The US State Department told Sputnik on Saturday that Washington is concerned about reports of chemical weapons used in the Syrian city of Douma, and suggested that Russia was responsible "for the brutal targeting of countless Syrians."

The Department of State also said that at least forty people may have been killed in Douma by chemical weapons, citing third-party organizations.

"We have seen multiple, very disturbing reports this afternoon regarding another possible CW attack near a hospital in Douma, Syria. Reports from a number of groups and medical personnel on the ground indicate at least 40 killed and hundreds injured, with many more families, including children, hiding in shelters but believed to be dead," the representative said Saturday.

The State Department's representative also accused Syrian government of chemical weapons use, claiming that "history" of such weapons use by the government of the Arab republic "not in dispute," and ultimately called Russia responsible.

"We continue to receive reports and assess information regarding the alleged attack. The regime's [the government of the Syrian President Bashar Assad] history of using chemical weapons against its own people in not in dispute," the US Department of State's representative added.

"As we've said, Russia ultimately bears responsibility for the brutal targeting of countless Syrians with chemical weapons. Russia's protection of the Assad regime and failure to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria calls into question its commitment to resolving the overall crisis," the representative stressed.

Israeli officials have threatened to assassinate Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip in order to deter the Great March of Return demonstrations, Quds Press reported yesterday. Former Israeli MK Moti Yogev told Channel 7 that the "terror leaders" in Gaza must be assassinated, noting that they are the leaders of Hamas.

Meanwhile, MK Nissan Slomiansky was reported saying to the same channel: "There is no choice except the ouster of Hamas government in Gaza." Deputy Israeli Defence Minister Eli Ben-Dahan threatened to wipe Hamas out and end its rule in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported yesterday that an Israeli commander threatening to attack Hamas targets and facilities in Gaza if demonstrations being held as part of the Great March of Return did not stop. "The [Israeli] security institution will not allow the Great March of Return to change from weekly demonstrations near the border fence to a battle and a lengthy war of attrition," Haaretz reported the commander saying.

According to Quds Press, the paper said the Israeli army accused Hamas of organising the demonstrations which are expected to reach their peak on 15 May, the day on which Palestinian mark the Nakba - the catastrophe which saw them forced out of their homes and led to the creation of Israel. Some 32 Palestinians have been killed since 30 March when the Right of Return March was launch. A further 2,850 were injured.

Israeli officials have called on the US to attack the Syrian Army, following what they called a "shocking attack" in Douma. Israel's own crackdown on Gaza protesters was "self-defense" and not worthy of attention, they said.

Washington must launch a strike against Damascus in response to the alleged chemical attack in the city of Douma, the Israeli Strategic Affairs and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told the Army Radio on Sunday, commenting on the reports coming from anti-government groups in Syria. Erdan also said he personally hopes that the US would take military action against the Syrian government, which he blamed for the attack, the Jerusalem Post reports. The minister added that the Douma incident shows the "need" for a US troop buildup in Syria.


The Israeli construction minister and former IDF major general, Yoav Galant, went even further and called for a military strike aimed directly against the Syrian president. "[Bashar] Assad is the angel of death, and the world would be better without him," Galant said. The Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog called on the US to take "decisive military action" against Syria.

In less than two weeks, James Comey is poised to begin a book tour and break his silence about his experience serving as FBI director before he was fired last spring by President Trump.

Beyond the occasional tweet in which he has defended an embattled FBI from Trump's criticisms, Comey has largely kept out of the public eye while wrapping up his book, titled A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. But with April 17, the day his memoir hits bookshelves, fast approaching, a number of potential complications have arisen.

An ex-FBI supervisory special agent put it bluntly on Saturday when he said he has no issue with Comey, now a private citizen, selling books and charging $1,000 for tickets for people to hear him speak, but that the timing of the media blitz was the issue.

"There are two major consequential probes going on right now. The Russia probe ... and with the findings not being released yet, James Comey is putting himself into a perjury trap position. He will be talking about things - meaning his interactions with the president - he had nine separate interactions either on the phone or in person with the president, and he's going to set himself up to purposefully or unwittingly saying something that is not consistent with what he's going to have told the special prosecutor,"

James Gagliano said during an interview on CNN, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump's former campaign chair Paul Manafort's lawyers accused Mueller's team of illegal property search in a late Friday night court filing. A search warrant was issued for a storage locker on May 27 which gave the FBI authorization to seize any financial or tax records relating to Manafort or his business partner Rick Gates.

Manafort filed this motion 24 minutes before the deadline, according to Politico reporter Josh Gerstein. Politico reported:

The FBI first got into the Alexandria, Va. storage unit last May with the assistance of an employee who worked at two or more of Manafort's companies, an agent told the federal magistrate judge who issued the warrant. Then, the agent used what he saw written on so-called Banker's Boxes and the fact there was a five-drawer filing cabinet to get permission to return and seize many of the records.

In a motion filed Friday night in federal court in Washington, Manafort's defense team contends that the initial entry was illegal because the employee did not not have authority to let the FBI into the locker. The defense also argues that the warrant was overbroad and that agents seizing records went beyond what limits the warrant did set.

