In a ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation's top court found that a police officer who mistakenly interprets a law and pulls someone over hasn't violated their Fourth Amendment rights.

The case pertained to a traffic stop initiated on Nicholas Heien in North Carolina, on account of a broken tail light. The stop and search of the vehicle, conducted by the officer after the initial citation, yielded a good amount of cocaine. Heien was charged with drug trafficking.

The problem? According to North Carolina traffic law, only one tail light needs to be functional. That means the initial stop, justified on these grounds, would have been illegal - and so would the seizure of the cocaine found in Heien's car.

In his New Year address to the nation, Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked Russians for their "invariable readiness to defend Russia's interests, to be with it both in days of triumph and in times of trial".

Russia is struggling to avoid a recession next year having been hit hard by the steep fall in oil prices and economic sanctions imposed by the US, EU and their allies over Moscow's alleged role in the Ukraine unrest.

The Russian currency has hit an all-time low in 2014 and has declined more than 50 per cent since the start of the year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said in a New Year's message to U.S. President Barack Obama that Moscow is looking for equality in bilateral relations next year.

The Kremlin on Wednesday published several dozen New Year's messages addressed to heads of states and international organizations such as the Olympic Committee and FIFA.

Putin reminded Obama of the upcoming 70th anniversary of the allied victory in World War II and said that it should serve as a reminder of "the responsibility that Russia and the United States bear for maintaining peace and international stability." Moscow is anxious for the relations to advance but only as long as there is "equality and mutual respect."

Conspicuously absent from the list of the recipients of New Year's messages was Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi on Wednesday condemned the UN Security Council vote against a bid to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine as "outrageously shameful."

"It is ironic that while the United Nations designated 2014 as the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the resolution failed to pass as an indication of a failure of will by some members of the international community," she said in a statement.

"Furthermore, all the articles of the resolution are consistent with declared American policy, international law, UN resolutions, and the requirements of peace. The extent to which the US has gone to protect Israeli impunity and lawlessness and to enable its criminal behavior is disgraceful and dangerous."

Imagine some future Brussels edict has finally broken up Britain and handed Devon and Cornwall over to rule by Wales.

Imagine the Royal Navy, much shrunk and renamed the English Navy, being told it has to share Plymouth with a new Welsh fleet; that is, if it is allowed to stay there at all.

Picture the scene as cinemas in Plymouth and Exeter are forced to dub all their films into Welsh, while schools teach anti-English history and children are pressed to learn Welsh.

Street signs are in Welsh. TV is in Welsh. Police cars patrolling Dartmoor have 'Heddlu' blazoned on them, banks have become 'bancs' and taxis 'tacsis'.

Meanwhile, Devon and Cornwall are cut off by a frontier from the rest of England, closing down industries with English links, and people are issued with new identity documents with Welsh names.

Utterly mad and unthinkable, you might say. And you would be right. But something very similar has happened in what used to be the Soviet Union, and we are supposed to think it is a good thing - because Russia is officially a bad country, and its former subject nations are therefore automatically good.

Remember how the world's media reported on Kiev's 'Orange Revolution', which lasted from November 2004 until the following January, with gushing approval?

Remember how you were supposed to think the Orange-clad crowds were a ­benevolent expression of popular opinion?

Remember talk of a 'New Cold War', in which wicked Russia was the enemy and 'we', the European Union, were going to extend 'our' rule deep into the former Soviet lands?

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reports that 118 journalists and other media workers have been the victims of targeted killings while another 17 were registered as "accidental death" among them, Serena Shim, who died in Turkey after she told colleagues that she had been threatened by Turkey's intelligence service.

Leading in the tragic statistics about media workers who died after being targeted is Pakistan with fourteen targeted killings followed by Syria with twelve fatalities. The tragic records are followed by Afghanistan and Palestine with respectively nine each and Iraq with eight.

The IFJ's list of media workers who died in targeted murders shows an unmistakable trend.

That is, the majority of high-rates of targeted assassinations of media workers happened in countries where Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States and its allies have fostered and used radicalized Islamic militant groups or Nazi militants as respectively ally, or infiltrated, and in part controlled foe.

