going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States."

For a moment, it seemed, the distrust and antipathy of the Cold War were fading.

Then, just weeks later, Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so that it could build a system in Eastern Europe to protect NATO allies and U.S. bases from Iranian missile attack. In a nationally televised address, Putin warned that the move would undermine arms control and nonproliferation efforts.

"This step has not come as a surprise to us," Putin said. "But we believe this decision to be mistaken."

The sequence of events early in Washington's relationship with Putin reflects a dynamic that has persisted through the ensuing 14 years and the current crisis in Ukraine: U.S. actions, some intentional and some not, sparking an overreaction from an aggrieved Putin.

As Russia masses tens of thousands of troops along the Russian-Ukrainian border, Putin is thwarting what the Kremlin says is an American plot to surround Russia with hostile neighbors. Experts said he is also promoting "Putinism" - a conservative, ultra-nationalist form of state capitalism - as a global alternative to Western democracy.