Two days ago, on March 16th, a Ukrainian tank ran over a mother and her two children as they stood on a sidewalk in the Donetsk town of Konstantinovka, 55 km from Donetsk city. The girl, Polina, was killed instantly. The woman apparently died later in hospital. The Ukie soldiers driving the tank were apparently drunk. The girl's death prompted riots in the town - the first big revolt behind Kiev's front line since the Odessa massacre. Right Sektor thugs have been sent in to 'restore order'.

The rioters demanded the soldiers be brought to justice. That's unlikely. Justice is a foreign concept to the Ukrainian regime. Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashenko responded by announcing that soldiers will 'shoot to kill':

If someone in Kostantinovka with arms in their hands will protest against the laws of the Ukrainian authorities, using this accident to instigate mass clashes, then first one warning shot will be made, and then they will shoot to kill. If there is no time to give a warning, they will be shooting to kill immediately. Nobody is allowed to undermine the Ukrainian government with arms on the territory of Ukraine.

Kiev forbade protests, but around 100 people gathered at the site of Polina's death with toys and flowers. Kiev called them "associates of the terrorists".

French lawmakers have given the green light to a law that will allow doctors the right to put terminally ill patients into a deep sleep until they die.

The vote passed by a huge majority with 436 in favor and 34 against, although the session was briefly interrupted by a group of protesters who threw bits of paper with slogans like "no to euthanasia" from the gallery.

A total of 83 lawmakers abstained. Of these, several from the left abstained because the law didn't go far enough. Around 20 MPs from the right wing UMP party also didn't take part because they thought the law went too far, which some said represented a drift towards euthanasia.

On Monday representatives of France's religious communities said they would try and appeal the bill.

"We are launching a joint appeal, anxious and pressing, [so] that this possible new law will not in any way violate this basic principle: all human life must be respected particularly at the moment when it is most fragile," they said in an open letter published in French daily Le Monde.

The Obama administration set a new record again for more often than ever censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.


Its backlog of unanswered requests at year's end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.

The government's new figures, published Tuesday, covered all requests to 100 federal agencies during fiscal 2014 under the Freedom of Information law, which is heralded globally as a model for transparent government. They showed that despite disappointments and failed promises by the White House to make meaningful improvements in the way it releases records, the law was more popular than ever. Citizens, journalists, businesses and others made a record 714,231 requests for information. The U.S. spent a record $434 million trying to keep up. It also spent about $28 million on lawyers' fees to keep records secret.

Gas supplies from Hungary to Ukraine have increased tenfold to a record 7.4 million cubic meters per day on Monday, up sharply from 720,000 cubic meters per day on March 7-12, the Ukrainian gas transportation network operator Ukrtransgaz said.

"As of 6:00 [04:00 GMT] on March 16, daily natural gas supplies to Ukraine from Hungary amounted to 7.4 million cubic meters. From March 7 to March 12, when gas supplies from Hungary were increased, the deliveries stood at 0.72 million cubic meters per day," Ukrtransgaz said in a statement on its website on Monday. Ukraine's has imported 52 million cubic meters from Hungary in the first half of March, the operator added. Last year, Ukraine imported 600 million cubic meters of gas from Hungary.

The statistics from Naftogaz come at a time when Ukraine is seeking to diversify away from Russian supplies. The new gas conflict with Moscow could trigger another cut-off. Meanwhile, Kiev says it's going to cut imports from Russia to zero and buy gas in reverse schemes from other western countries like Slovakia and Poland. Last week, President Petro Poroshenko blamed Russia for charging Ukraine 15 percent more for its gas than the countries in Europe and said he would get gas in reverse supplies from Europe at $245 per 1,000 cubic meters.

Ukraine, where the economy is in a full-blown crisis, now pays for Russian gas in small tranches. The last one - $15 million - was made on March 6 and is supposed to last through March 15, but since then, Gazprom has not received any new payments.

Ukraine's regime of Petro Poroshenko is shifting the goalposts on any given political matter, brazenly violating the Minsk deal, while the West is turning a blind eye to Kiev's actions, a UK expert notes.

The Ukrainian regime of Petro Poroshenko backed by the West has become a sort of "star team" in shifting the goalposts on any given political matter, especially on the Minsk ceasefire deal, noted a UK expert.

"Poroshenko and his reactionary Kiev regime - which seized power in February last year in a Western-backed violent coup against a constitutionally elected government - have shown themselves to be shameless purveyors of the most outlandish claims over the Ukraine crisis," noted Finian Cunningham, an author and prominent expert in international affairs.

Petro Poroshenko, greeted in Berlin with open arms by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck, called upon his Western allies to boycott the 2018 World Cup Finals in Russia and claimed again - without the slightest evidence - that Russia was "waging war against Ukraine." However, these ludicrous and reckless assertions "are gladly broadcast by the US-led NATO military alliance, Western governments and Western news media," noted the author. Even though Berlin has recently adopted a more cautious approach to Ukrainian propaganda and they continue indulging Kiev's dangerous warmongering.

