Senior Labour staffer says newly appointed senior strategist will focus on mobilising activists in 2015 election

David Axelrod, Labour's newly appointed senior strategist and Barack Obama's closest long-term political adviser, will make mobilisation of Labour's grassroots central to the election campaign, a senior Labour staffer who has worked for Obama has forecast.

Axelrod himself stressed on Friday that he could not help Labour succeed at the next election without the mobilisation of local communities, adding - in his first effort to energise Labour members - that the world would be watching the outcome of the 2015 vote. The Guardian revealed on Thursday that Axelrod was joining the Labour campaign team as a senior strategist.

Matthew McGregor, who is advising Labour on digital campaigning, worked on the Obama campaign in 2012 in Chicago. He told the Guardian: "Axelrod puts mobilisation of activists at the centre of all his campaigns. It is one way he views political empowerment. Obama said whether he won or lost the election, he wanted to leave politics better off at the end of the campaign by finding more ways to involve people in politics. He harnesses data, digital techniques and doorstep canvassers to create an effective movement online and offline."

In September 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vladimir Putin supported Washington's imminent invasion of Afghanistan in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War.

He agreed that U.S. planes carrying humanitarian aid could fly through Russian air space. He said the U.S. military could use airbases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. And he ordered his generals to brief their U.S. counterparts on their own ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan.

During Putin's visit to President George W. Bush's Texas ranch two months later, the U.S. leader, speaking at a local high school, declared his Russian counterpart "a new style of leader, a reformer..., a man who's going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States."

For a moment, it seemed, the distrust and antipathy of the Cold War were fading.

Then, just weeks later, Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so that it could build a system in Eastern Europe to protect NATO allies and U.S. bases from Iranian missile attack. In a nationally televised address, Putin warned that the move would undermine arms control and nonproliferation efforts.

"This step has not come as a surprise to us," Putin said. "But we believe this decision to be mistaken."

The sequence of events early in Washington's relationship with Putin reflects a dynamic that has persisted through the ensuing 14 years and the current crisis in Ukraine: U.S. actions, some intentional and some not, sparking an overreaction from an aggrieved Putin.

As Russia masses tens of thousands of troops along the Russian-Ukrainian border, Putin is thwarting what the Kremlin says is an American plot to surround Russia with hostile neighbors. Experts said he is also promoting "Putinism" - a conservative, ultra-nationalist form of state capitalism - as a global alternative to Western democracy.

A deadly gunfight in a town in restive east Ukraine on Sunday shattered a fragile Easter truce, with Russia declaring it was "outraged" at the return to violence in the crisis-hit former Soviet republic.

Three pro-Russian militants and one attacker were killed in a firefight at a roadblock close to the separatist-held town of Slavyansk, said a local pro-Kremlin rebel leader, Vyatcheslav Ponomarev.

Vladimir, a masked 20-year-old pro-Russian rebel who was at the barricade, told AFP: "Four cars pulled up to our roadblock around 1:00am (2200 GMT Saturday). We wanted to conduct a check, and then they opened fire on us with automatic weapons."

He said there were around 20 attackers, and confirmed the three rebel deaths, but was not sure of casualties on the other side.

It's days like this that your intrepid reporter here at The Anti-New York Times fantasizes about taking the 40 minute bus ride into Manhattan's Port Authority Bus Terminal, crossing 8th Avenue, entering The Times building, taking the elevator and then pounding one of these seditious scribblers into a bloody pulp, MMA style! (Only a dream of course).

The above listed articles, brought to us by Messrs. Herszenhorn and Kramer (Jew & Jew) reek with such mendacious manure that it can actually be smelled from across the Hudson River, here in New Jersey; (or is that the rancid aroma of Governor 'Crispy Creme' Christie's sweaty fatty butt cheeks I'm picking up?)

The US and Saudi Arabia have provided Syria's Western and Arab-backed militants with American antitank missiles as part of an ongoing campaign to provide the militants with heavy weaponry, according to a new report.

