A close relationship between Moscow and Europe would remove the rationale for America's military role in NATO and thereby its political influence in Europe.

The US is prepared to plunge Europe into a war with Russia in order for Washington to preserve its hegemony over the transatlantic axis.

The key issues are the prevention of Russia and Europe developing closer trade and political ties - stemming primarily from a vast trade in energy fuels; and, secondly, the survival of the American dollar as the world's reserve currency.

NATO's decision to suspend cooperation with Russia gives Moscow the right to suspend NATO transit to Afghanistan across Russian territory, Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ozerov said.

"NATO is transporting armaments, military hardware and servicemen to Afghanistan across our territory. If our cooperation comes to a halt, we will have the right to suspend this transit, and the alliance will have to find other routes," Ozerov told Interfax on Wednesday.

He recalled that the NATO transit to Afghanistan was based on bilateral agreements with France, Italy, the United States, Germany and some other countries.

"The NATO pullout from Afghanistan will begin soon and the alliance will have to find routes bypassing our territory. Cooperation always implies mutual interests," Ozerov said.

In his opinion, Russia won't lose from the halt of cooperation. "First of all, that cooperation was advantageous for the alliance.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) confirmed on Thursday the detention of dozens of Ukrainian citizens suspected of planning terrorist attacks in seven Russian regions. The detainees admitted officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) instructed them to make a photo survey of Russian military maneuvers in regions bordering Ukraine, FSB said.

Russia's NTV television earlier reported that 25 Ukrainians, including three activists of the radical Right Sector movement had been detained in Russia on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in the Rostov, Vogograd, Tver, Orel, Belgorod regions and republics of Kalmykia and Tatarstan.

'As a result of measures taken on the basis of information about the preparation of terrorist acts on the territory of the Russian Federation by activists of the so-called Right Sector movement during the period from March 14 to March 16, some 25 Ukrainian citizens have been detained,' the FSB said.

The detainees admitted officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) instructed them to make a photo survey of Russian military maneuvers in regions bordering Ukraine, FSB said.

In addition, they were to establish contacts with Russian radicals.

By the time you read this Russia will have invaded Ukraine. Well, that's what the Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, is spinning. Breedlove Supreme says the Russians are "ready to go" and could easily take over eastern Ukraine. Western corporate media have already dusted off their Kevlar vests.

Now compare Breedlove Supreme with a grown-up diplomat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has called on NATO to please de-escalate the "unreasonable" warmongering rhetoric, which also includes officially ending all civilian and military cooperation with Russia and planning more military moves in Eastern Europe.

While NATO - shorthand for the Pentagon's European division - freaks out, especially via its outgoing secretary-general, Danish patsy Anders Fogh Rasmussen, let's see where we really stand on the ground, based on leaks from both Lavrov's and US Secretary of State John Kerry's camps.

The heart of the matter - obscured by a rainbow bridge of hysteria - is that neither Washington nor Moscow want Ukraine to become a festering wound. Moscow told Washington, officially, it has no intention of "invading" Ukraine. And Washington told Moscow that, for all the demented rhetoric, it does not want to expand NATO to either Ukraine or Georgia.

Western-backed rebel leader, Jamal Maarouf, has admitted that the fighting against Al-Qaeda was "not our problem" and that his group is battling alongside the terrorist organization.

Maarouf told The Independent that his group, the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF), carries out joint operations with Jabhat Al-Nusra - the official Al-Qaeda branch in Syria.

"It's clear that I'm not fighting against Al-Qaeda. This is a problem outside of Syria's border, so it's not our problem. I don't have a problem with anyone who fights against the regime inside Syria," Maarouf said to the media outlet.

The SRF leader even provided examples of the ways his group was helping Al-Qaeda.

"If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They asked us a month ago to send weapons to Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there. When they ask us to do this, we do it."

Maarouf's brigades were previously viewed as moderate among rebel forces that are more and more dominated by radical militants. Plus, the SRF was allegedly receiving significant aid from the US and other Western allies to battle the extremist forces.

However, Maarouf denies getting strong support from the US, saying there was a one-time $250,000 payment for salaries and benefits of a shared operations room in Jordan to fight the Southern Front.

"We have received lots of promises from the US, but so far nothing more," he stated.

Maarouf's advisor confirms this, insisting that the SRF relies on funding from Saudi Arabia.

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.