The Conservative Government is planning a significant assault on political freedoms in the name of protecting those profiting from human rights violations. Specifically, they are seeking to shield Israel from the growing pressure of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

The Government is intentionally misrepresenting the BDS movement as anti-Semitic, despite the fact that many Jews in this country and worldwide back boycott in solidarity with Palestinians.

The campaign is quite straightforward, and strictly in opposition to Israel's illegal policies. Just like the boycotting of South Africa during apartheid, it is about applying non-violent, popular pressure to effect change and challenge impunity. The case for a boycott of Israel is based on three elements - none of which have anything to do with anti-Semitism.

The first is the reality of Israeli settler colonialism and occupation. Israel's settlements in the West Bank have been declared a war crime by Amnesty International, and successive Israeli governments of all political stripes have furthered and expanded an apartheid regime enforced by military courts, torture, detention without trial, and needless violence.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are subjected to devastating Israeli offensives; in July-August 2014, more than 500 children were killed in their homes, in the street, or playing football on the beach. Palestinian citizens of Israel, meanwhile, face constant and official incitement as well as racist laws.

This reality is attested to and well-documented by Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups, international bodies like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as in UN resolutions, and by UN agencies.

Secondly, calls for a boycott are based on the appeals for solidarity from Palestinians. The BDS campaign, launched in 2005 by Palestinian NGOs, trade unions, and other civil society groups, has three basic "asks": an end to occupation, equality, and the rights of Palestinian refugees, expelled by Israel, to return.

A massive apparent terror attack in Turkey's capital comes at a crucial time just when the Erdogan government is trying to woo Washington's support for its military intervention in Syria. The Turkish capital Ankara on Wednesday was hit with a deadly car bomb outside its military headquarters. Reports put the dead at 28 with more than 60 injured in what appears to have been a highly sophisticated attack during evening rush hour.

The powerful blast went off just as two buses ferrying military personnel stopped at traffic lights outside the army headquarters at a busy intersection which is also near ministerial and parliament buildings. This part of the capital is normally kept under tight security. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has accused forces linked with the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia of the terrorist attack.

The Turkish military have been shelling YPG units across the border in northern Syria. Erdogan and Davutoglu had issued several statements prior to the Wednesday bombing in Ankara denouncing the YPG as "terrorists" owing to their links to separatist Kurdish militants in Turkey belonging to the PKK. This was at least the fourth major apparent terror attack inside Turkey over the past seven months. In January this year, a suicide bomber killed 10, mainly German tourists, in the city of Istanbul. Last October, a blast at a Kurdish peace rally in Ankara killed nearly 100 people. Both attacks were blamed on the Islamic State (IS) terror group, although Kurdish activists accused Turkish state intelligence agents of clandestine involvement in the October atrocity.

Turkish military intelligence, MIT, has been implicated in colluding with the IS group - from gun-running and oil smuggling across the Syrian border, to facilitating the jihadists access to chemical weapons. Several Turkish opposition lawmakers have openly accused the Erdogan government of complicity in criminal activities and sponsoring extremists in Syria for the purpose of regime change in Damascus.

It was around 10:30 p.m. when Steve Jacobs rolled down the gravel driveway. The air was warm for early January, even for Florida. Yellow boat lights bobbed on St. Augustine's harbor, and the scent of star jasmine hung on the breeze. Jacobs stepped onto his porch and found the door still locked. It had only been a few days since he had come home to find it mysteriously ajar.

When Jacobs sat down to work, however, he noticed his crate of files was missing. He headed to the kitchen, opened the top of his coffee maker, and looked inside. The hard drive he'd stashed there was gone too.

A police officer soon arrived, checked the doors, dusted for fingerprints. He carefully wrapped the coffee maker in a plastic bag and said he would forward it to the FBI.

Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of the lower house of Russian parliament said that NATO and the European Union's policies towards Russia are not constructive as they undermine the principles of international law, global and regional security and mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

NATO's increased presence in Europe near Russia and Belarus' borders is an aggressive policy, which will continue in the future, the speaker of the lower house of Russian parliament said Thursday.

"The aggressive expansion of NATO military infrastructure toward the Belarusian and Russian borders, the sanctions policy violating international law, the West's interference in the political life of sovereign states, a massive disinformation campaign against our countries, unfortunately, will continue," Sergei Naryshkin said at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia.

Prosecutors in Bologna have launched a money laundering investigation against the son of the Turkish president. The probe is based on accusations put forward by an exiled political opponent of Tayyip Erdogan.

The Bologna prosecutors' office has confirmed to various media outlets that the probe has been launched into the activities of 35-year-old Necmettin Bilal Erdogan, the third child of the Turkish president.