The delivery of the TOW anti-tank guided missiles began in March and is part of a pilot program that could lead to larger flows of sophisticated weaponry, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people briefed on the effort.

Some of the TOWs provided to militants are equipped with a complex, fingerprint-keyed security device that controls who can fire it, said Mustafa Alani, a senior security analyst at the Geneva-based [Persian] Gulf Research Center who has ties with Saudi security officials.

A newly-created militant group called Harakat Hazm said it had received about a dozen BGM-71 TOWs and was being trained on how to operate them. Earlier in April, Israel's Debkafile website reported that two Syrian militant groups have been supplied with anti-tank missiles.

The pro-paedophilia organisation Martijn should be banned, the Dutch supreme court ruled on Friday, marking the end of a legal battle which began in 2011.

The court's decision is in line with recommendations made by the advocate general in March. He said the organisation should be banned because the protection of children should weigh more heavily than freedom of expression.

The Martijn Foundation campaigns for the legalisation of sexual contact between adults and children and has been the subject of a convoluted legal battle for years.

Four French journalists kidnapped by al-Qaeda-linked militants in Syria have been released, President Francois Hollande says.

The French President made the announcement on Saturday, saying he had "learned with great relief this morning of the liberation of the four French journalists."

Edouard Elias, Didier Francois, Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres had been held captive in Syria since 2013.

The four were reportedly found blindfolded with their hands bound in Sanliurfa Province on the border with Syria.The four French journalists were found by Turkish soldiers.

Francois, a correspondent for Europe 1 radio, and Elias, a photographer, were kidnapped in early June near the northern town of Aleppo. Henin, a journalist for Le Point magazine, and Torres, reporter for Arte television channel, were abducted later in June near Raqqa, about 160 km east of Aleppo.

Earlier reports said the four had been abducted by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The foreign-backed militants operating in Syria have kidnapped several journalists since the beginning of the violence in the country in March 2011.

This piece of *#$@ belongs in jail

It's very simple.

Harry Reid, Senator from Nevada, is using federal violence to take people's land in his state so he can package it to re-sell it to the Chinese.

That's what the Bundy Ranch deal is all about.

Amazing isn't it?

And this thieving, lying sack of shit has the gall to threaten the Bundy family with retaliation for not being willing to hand their property over to him.

A report by the Israel's Ynet News, that has been widely circulated, claims that leaflets are being handed out in the eastern Ukrainian province of Donetsk, demanding Jews register, pay a $50 registration fee, and provide a list of property they own or face revocation of citizenship, deportation, and asset seizure.

Ynet has reported that that these documents carried the signature of Denis Pushilin, chairman of Donetsk's interim pro-Russian government. Pushilin, as reported in The Times of Israel, has denied any connection to the leaflet's content, labeling them as a forgery and provocation designed to discredit the protest movement.

The region has defied the central Ukrainian government and has been declared by pro-Russian activists as a "people's republic" disregarding an ultimatum from Kiev to surrender. Donetsk is a Ukraine province of about 4.3 million people and holds close to 10 percent of Ukraine's population. Roughly 17,000 Jews live in this province and it is home to much of the country's heavy industry. This makes it one of the most important prizes in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian activists have captured a number of government buildings over the past week.

Diplomats meeting for emergency talks on the crisis in Ukraine issued a joint statement Thursday aimed at de-escalating the tensions and ensuring the security of all Ukrainians.

The statement -- which appears to be the biggest step toward calming the situation in days -- followed talks lasting several hours between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, his acting Ukrainian counterpart, Andriy Deshchytsia, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The pact calls for all illegal armed groups to be disarmed, all illegally seized buildings to be returned to their legitimate owners and all occupied public spaces to be vacated. It promises amnesty for protesters who leave buildings and give up their weapons, apart from those convicted of capital crimes.