Opposition fighters in the Syrian town of Zabadani have surrendered after intense fighting with regime troops, losing their last stronghold along Lebanon's border.

The Syrian army was now in near total control of the Qalamoun region, west of Damascus.

Iran's Al Alam TV broadcast pictures of dozens of opposition fighters reportedly handing themselves over to the Syrian authorities.

Rebels did not deny losing the town, located 30 kilometers northwest of Damascus. Opposition activists say the armed men had no other choice but to surrender.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, opposition activist Tayem al-Qalamouni said: "The fighters were forced to accept the truce because supply lines were cut. There was no safe corridor for civilians."

Representatives of Russian TV channels have urged international organizations, including the UN, UNESCO and the OSCE, to protect the rights and dignity of journalists covering the Ukraine crisis from illegal actions of the Kiev authorities.

Disturbed by intensified assaults and intimidation of journalists in Ukraine, their detentions and deportations, the heads of all Russia's major TV corporations, including RT, have called on human rights organizations to "defend the professional rights of journalists working in Ukraine."

"Ukraine's Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and other regions are witnessing the ruthless suppression of civil liberties on a daily basis. Journalists are being threatened with their lives if they continue to report from Ukraine," the letter reads, signed by the heads of All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), NTV, REN TV, Channel 5, RT and News Media.

An unnamed phone company recently resisted a National Security Agency demand for access to its subscribers' data, according to court documents declassified Friday.

But on March 20, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected the company's motion and ordered it to continue turning the records over to the NSA. The government redacted the name of the company and other information from the documents.

It was apparently the first time any phone company tried to fight the NSA's controversial mass-surveillance program. A federal judge wrote last year that no phone company had resisted the program, which the NSA claims is authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Russian military aircraft have not breached any state borders, including those of Ukraine, Russia's Defense Ministry has said. Ukraine's acting defense minister has also retracted claims by Kiev that Russian jets "violated Ukrainian airspace seven times."

"Russia's means of objective airspace situation control did not record any violations of air boundaries of the states adjacent to Russia, including those of Ukraine,"Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Saturday.

Pentagon officials quoted by US media Friday claimed that "Russian fighter jets flew into Ukrainian airspace a handful of times over the last 24 hours," calling it "a continued provocation." The officials were not named.

Human Rights Watch has called for Israel's militia to stop shooting at Palestine civilians in Gaza, citing the shooting of civilians including a disabled woman and a high school student having a picnic.

There have been 4 deaths and some 60 injuries since the beginning of this year based on UN statistics

"Month after month, Israeli forces have wounded and killed unarmed Palestinians who did nothing but cross an invisible, shifting line that Israel has drawn inside Gaza's perimeter," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch in a statement published on the organization's website.

"It's appalling that soldiers have shot men, women, and children apparently for simply crossing a line," Whitson said.

The US-based human rights group conducted research into seven separate incidents between the New Year and March 1 during which Israeli troops unleashed gunfire in the vicinity of the fence. Among the dead were a high school student was killed while picnicking and an intellectually disabled woman who had lost her way.

I've written before on the subject of 'false flag' events¹;² - events which get their name from the early days of piracy on the high seas and naval warfare (often the same thing), when a ship could be attacked by another ship which had been able to get close enough to its victim by flying flags which lied about the real nature of the attacking ship. However, the subject is not confined to quirky historical anomalies, events which happened in the distant past but could not possibly happen in the modern "civilised" world: they're almost certainly as alive and well today as they were three hundred years ago - and for pretty much the same reasons.

Because of the very nature of these shameful events they're never openly admitted by our trusted leaders at the time they occur. So when they happen the only people who know for sure they've taken place are those immediately involved in perpetrating them. Because these actions are so vile and inexcusable - carried out by psychopaths, megalomaniacs and thieves, or their flunkeys - the perpetrators invariably keep very quiet about them. If we ever find out about them at all it's only years later, when memory has faded and the perpetrators have likely died of old age; when long-secret documents become declassified or if an ancient perpetrator suddenly discovers a conscience he wants to purge before facing his maker.