"The FBI Agent had no legitimate basis to reasonably believe that the former employee had common authority to consent to the warrantless
initial search of the storage unit," attorneys Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle wrote.

In the new motion, Manafort's defense asks the judge overseeing the Washington case, Amy Berman Jackson, to rule the search illegal and suppress the evidence the FBI found. Defense attorneys were also facing a deadline Friday to file a motion to suppress evidence found in a search of Manafort's Alexandria condo in July, but they asked for a last-minute extension until Monday.

The increasing desperation of government attempts to "prove" the Russians responsible for the Skripal attack has become increasingly bizarre. They now claim GCHQ picked up from Troodos a message from Syria to Moscow that "the package has been delivered", and a further one that "two people have made their egress".

Because of course, if you were sending a cryptic message back from Salisbury to Moscow, you would naturally route it back via Syria, in the certain knowledge that all such calls from Syria are picked up from Troodos. I am sure the Russians already knew that, even before I published it in detail five years ago.

Given Russian involvement in Syria, that somebody is reporting in Syria the delivery of a package to Moscow, would not lead any sane human being to conclude it was delivered in Salisbury.

As for the phrase "two people have made their egress", presumably this was said in Russian and I cannot understand the translation at all. Exit, egress, go out, leave to outside - there is only one Russian word to express all of these and that is phonetically from the stem "vihod", either as noun or verb. There is no egress/exit choice in Russian.

Jabhat al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army are planning chemical attacks with the use of chlorine in areas under their control, according to the Russian Defense Ministry

Moscow - Jabhat al-Nusra (a group outlawed in Russia) and the Free Syrian Army are planning chemical attacks with the use of chlorine in areas under their control, including Daraa's district of Al-Balad, the chief of Russia's center for the reconciliation of conflicting parties in Syria, Major-General Yuri Yevtushenko, said on Friday.

"The ringleaders of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army, which are acting together, are plotting explosions of makeshift chemical charges containing chlorine in a number of areas under their control, including Al Balad in Daraa," he said.

Tipoffs about preparations being made for provocations in the south of Syria, including the use of chemical warfare agents, Yevtushenko said, had been received from the group Jaish Ahrar Al-Ashair, which has taken the government's side.

Yevtushenko said "the militants plan to photograph and video the alleged effects of chemical weapons and show the clips to the public at large to blame government troops for civilians casualties, as well as to provide excuses for their own actions to disrupt ceasefire in Daraa."

The equipment for catching phony chemical attacks on camera is already in place and other preparations are on, he said.

Rupert Murdoch's flagship 'newspapers' have taken desperate measures to defend Boris Johnson. Although Johnson has been accused of 'misleading the public', coverage by The Sun and The Times on 5 April offers little criticism of the foreign minister. In fact, it tips dangerously close to pro-government propaganda.

Blame game

Johnson stated that experts from Porton Down were "absolutely categorical" that Russia was the source of novichok, the nerve agent that poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.

But on 3 April, Porton Down said it could not identify the "precise source" of the novichok. And then, on 4 April, it also emerged that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had deleted a tweet that also claimed the nerve agent was "produced in Russia". But Murdoch's papers gave full support to the position outlined in Johnson's tweets. Instead of issuing an apology, Johnson tried to divert attention and shift blame onto Jeremy Corbyn.

The 'Scum'

Remember when the US admitted Syrian "rebels" have used chemical weapons? Or when earlier this year, the now former Secretary of State blamed Russia for an alleged Syrian chemical attack, despite admitting he doesn't know who actually did it? Or when the US finally admitted there was "no evidence" Assad used sarin gas? Or just last week, when Trump said that the US is finally pulling out of Syria as a result of the defeat of ISIS (much to the Pentagon's fury and open-ended timetable for extracting Syrian resources)?

Well, maybe you do, but the neocons are back in charge of US war preparations foreign policy - now that war hawk John Bolton is Trump's National Security Advisor - are so stuck with the age-old narrative that Assad is desperate to be bombed at any cost, that none of this actually matters, and instead the big story overnight is once again that, lo and behold, Assad decided to gas some "rebels" again, despite now overwhelmingly winning the war against US-backed insurgents, and despite knowing very well that exactly one year ago an alleged "chemical attack" prompted Trump to launch dozens of Tomahawks at Syria.

Accusing your opponent of doing what you are doing, while you are doing it, in order to create confusion has been credited to various figures, including Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Goebbels and even Karl Rove.

This weekend, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson resorted to an especially blatant version of the tactic. Writing in Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times, Johnson labelled British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn "the Kremlin's useful idiot."

The insult was delivered as the footnote to an op-ed where the embattled chief diplomat insisted there was doubt about Russia being responsible for the poison attack in Salisbury last month.

In the diatribe, the Conservative minister repeatedly insinuated that Corbyn was somehow in league with Moscow and sympathetic to countries "hostile" to Britain. Which is effectively another way of saying Johnson regards the Labour leader as a traitor to his country.