It was a good year for those long 'beheadings'. After a solid 79 head-removals in 2013, 2014 surged 10% higher with a recent record 87 beheadings overall (following a surge since August for crimes such as "drug smuggling, witchcraft, or sorcery"). The 'State' responsible for all these executions... not ISIS, but US ally, Saudi Arabia...

As BNO News reports,

A Pakistani man convicted of smuggling a large amount of heroin has been decapitated by sword in Saudi Arabia, the government reported on Wednesday, disregarding concerns raised by human rights activists and raising the number of people executed there this year to 87.
...

"The Interior Ministry reminds the public that the Government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud) - may Allah protect him - continues the fight against drugs of all kinds as it inflicts serious harm on the individual and society," the ministry said in its statement. "The most severe penalties on the perpetrators are derived from the righteous approach of Sharia law."

Wednesday's beheading adds to a surge in executions that began in August, angering human rights organizations because many of those killed were convicted of non-lethal crimes. "Any execution is appalling, but executions for crimes such as drug smuggling or sorcery that result in no loss of life are particularly egregious," said Sarah Leah Whitson, of Human Rights Watch, earlier this year.

Amnesty International also expressed its concern after four family members were all beheaded on the same day in August for merely possessing hashish. "The recent increase in executions in Saudi Arabia is a deeply disturbing deterioration. The authorities must act immediately to halt this cruel practice," said Said Boumedouha, of Amnesty International.

At least 87 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia this year, following 79 executions last year. The kingdom applies the death penalty for a large number of crimes, including drug offenses, apostasy, sorcery and witchcraft. Both witchcraft and sorcery are not listed as crimes but have been used to prosecute people for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion, according to activists.

From November 2013 through November 2014, the aggregate balance in the federal direct student loan program--as reported by the Monthly Treasury Statement--rose from $687,149,000,000 to $806,561,000,000, a one-year jump of $119,412,000,000.

The balance on all student loans, including those from private sources, exceeded a trillion dollars as of the end of the third quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"Outstanding student loan balances reported on credit reports increased to $1.13 trillion (an increase of $8 billion) as of September 30, 2014, representing about $100 billion increase from one year ago," the bank said in its latest report on household debt and credit.

Seven years ago, in November 2007, the aggregate balance in the federal direct student loan program was only $98,529,000,000. Since then, it has grown by $708,032,000,000.

This is money that young Americans owe the federal Treasury--and that gives the federal government leverage over their lives.

"Under the DL program, the federal government essentially serves as the banker - it provides the loans to students and their families using federal capital (i.e., funds from the U.S. Treasury), and it owns the loans," explains the Congressional Research Service.

In fact, the program is a government-funded redistribution of wealth to colleges and universities. The question is: Who will ultimately pay for that wealth transfer?

In 2013, the National Center for Educational Statistics published a study of student aid in the 2011-2012 school year. It showed that 40.2 percent of students attending a postsecondary school had a federal student loan.

The appointment to the Ukrainian government of fugitives from Georgia, searched by Interpol, could harm relations between the two countries, said Saturday Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili.

He said he personally informed the President Piotr Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk that this practice would affect relations between Tbilisi and Kiev.

"I cannot explain to the people of Georgia why Zurab Adeishvili [former Justice Minister] who is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice could be appointed to a position in the Ukrainian government with which we have friendly relationship. It was one of the main representatives of the criminal regime that sentenced 300,000 people. This also applies to Eka Zgouladze, assistant of Vano Merabishvili [Minister of the Interior from 2005 to 2012], which has worked over many years to exonerate the regime in power in Georgia," said Irakli Garibashvili.

Zurab Adeishvili is the subject of an international search warrant issued by Interpol at the request of the Georgian authorities who accuse him of abuse of power, abuse of detainees in Georgian prisons and falsifying evidence.

"This [U.S-Russian conflict that's being carried out in Ukraine] is a prelude to World War III. A lot of people know this." So says Yuri Shcherbak, who was Ukraine's Ambassador in Washington during 1994-1998.

Dr. Shcherbak was one of Ukraine's few progressives ever to become an official of the Ukrainian Government. He now is speaking out publicly for the first time to express his concern about the movement toward a nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia, and about Ukraine's dangerous current role in helping to bring that about.

In 1998, he authored a book The Strategic Role of Ukraine, published by Harvard University Press; so, this is a subject that he knows a lot about.