The Senate Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to make public a long-awaited report that concludes that the CIA's use of brutal interrogation measures did not produce valuable intelligence and that the agency repeatedly misled government officials about the severity and success of the program.

The decision, opposed by three Republicans on the panel, means that the findings will be sent to the White House and the CIA, putting the agency in the awkward position of having to declassify a document that delivers a scathing verdict on one of the most controversial periods in its history.

"The purpose of this review was to uncover the facts behind this secret program, and the results were shocking," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the committee's chairman, said in a statement Thursday. "The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen."

A top Russian official has accused the US of "childish tantrums" in its response to the annexation of Crimea, and suggested that American politicians practise yoga and watch sitcoms to help chill out.

"Clearly, the US leadership is really annoyed, and cannot come to terms with the new situation, which has arisen in large part due to the deliberate line taken by the US and its allies in Europe to prepare anti-Russian forces to take power in Ukraine," said deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, in an interview with Interfax.

A budget plan stuffed with familiar proposals to cut across a wide swath of the federal budget breezed through the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, but its sharp cuts to health care coverage for the middle class and the poor, food stamps and popular domestic programs are a nonstarter with President Barack Obama. Related Stories

The GOP-controlled committee approved the plan by a party-line vote after swatting away numerous Democratic attempts to ease its cuts. The plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the committee chairman and the party's former vice presidential nominee, promises $5.1 trillion in cuts over the coming decade to bring the government's ledger into the black by 2024.

The plan is a dead letter with the Democratic-controlled Senate and Obama, but gives Republicans a vehicle to polish their budget-cutting credentials in the run-up to fall midterm elections in which they're counting on a big turnout from GOP conservatives and the tea party.

U.S. policymakers need to calm down, maybe do some yoga and accept that Crimea is now part of Russia, a senior Russian diplomat said on Thursday in unusually caustic remarks directed at Moscow's former Cold War-era adversary.

Russia's annexation of Ukraine's reunification with Crimea region last month has deepened the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War ended two decades ago. The West has imposed sanctions on officials and businessmen believed to be close to President Vladimir Putin.

Many of those blacklisted have mocked the sanctions, wearing them as a badge of honor, but they have also rankled Moscow, with officials warning the West was only doing damage to itself.

Isn't there something strangely reassuring when your eyeballs are gripped by a "mystery" on the news that has no greater meaning and yet sweeps all else away? This, of course, is the essence of the ongoing tale of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Except to the relatives of those on board, it never really mattered what happened in the cockpit that day. To the extent that the plane's disappearance was solvable, the mystery could only end in one of two ways: it landed somewhere (somehow unnoticed, a deep unlikelihood) or it crashed somewhere, probably in an ocean. End of story. It was, however, a tale with thrilling upsides when it came to filling airtime, especially on cable news. The fact that there was no there there allowed for the raising of every possible disappearance trope -- from Star Trekkian black holes to the Bermuda Triangle to Muslim terrorists -- and it had the added benefit of instantly evoking a popular TV show. It was a formula too good to waste, and wasted it wasn't.

The same has been true of the story that, in the U.S., came to vie with it for the top news spot: the devastating mudslide in Washington State. An act of nature, sweeping out of nowhere, buries part of a tiny community, leaving an unknown but possibly large number of people dead. Was anyone still alive under all that mud? (Such potential "miracles" are like manna from heaven for the TV news.) How many died? These questions mattered locally and to desperate relatives of those who had disappeared, but otherwise had little import. Yes, unbridled growth, lack of attention to expected disasters, and even possibly climate change were topics that might have been attached to the mudslide horror. As a gruesome incident, it could have stood in for a lot, but in the end it stood in for nothing except itself and that was undoubtedly its abiding appeal.

As the dust settles in Kiev, another money trail has been revealed...

According to reports out of Kiev (see links below), the US has quietly transfers 33 tons of Ukrainian gold out of the country and back to vaults in the US. Presumably, this sovereign wealth transfer would be counted as partial "collateral" for a fresh round of IMF, US FED, and ECB paper debt that is currently being organised for dumping into the Ukraine's economic black hole.

Multiple inquiries to US Federal Reserve administrators into the location of the Ukraine's gold have been met with the proverbial 'pass the buck', making tracking and tracking the final resting place of these 33 tonnes very difficult indeed - but one can expect that the NY Fed is probably the institution who has masterminded this financial heist.

An Israeli minister threatened on Wednesday to annex further territory in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for renewed Palestinian action to join United Nations agencies and international treaties.

"If they are now threatening (to go to UN institutions), they must know something simple: they will pay a heavy price," Tourism Minister Uzi Landau told public radio.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday said he had begun steps to join several UN agencies, abandoning a pledge to freeze such action for the duration of peace talks - which end in just four weeks.

Abbas announced a request to join "15 UN agencies and international treaties."

This article, the first of two parts, is adapted from a lecture by Noam Chomsky on Feb. 28 sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif.
A leading principle of international relations theory is that the state's highest priority is to ensure security. As Cold War strategist George F. Kennan formulated the standard view, government is created "to assure order and justice internally and to provide for the common defense."

The proposition seems plausible, almost self-evident, until we look more closely and ask: Security for whom? For the general population? For state power itself? For dominant domestic constituencies?

Depending on what we mean, the credibility of the proposition ranges from negligible to very high.

Security for state power is at the high extreme, as illustrated by the efforts that states exert to protect themselves from the scrutiny of their own populations.

Russia expects detailed explanations from NATO regarding expanding its military presence in Eastern Europe, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The statement comes after NATO bloc announced boosting its military presence in the area.

"We have addressed questions to the North Atlantic military alliance. We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on," Lavrov told reports at a joint briefing with Kazakhstan's FM Yerlan Idrisov.

The statement came after the NATO chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the bloc will deploy more troops to Eastern Europe. According to him, NATO is considering "revised operational plans, military maneuvers and adequate troop reinforcements." This military buildup was approved by many eastern European countries. On April 1, Polish PM Donald Tusk praised the NATO presence in the country.

After the announcement of deploying troops in Ukraine, NATO also said that it is suspending all military and civilian cooperation with Russia over the Ukrainian crisis, a move that was immediately blasted by Moscow who said that neither Russia, not NATO would benefit from such a step. Russia called this move reminiscent of Cold War language.

Ukrainian prosecutors have detained several Berkut riot police officers, saying they may be behind the mass killings by unidentified snipers in Kiev on February 20. The new twist adds further mystery to the politically-loaded investigation.

The detainees belonged to 'Berkut black company', acting Prosecutor General Oleg Makhnitsky told journalists on Thursday.

The General Prosecutor's office explained that unlike regular Berkut troops, which went unarmed to the confrontation with anti-government protesters, the special operations unit was issued with sniper rifles to provide cover for their Berkut comrades.

"Their task was, as they explained, although we don't fully believe them, to shoot back at advancing protesters and allow the regular Berkut troops retreat," acting Deputy Prosecutor General Aleksey Baganets said.

A total of 12 officers were detained in the investigation, including the commander of the unit. The alleged involvement of other Ukrainian police and security units in the mass killings is still under investigation.