A former Department of Justice appointee under former President Barack Obama said special counsel Robert Mueller "almost certainly won't indict" President Donald Trump at the conclusion of his investigation.

Eric Columbus, former senior counsel to the deputy attorney general under Obama, explained on Twitter why we should not expect any criminal charges against Trump, despite a growing chorus of pundits and Democratic politicians predicting that Mueller is building an obstruction of justice case.

The head of the Palestinian Mission to the United States accused President Donald Trump of "backstabbing" President Mahmoud Abbas in a talk yesterday, deepening a dispute over who is to blame for failure of a peace deal with Israel. That morning Trump said Palestinian leaders had abandoned pre-talk discussions, making the claim while seated next to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu in Davos at the World Economic Forum. Trump called Netanyahu a "close personal friend," which served as a reminder to the Palestinians which side the administration has been on.

Hours later Palestinian Ambassador Husam Zomlot took the stage in Washington DC at the Middle East Institute, presenting an altogether different narrative: the Palestinians were bystanders to internal divisions within the Trump administration that prevented peace talks from starting months ago.

It was "the Americans who blocked the Americans" from kick-starting negotiations with Israel, not the Palestinians, Zomlot said, revealing confidential discussions between the Trump and Abbas that took place last year. From the first sit-down between the two presidents in May 2017 until December, the Palestinian leadership had been "nagging" Trump to begin direct talks with Israel, he said.

The rupture in relations between the Trump administration and the Palestinian leadership started on December 6, 2017 when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, "unilaterally," Zomlot pointed.

The Russian Defense Ministry has ridiculed British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson's allegations that Russia was 'plotting attacks' on Britain's key infrastructure as an attempt to gain publicity and score political points.

"British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson in his fiery crusade for military budget money appears to have lost his grasp on reason. His fears about Russia getting pictures of power plants and studying the routes of British pipelines are worthy of a comic plot or a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday.

He took a swipe at Williamson's remark by noting that all information concerning the location of British power plants or pipelines was "as secret as the location of Westminster Abbey or the Big Ben."

"What is really stunning is this: if Williamson in this way hopes to draw attention to his own personality, he is not the first one in the defense secretary's seat who is trying to score political points by spooking the British people with horror stories," Konashenkov said. "But if it is Britain's General Staff that reports such nonsense to him, then he should start thinking not about ways of increasing the defense budget but checking British military planners for professional aptitude, with a special emphasis on medical exams," Konashenkov explained.

Earlier this week Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a partially redacted transcript of Glenn Simpson's Aug. 22, 2017 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Perhaps it's a coincidence that just last week Simpson himself, co-founder of the Washington, D.C.-based strategic communications firm Fusion GPS that assembled and distributed the now notorious anti-Trump dossier, wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for Republican members of the committee to release his testimony.

Feinstein said at first that she was pressured to release the document. Now she says she wasn't, and her statement was misunderstood. The mix-up adds further confusion as to who thought it advisable to subject the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative to more light. It discloses no further information to verify the research of Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose byline was used to promote the dossier as an "intelligence" product, rather than as opposition research for hire. Rather, the transcript raises some serious questions about the former MI6 officer who Feinstein's committee colleagues Senators Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham referred to the Justice Department for a criminal probe last week.

The release of the Simpson transcript is the latest salvo in a campaign of bare-knuckled political warfare that began when reports of Donald Trump's sub rosa ties to Vladimir Putin first surfaced before the 2016 election. At that time, most of the press refrained from publishing articles sourced to a dossier that former FBI director James Comey called "salacious and unverified" and which the reliably liberal New York Times refused to touch. Those opinions changed abruptly after Trump won, as the result of what looks increasingly like a coordinated campaign involving outgoing Obama administration officials who leaked carefully chosen bits of classified information to a credulous press corps that had become used to printing handouts from the good guys and was especially eager to #Resist Trump.

The Polish parliament has backed legislative amendments to introduce prison terms and fines for people who support the so-called "Bandera ideology" and those who deny crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists against the Poles.

"The crimes include the actions committed by Ukrainian nationalists in 1925-1950, involving the use of force, terror or other forms of violation of human rights against ... the people, in particular, the people of Poland," the legislation read.

