On May 13, the Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine. Indeed, the Vatican had already welcomed the United Nations General Assembly vote in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state. It has treated Palestine as a state since then despite the conflict over this issue. Meanwhile, Venezuela is strengthening diplomatic ties with Palestine. Particularly, it means that Venezuela's diplomatic representation in Palestine will be elevated to full embassy status. The news was revealed in the wake of a visit to Venezuela by PA Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki, which resulted in the signing of 18 cooperation agreements related to trade, energy, agriculture, health, education, defence and security. Although, these facts don't resolve system problem in the region.

The State of Palestine is a de jure sovereign state in the Middle East. Its independence was declared on 15 November 1988 by the Palestine Liberation Organization in Algiers as a government-in-exile. The State of Palestine claims the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and has designated Jerusalem as its capital, with partial control of those areas assumed in 1994 as the Palestinian Authority. Most of the areas claimed by the State of Palestine have been occupied by Israel since 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. In 2007, the Hamas takeover of Gaza Strip politically and territorially divided the Palestinians, with Abbas's Fatah left largely ruling the West Bank and recognized internationally as the official Palestinian Authority, while Hamas has secured its control over the Gaza Strip. In April 2011, the Palestinian parties signed an agreement of reconciliation, but its implementation had stalled until a unity government was formed on 2 June 2014.

The IRS believes that a major cyber breach that allowed criminals to steal the tax returns of more than 100,000 people originated in Russia, two sources briefed on the data theft tell CNN.

On Tuesday, the Internal Revenue Service announced that organized crime syndicates used personal data obtained elsewhere to access tax information, which they then used to file $50 million in fraudulent tax refunds.

The IRS said the agency's Criminal Investigation Unit and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration are investigating the origins of the breach. The agency also alerted the Homeland Security Department of the breach, a DHS official confirmed. On Thursday, the FBI announced it had also opened an investigation into the incident.

An IRS spokeswoman said the agency does not discuss ongoing investigations.

NATO is destabilizing the Ukrainian crisis by turning blind eye to Kiev's aim for a military solution, Moscow's envoy to NATO said, warning that alliance's rhetoric of shifting all responsibility onto Russia is not consistent with real state of affairs.

"NATO continues to position Russia as a participant in the conflict, which is far from reality and has a serious confrontational potential because, in essence, it gives Kiev carte blanche to seek a military solution to the conflict," Russian envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko told Rossiya 24 TV channel.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced earlier on Wednesday that the alliance will create up to eight new command and control units on its eastern borders.

"We are establishing six command and control units in the three Baltic countries [Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia] and in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. And probably also [there will] be two more of those in two more countries," Stoltenberg said.

Russian Gazprom has signaled that it will move forward with the construction of the Turkish Stream, regardless of potential political obstacles in Europe, planning to cease using its route through Ukraine in 2019, Stratfor reported.

According to US private intelligence company Stratfor, Russia's Gazprom has clearly signaled that it will push ahead the construction of the Turkish Stream, calling upon Italian energy firm Saipem and Germany's Europipe to start working on the project.

"Russia said it plans to start constructing the underwater portion of the pipeline in June. Gazprom has already told Europe that it plans to cease using its current export route through Ukraine in 2019 and shift those natural gas supplies to the Turkish Stream pipeline," Stratfor analysts emphasized.

Indeed, Moscow has resumed a contract with Europipe for 150,000 metric tons of pipe, and notified a subsidiary of Saipem that it could begin constructing the 63 billion-cubic-meter pipeline in the Black Sea.

The harsh rhetoric of Merkel at the Moscow press conference on May 10th, as well as her very sour face after talking to Putin, may have very real and important reasons. Germany is looking more and more like the main loser in the geopolitical schemes of both Russia and USA. Well, if we don't count Ukraine, which is the main battlefield.

It's no secret that Russia's most important foreign policy objective has long been fostering closer ties with Europe, especially Germany. This is not only about Russia's traditional goal off "Westernization", or the fact that President Putin's previous work in Germany has impacted his strategic views, but also about elementary lessons of history. Russia and Germany ended up on opposing sides in two world wars, and took immense losses, while USA and Britain reaped most of the spoils. So, attempting to break this pattern is only natural. Unfortunately, each of our countries looks out for its own geopolitical interests first and foremost, and those are often opposed to each other. And, like twice before, Germany is about to fall prey to its short-term interests going against its long-term strategic position.