Turkish businessman Murat Hakan Huzan, a political opponent of President Tayyip Erdogan living in exile in France, filed a complaint against the Turkish president's son in September 2015. Huzan's lawyer Massimiliano Annetta claims the papers handed over to the prosecutors by his client contain evidence that Erdogan Jr managed to smuggle into Italy a large amount of money gained through illegal economic activities.

Officially, Bilal Erdogan arrived to the capital of Italy's Emilia-Romagna region last September with his wife and children to study at Johns Hopkins University and conclude a doctorate he started in 2007.

A controversial new trade deal between the EU and the United States could make it more difficult to fight tax avoidance, a new report has warned.

TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is expected to include provisions to allow multinational corporations to effectively "sue" governments for taking actions that might damage their business.

A new report by the Transnational Institute and Global Justice Now found that previous implementations of this rule in other trade agreements have been used to fight tax policies imposed by soverign countries.

The analysis, which looked at data and documents of hundreds past of "investor state dispute settlement" (ISDS) tribunal cases, found that 24 countries have already been sued for changing their tax policies.

ISDS clauses are written into international free trade agreements and allow foreign investors to take governments to court.

Countries that have already had tax policies challenged by corporations include India, Romania, Mexico, Ecuador, and Uganda.

Politicians gain access to documents on controversial trade deal, but electronic devices ban fuels 'cloak of secrecy' fears.

MPs have won access to documents covering controversial and secretive trade talks between Brussels and Washington, but can only take a pencil and paper into the room where the files can be viewed.

Confidentiality rules mean no electronic devices - including phones, tablet and laptop computers, or cameras - are allowed in the room at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in Westminster. This is fuelling concerns about a "cloak of secrecy" surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations between the EU and the US government.

UK business minister Anna Soubry agreed to provide the room in BIS's offices on the condition that MPs keep the TTIP documents private. Soubry said pressure on Brussels officials from EU governments had won the concession, but the department was obliged to maintain secrecy.

Green MP Caroline Lucas said that access to documents on "this hugely significant trade deal" was necessary before UK parliamentarians were asked to vote on it. "But the bad news is that a cloak of secrecy still surrounds TTIP. If the same rules apply here in the UK as they do in Brussels, which is what the minister is implying, then MPs will be bound by a confidentiality agreement if they want to see the text," Lucas said. "This opaque process, which shuts citizens out of this crucial debate, is profoundly undemocratic."

Turkish military vehicles have crossed into a Kurdistani area in Syria, Afrin, just over the border, a Kurdish news agency reported adding that the troops started to dig a trench near Meidan Ekbis, a town in Aleppo province.

Dozens of Turkish military vehicles advanced 200 meters into the Syrian Kurdish region in Aleppo province on Thursday, ANHA news agency reported.

It added that the troops started digging a trench between the towns of Sorka and Meydan Ekbis. According to the agency the construction of a concrete wall on the Syrian border in the area is ongoing as well.

The agency posted photos of ongoing operations on its website.

On February 15, six Turkish fighter jets and a Navy transport plane violated Greek airspace over island territories in the eastern Aegean Sea nearly two dozen times. Commenting on the latest violation, Russian military analyst Alexei Kupriyanov decided to take a look back at the recent history of the decades-long conflict between Athens and Ankara.

The reported airspace violations earlier this week took place between the islands of Chios and Samos in the eastern Aegean, and between Lemnos and Lesbos, in the Sea's northeast. According to Greece's General Staff, Turkish aircraft violated Greek airspace 22 times in a period of 24 hours. Two of the Turkish planes were reported to be armed, and Greek military officials confirmed that two "virtual dogfights" took place between Turkish and Greek aircraft after Greek patrols intercepted the violators.

The incident was far from the first time that Turkish aircraft violated Greek airspace, with Greek media earlier calculating that in 2015 alone, Turkey had violated Greek airspace 1,375 times, with the transgressing aircraft armed and prepared for combat in 135 of those incidents.

Jesus once remarked to a wealthy man that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven."

Today, we could amend the words of that Biblical reference with the US presidential race underway:

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a voter in the US to know and understand the rules regulating the administration of all elections, including elections for President of the United States."

Let's start with the phenomenon of what is called a "minority president." No, that is not a president who identifies as an ethnic or racial minority in the US. A minority president is one who has failed to win a plurality of the votes cast in the race for president, and yet is still able to become President of the United States. This is the exact opposite of what a true democracy would require; perhaps not even a pure democracy would entertain such a position such as the 'Office of the Presidency'. But that is an entirely different matter.