The amendments criminalize the denial of the massacre of Poles and Jews in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, and also outlaw support for the actions and ideology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which were responsible for the killings. The legislation allows prison sentences of up to three years or a fine.

The initiative was supported by 279 out of 414 deputies present at the Sejm on Friday, with 130 MPs abstaining and just four voting 'no.' The parliament was to decide on the amendments to the Institute of National Remembrance law last year, but the vote was postponed in order to avoid tensions with Ukraine.

The Syrian Negotiations Committee will not participate in the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi, the organization's leader Nasr al-Hariri said after intra-Syrian talks in Vienna.

"In a free and transparent voting we have come to the decision the Committee will not participate in the Sochi conference," he said on Saturday. "We hope, the congress in Sochi will be very useful if it favors implementation of the UN SC's resolution 2254, we shall hail it."

The vote took place late on Friday. According to sources familiar with the situation, 26 out of 36 members voted against participation, which is sufficient to take the decision.

A week-ago four-page memo described as explosive and shocking was released to House members - reportedly showing extensive FISA abuses.

A previous article explained it contains information about the Justice Department, the FBI and fake Trump dossier - prepared for Hillary Clinton and the DNC by former UK MI6 intelligence operative Christopher Steele. It makes spurious accusations without evidence, alleging misconduct and collusion between Trump, his campaign team and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign - including phony accusations of Russian US election interference.

It reveals alleged abusive tactics by high-level US officials. According to the Daily Beast, it names "FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, along with former FBI Director James Comey."

Many GOP lawmakers are calling for the memo's release, spearheaded by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes.

Sudan is willing to house a Russian military base on the Red Sea shore, as it should help fight contraband and slavery, according to Sudan's chairman of Defense and Security committee Al-Hadi Adam Hamid.

He noted that setting up a base in the country would be reasonable, calling the decision "marvelous".

The chairman also complained about a lot of vessels illegally crossing the naval borders of Sudan: "Vessels enter our territorial waters, fish illegally, and fisherman also cross borders illegally."

Hamid added that Sudan has to fight slavery and contraband on the Red Sea. He stressed the importance of military cooperation with Moscow in this regard, and said that establishing a base "won't be out of the ordinary."

"The times demand it," he added.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir visited Russia for the first time on November 23, where he had discussed a possibility of establishing a Russian base in Sudan with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu. No official agreement had been signed. Kremlin did not provide comment.

The Trump administration has pursued policies that have hewed remarkably close to the recommendations of a leading conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, which found in a new review that nearly two-thirds of its ideas had been carried out or embraced by the White House over the past year.

Not one to dwell on the details of governing, President Trump has shown a considerable degree of deference to groups within the conservative movement like Heritage, leading to a rightward shift in social, environmental, immigration and foreign policy.

The results, Heritage found in its review, exceeded even the first year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, whose tenure has long been the conservative gold standard.

"There is so much noise in this town that I think it obscures the real work that's being done," said Kay Coles James, the new president of the Heritage Foundation, which shook up its leadership last year after disagreements that stemmed in part from the perception that it was not acting effectively enough to shape the debate in Washington.

"This administration is doing quite well in terms of advancing a conservative agenda - clearly, quite well," Ms. James added.

On Tuesday, Israel's envoy to the UN Danny Danon said that Iran controls a force of 82,000 fighters in Syria: 60,000 Syrian troops; 10,000 Shiite militiamen from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan; 9,000 members of the Lebanese Iran-aligned militia Hezbollah; and 3,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards.


Danon said Iran had spent $35 billion on training and equipping this force. He went on to claim that the Islamic Republic was building missile bases in Syria, with the ultimate goal of turning Israel's war-torn neighbor "into the largest military base in the world."

He claimed that Israeli intelligence had garnered this secret information and was now sharing it with the world. "We are releasing this classified information because it is vital for the world to understand that if we turn a blind eye in Syria, the Iranian threat will only grow," said Danon.

"The Shi'ite crescent is on our doorstep. Iran is ready to strike at a moment's notice," he said, referring to the crescent-shaped region of the Middle East that has a Shia-majority population. As a Shia state, Tehran often styles itself as protector of the global Shia community.