The Obama regime, wallowing in hubris and arrogance, has recklessly escalated the Ukrainian crisis into a crisis with Russia. Whether intentionally or stupidly, Washington's propagandistic lies are driving the crisis to war. Unwilling to listen to any more of Washington's senseless threats, Moscow no longer accepts telephone calls from Obama and US top officials.

The crisis in Ukraine originated with Washington's overthrow of the elected democratic government and its replacement with Washington's hand-chosen stooges. The stooges proceeded to act in word and deed against the populations in the former Russian territories that Soviet Communist Party leaders had attached to Ukraine. The consequence of this foolish policy is agitation on the part of the Russian speaking populations to return to Russia. Crimea has already rejoined Russia, and eastern Ukraine and other parts of southern Ukraine are likely to follow.

Only the other day, Benjamin Netanyahu earned a small note of immortality when he said the peace talks were ended by the new arrangements between the Palestine Authority and Hamas: Netanyahu's announcement bundled a record number of lies into one mouthful of words. There, of course, never was anything properly called peace talks with Israel. There has been only a long series of closed-door personal, and security-scrambled telephonic, exchanges with America's superbly ineffectual John Kerry, exchanges in which the Palestinians played virtually no role and in which Mr. Netanyahu had absolutely no interest. Netanyahu was always setting an impossible set of conditions as prerequisites to anything happening precisely because he does not want anything to happen, while undoubtedly periodically raging with one of his mind-numbing harangues which are impossible to answer rationally for the simple reason they are not rational.

Netanyahu's announcement is larded with layers of lies much like layers of rock in stratigraphic formations. Perhaps the chief of these being that Hamas - that democratically elected party led by middle-class professionals whose only concerns have been to obtain a fair deal for Palestinians and to provide clean government after the long-term corruption of Fatah - is a dreadful terrorist organization. Of course, you do have to say something along those lines to excuse your warring on civilians, blockading their needs (starting with a viciously-calculated minimal calorie allowance per person), cutting off services, piracy on the high seas, denying fishing rights, kidnapping and murdering politicians, and constant menaces. You wouldn't do all that to people just trying to run a democratic, clean government, now would you? You might if you viewed the Palestinians in Gaza as a nightmare (a past Israeli prime minister's actual word), as a source of constant fear, resembling fears in the Old South of revolt in the slave quarters some dark night, something which caused uneasy sleep for plantation families with pistols and knives tucked under their pillows.

"Russia ... is now recognized as the center of the global 'mutiny' against global dictatorship of the US and EU. Its generally peaceful .. approach is in direct contrast to brutal and destabilizing methods used by the US and EU.... The world is waking up to reality that there actually is, suddenly, some strong and determined resistance to Western imperialism. After decades of darkness, hope is emerging." - Andre Vltchek, Ukraine: Lies and Realities, CounterPunch

Russia is not responsible for the crisis in Ukraine. The US State Department engineered the fascist-backed coup that toppled Ukraine's democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with the American puppet Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a former banker. Hacked phone calls reveal the critical role that Washington played in orchestrating the putsch and selecting the coup's leaders. Moscow was not involved in any of these activities. Vladimir Putin, whatever one may think of him, has not done anything to fuel the violence and chaos that has spread across the country.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas says the new unity government he is set to head with the backing of Hamas will reject violence and recognise Israel and existing agreements.

Israel, however, has slammed his Saturday speech to the Palestine Liberation Organisation's Central Council as a "coup de grace" to the peace process.

The PLO body had convened to chart a course of action after Israel suspended US-brokered peace talks in response to a reconciliation deal with the Islamist Hamas movement.

The agreement between the rival Palestinian factions came as the United States and Israel had hoped to extend the faltering peace talks beyond their April 29 deadline.

Israel said it would not negotiate with a government backed by Hamas, the armed Islamist movement ruling the Gaza Strip, which is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state and has always rejected peace talks.