We could talk about Germany not being fully sovereign and all of this happening due to United States influence, but this is only partly true. In the last three decades, Germany has made enormous progress towards restoring its geopolitical standing. It became the leading power in the EU - virtually all other European countries are dependent on German loans and already severely in German debt. The process has gone so far that many talk about the new "EuroReich", as EU is essentially economically controlled by Germany.

Over the course of the past 100 years, eastwards from South America to South East Asia (and everywhere in between), official history records that US governments have repeatedly created and used terrorist groups to attack foreign governments and populations who foolishly refused to view the world through a 'stars and stripes'-tinted lens. Two examples, among dozens, include Nicaragua and Indonesia.

At a 1985 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on US operations in Nicaragua, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) told then Secretary of State George P. Shultz: "There is a growing body of evidence that the Contras have committed widespread violence against the civilian population. I am concerned that money from our government goes to an organization that commits atrocities. I have been given affidavits by victims of atrocities, terrible photographs."

Shultz was being rather coy here. The US government viewed the democratically-elected Sandinista government as a threat to the ability of American corporations to exploit Nicaraguan resources. Continuing in the tradition they had, by then, established in at least five other South American nations that rejected US corporate plunder of their nation, the US government decided to fund, arm and train a terrorist group known as the 'Contras' or 'counter-revolutionaries'.

For the next ten years, the Contras carried out widespread terror attacks against the civilian population that killed at least 45,000 people in the tiny central American nation. The CIA even produced a 'terror manual' for the Contras called Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare that advised on how to rationalize the killing of civilians. For almost ten years these CIA terrorists busied themselves by:

• targeting health care clinics and health care workers for assassination
• kidnapping civilians
• torturing civilians
• executing civilians, including children, who were captured in combat
• raping women

In his case study of the Nicaragua vs United States dispute, Professor of military law at the University of Amsterdam, Terry Gill wrote: "The US played a very large role in financing, training, arming, and advising the contras over a long period, and the Contras only became capable of carrying out significant military operations as a result of this support."

The title is of course a little misleading because China has many options, none of which except one in my opinion will actually work. Options to what exactly you ask? Options to a collapsing global economy and an imploding financial system which will surely affect China as much as anywhere else, but with one caveat. I take these events as a given, others do not but betting against an outright panic and global bankruptcy is betting against pure mathematics itself.

Let's back up a little bit and look at where China is currently. They are the second largest economy in the world (maybe the largest, we can't really know because the numbers here, there, and everywhere are made up). China is by far THE largest manufacturer in the world and also an enormous exporter. China is also in a three horse race as to who owns the most U.S. Treasuries with Japan and unbelievably the Federal Reserve itself. They have an oversized shadow banking system which has already been shown as fraudulent in several cases regarding copper, zinc and lead as "collateral" (or not).

Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Thursday there was a need to fully separate the territories of the East-Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by militia forces.

"We'll have to fully close the line of contact [separating the militia units and the forces loyal to the government in Kiev - TASS] to close it for everything," he said in an interview with LigaBiznesinform agency.

"That's my radical viewpoint," Avakov went on. "In a junta-like style, the way we do it. Let's shut the contact line. Let them cross it on foot or in small cars but without any goods. As for the goods, let them get everything from Russia."

President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro says his country has reached an agreement with Russia, which will see investment of $14 billion in the oil and gas sector over the next few years.

The agreement was reached between the Venezuelan state oil firm, PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela) and the Russian oil giant, Rosneft, after talks in the South American country's capital, Caracas, between Maduro, the president of PDVSA, Eulogio Del Pino, and the president of Rosneft, Igor Sechin.

"We had a great meeting and agreed on investment of over $14 billion," said Maduro in a television address, following a meeting with Sechin. He added that the funds would go towards doubling Venezuela's oil production.

The US rejects the idea of any nation claiming a sphere of influence, Vice President Joe Biden told a Washington think tank, arguing that the crisis in Ukraine was about the principles and values of the West and international order.

"We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence," the vice president said during a speech at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday. It remained unclear whether the remark applied to US influence around the globe, or referred only to Russia, China and other countries.