So far, enjoying this whole-hearted support of the West, the Kiev regime is moving goalposts on any given political matter with total impunity. For instance, while declaring that "there was no alternative to the Minsk ceasefire," Poroshenko's regime is violating the deal at every turn, the expert underscored. Sporadic fire of Ukrainian military forces on militia's positions in eastern Ukraine has never ceased since February 15. At least 20 percent of Kiev's heavy artillery still remains in the conflict zone. Moreover, Kiev's remaining forces have been conducting live-fire drills near the Contact Line, psychologically terrorizing peaceful civilians.

Tel Aviv — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday's elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.

With 99.5 percent of the ballots counted, the YNet news site reported Wednesday morning that Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party had captured 29 or 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, sweeping past his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, which got 24 seats.

Mr. Netanyahu and his allies had seized on earlier exit polls that showed a slimmer Likud lead to create an aura of inevitability, and celebrated with singing and dancing. While his opponents vowed a fight, Israeli political analysts agreed even before most of the ballots were counted that he had the advantage, with more seats having gone to the right-leaning parties likely to support him.

In a sign of the European Union's diminishing appetite for sanctions against Russia, seven EU member states are expected to reject any prolongation of the current western sanctions against Russia for its alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis.

The list of no-backers includes Cyprus, whose President Nicos Anastasiades visited Moscow in February, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who met with Vladimir Putin earlier this month, and Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras, who is due in Moscow in April.

Along with Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Spain, these three countries are reluctant backers of economic curbs against Russia and, as long as the shaky truce holds in eastern Ukraine, the anti-sanctions bloc will lay down a marker at an EU summit starting Thursday in Brussels, Bloomberg reported.

"The likeliest outcome is that they will not agree to roll over the sanctions now and they will put off a decision until the last possible moment before the sanctions expire," Ian Bond, a former British diplomat now with the Center for European Reform in London, said by phone.

A significant rift has opened up between the UK and the US following the decision by the Cameron government last week to defy the wishes of the Obama administration and become a founding member of the $50 billion China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

In a sharp rebuke, an unnamed White House official told the Financial Times the British government had been engaged in a "constant accommodation" of China.

The decision came after the US earlier had applied great pressure to its allies in the region—South Korea, Japan and Australia—not to become members, out of concern the bank would undermine the influence of the US-dominated World Bank and cut across US plans for the diplomatic and military encirclement of China under the Obama administration's "pivot to Asia."

Last October, intense lobbying by the Obama administration saw the Australian Liberal government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott overturn a previous decision to take part in the establishment of the AIIB.

US Secretary of State John Kerry may be starting to enjoy the brinkmanship, as he says it's "unclear" whether the US and Iran would reach a political framework nuclear deal before the end of this month.

Loud applause may be heard in corridors ranging from Tel Aviv to Riyadh.

As negotiations resume in Lausanne, the fact is a potential nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, BRICS members Russia and China, and Germany) is bound to open the possibility of more Iranian oil exports - thus leading oil prices to fall even further. As of early this week, Brent crude was trading at $54.26 a barrel.

Assuming the US and the EU nations that are part of P5+1 really agree to implement the suspension of UN sanctions by the summer (Russia and China already agree), not only will Iran be exporting more energy - that should take a few months - but also OPEC as a whole will be increasing its oversupply.

The EU badly wants to buy loads of Iranian energy - and invest in Iranian energy infrastructure. Beijing, a key yet discreet member of the P5+1, is also watching these developments very carefully.

Whatever happens, for China this is a win-win situation, as Beijing keeps actively building up its strategic petroleum reserves profiting from low prices. And even as oil prices also remain under pressure from the strong US dollar - which makes oil way more expensive if you are paying with a different currency - that's certainly no problem for China, with its mammoth US dollar reserves.

The oil price war essentially unleashed by Saudi Arabia has hit Iran with a bang. The country may be down, but not out. There were no good options for Tehran except to try to keep its market share by offering the same discounts - especially to Asia - the Saudis are offering.

Tehran has been under a tsunami of nasty Western sanctions for years, which limit its ability to export oil and increase production. It's extremely difficult for the Iranian governments to reduce the gap of the expected revenue based on previous high oil prices.

Now the name of the game among major oil producers is to keep market share at all costs. Iran can't escape it - as it needs to keep in check at all times the fear of oversupply and its desire to increase production. Some oil producing countries are definitely keeping upcoming oil supplies out of the market. The result is Iran will have serious trouble going for more production and more exports while trying to regain its pre-sanctions market share.

The Russian president has again denounced attempts to rewrite WWII history, noting that the authors seek to sow strife between peoples and nations for their own geopolitical purposes.

Putin said the cynical lies about the Great Patriotic War and the attempts to blacken the reputation of the Soviet people and the Red Army have nothing to do with the truth. The president's comments came at the Tuesday session of the committee preparing the May 9 celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The Great Patriotic war is the traditional Russian title for the 1941-45 campaign against Germany and its allies.

"I reject these shameless conclusions and so called observations that have nothing to do with the truth. Their objective is clear - they want to undermine the power and moral authority of modern Russia and deprive it of the winner nation status with all consequences that would follow in international law," Putin told the committee members. "They want to divide peoples and instigate conflicts among them, to use historical lies in geopolitical games."

The president urged all committee members to maintain their efforts in upholding the truth about the war and the Soviet Union's input in repelling the Nazi threat.