Russia and UK still have very different approaches to the Syrian crisis, British PM Cameron said after meeting Putin adding that the decision to arm rebels is yet to be made. Russia's President warned against such a move citing rebels' atrocities.

"The blood is on the hands of both parties" of the conflict, not only Bashar Assad's government but also the rebels, Russia's President Vladimir Putin stressed at the press conference at 10 Downing Street.

"I think you will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras," Putin said referring to a video footage on the Internet of a rebel fighter eating the heart of a government soldier. Later however it was concluded the fighter was holding a lung.

"Is it them who you want to supply with weapons?" he said adding that it does not correspond with international humanitarian norms.

Conservative government's latest foray into the history books has raised questions among historians
Canadian history has a reputation for being dull, but our nation's past is arousing passions in Ottawa of late.

The federal government has spent $28 million commemorating the bicentennial of the War of 1812, a program that some critics say was an extravagant exercise in drumming up patriotism.

The Conservative government's latest foray into the history books has also divided opinion. Last month, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage started a "thorough and comprehensive review of significant aspects of Canadian history."

Talks on a landmark US-EU trade deal have been given the green light after EU trade ministers agreed on the bloc's negotiating mandate on Friday night (14 June).

The agreement, which was reached after more than 12 hours of talks in Luxembourg, paves the way for EU leaders and US President Barack Obama to officially launch the talks at next week's G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

As expected, the main stumbling block was the French government's insistence that it would veto agreement unless its subsidised film and television sector was excluded from the scope of the mandate. However, under a carefully phrased compromise, the cultural sector has been excluded from the initial mandate when EU officials open negotiations with their US counterparts, but could be put back in as talks progress.

Although paragraph 21 of the mandate makes clear that the audiovisual sector will not be in the mandate, a new paragraph has been included stating that the commission "may make recommendations to the council on possible additional negotiating directives on any issue, with the same procedures for adoption, including voting rules, as for this mandate."

British police are preparing one of their most unprecedented security operations, involving water cannons and summary hearings, for next week's G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

Police Service of Northern Ireland district commander Chief Superintendent Pauline Shields said more than 8,000 officers are being dispatched to Northern Ireland to help local police in the security operations.

The arrangements include a daunting four-mile security fence around the Lough Erne Golf Resort that will host the summit on Monday and Tuesday next week, while another barbed wire barrier is being set up outside the area.

The police have also deployed several mobile water cannons to frighten off potential protesters with a seven-mile area of the Lough Erne lake itself being closed down and patrolled by police boats.

Another four injured in second blast at hospital where victims were being treatedAt least 22 people have been killed, 14 of them female university students, and many others injured after a bomb was set off near a bus in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

A second device was then detonated at the hospital where friends and relatives had gone to visit the injured and gunmen stormed the building.

On Saturday evening, Pakistani police forced their way into the hospital that had been taken over by the gunmen, freeing 35 hostages and ending the five-hour standoff.

Reports said the initial blast happened in the car-park of the Sardar Badur Khan Women's University just as students were heading home after lessons. The injured were taken to the Bolan Medical Hospital where local officials and police were among the visitors. At least three people were hurt in the second blast.

Quetta has been by repeatedly rocked by violence, some of it relating to a separatist insurgency, but much of it has been carried out by Taliban fighters or other militants. Often the focus of the attacks have been members of the Hazara Shia community; some Shia students were reportedly among those targeted on Saturday.

Recently my child experienced firsthand the kind of victim disarmament indoctrination America's public school system is teaching our children.


The school went on lockdown mode without even bothering to inform me, her parent, and while it turned out to be nothing at all, the impression left on my child that day will not soon be forgotten.

In 2005, a federal court upheld that our nation's public schools trump parent rights:

Parents and politicians alike were shocked when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on Nov. 2 that parents' fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children "does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door," and that a public school has the right to provide its students with "whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise.

The court went on to clarify:

Parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed.

What this decision essentially says is that, as a parent, your rights to control what your children are being taught end at the school door.

The police have fired water cannon and tear gas to drive away protesters from both Istanbul's Taksim Square and Gezi Park, hours after Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan demanded the square to be "evacuated." Protesters claim multiple injuries.


Several people have been taken away in ambulances after being loaded onto stretchers, RT's Irina Galushko reports from Istanbul.

The police are now tearing down the tents in Gezi Park camp, she added.

Scores of riot police have sealed off Taksim Square and stormed the adjoining park, pressing the protesters out of the area.

Moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani has won Iran's presidential election with just over 50 percent of votes, state TV reported. 72 percent of the 50 million Iranians turned out to vote, said Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar.


The Saturday news was reported by the country's Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar on state television.

"Mr Hassan Rouhani ... got the absolute majority of votes and was elected as president," Najjar said.

The moderate cleric mastered a lead of 50.71 per cent (18,613,329 votes) which means Iran avoids another round of polls next week.

In the wake of the election results Rouhani hailed his election as a "...victory for wisdom, moderation and maturity... over extremism," he said in a statement according to local media, AFP reports.

Hundreds of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Hong Kong despite heavy rain to support the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and press the US to change its surveillance policies.

The gathering on Saturday came hours before Hong Kong's chief executive, CY Leung, broke days of silence on the case. He promised to "follow up on any incidents related to the privacy or other rights of the institutions or people in Hong Kong being violated".

His spokesman declined to elaborate on what that follow-up may entail, the South China Morning Post said.

Snowden has alleged that the US hacked hundreds of targets in Hong Kong and on mainland China.

Leung's statement said the government would handle Snowden's case "in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong".

The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges once famously wrote of a great Empire that created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map itself grew and decayed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire finally crumbled, all that remained was the map. In some sense we can say that it is the map in which we live; we occupy a location within a simulation of reality. Although semanticists say that 'the map is not the territory', within this digitised age the territory is increasingly becoming the map and the separation between the physical and the digitised rendition is blurring. In this context, to 'know the map' gives priority to intervene upon the physical. In recent years many of us have been scrambling to get 'on the Net' and thus be 'mapped'; within a few years we may find that living 'off the Net' will no longer be an option.

It is my argument that the future direction of present technological emergence is one that seeks to go beyond networks; rather it is towards ubiquitous technologies that offer a complete immersive (or rather 'sub-mersive') experience of a digitised environment. With networks there is always the possibility of moving into the grey and illusive areas in-between. These are the areas where the networks do not, or cannot, cover; neglected zones of poverty and risk, and insecure zones of warlord regions, and smuggling zones. With immersive technological mapping there may one day be no 'spaces in-between'; the distinction between 'in' and 'out' dissolved; boundaries melted away under the digital gaze. In this article I argue that the US military-industrial complex is attempting to gain full dominance over the complete information spectrum, including dominating the electro-magnetic spectrum and the Internet, in order to gain full total coverage for purposes of containment and control.