Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who had contested accusations of sexual impropriety in February, on Sunday acknowledged that "there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me."

O'Brien decided not to attend the March conclave after media reports that three priests and one former priest had accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior when he was a seminary rector in the 1980s.

New bus lines connecting the West Bank with Israel have sparked controversy. Despite claims they are regular lines, Israeli media believe they were set up specifically for Palestinians, in order to segregate them from Jewish settlers.

Leaflets in Arabic have lately been spread around the West Bank Palestinian villages, calling on their inhabitants to use the new bus lines, which will go from Eyal crossing near the city of Qalqilya to Israel, Ynetnews reported.

The official reason for introducing new bus lines is that the existing "mixed" ones are overcrowded and conflict-prone. Around 30,000 Palestinians work in Israel and have to travel there every day.

Plans to put them on separate bus lines were first announced in November 2012, following several episodes of police taking Palestinian laborers off buses from Tel Aviv to the West Bank. The police acted on complaints from Jewish settlers, who claimed that Palestinians posed a security threat by riding the same buses as them.

NATO has officially confirmed that two Australian troops accidentally killed two Afghan children in southern Afghanistan. The children were tending cattle when they were killed.

An official statement was made by the alliance after Afghan and ISAF investigators visited Uruzgan province: "The boys were killed when Coalition forces fired at what they thought were insurgent forces," Reuters quoted ISAF head US General Joseph Dunford as saying.

General Dunford also offered a "personal apology and condolences to the family of the boys who were killed."

The two children, 7 and 8 years old, were killed on February 28 during an attack in the southern province of Uruzgan. Australian troops were reportedly responding to an earlier attack in which Taliban militants shot at a helicopter carrying Australian soldiers.

A bomb blast killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens of others on Sunday in a neighborhood dominated by Shiite Muslims in the southern city of Karachi, Pakistani officials said.

The bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque as people were leaving evening prayers, said police official Azhar Iqbal. Men, women and children were among those killed and wounded, he said.

At least 28 people were killed and 50 others were wounded, said a top government official, Taha Farooqi. He said some people were feared trapped in the rubble of buildings that collapsed in the bombing.

No one has claimed responsibility, but Sunni militants linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban have targeted Shiites in the past, claiming they are heretics.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman used some of President Barack Obama's language on Friday in describing the spending cuts the president signed into effect.

While the federal sequester isn't as bad as the "fiscal cliff" debate that tied up Congress and the White House at the end of 2012, Krugman told MSNBC host Ed Schultz, "it's bad, and of course, it's degrading government services. Not only are cuts the wrong thing to be doing right now, but these are especially dumb cuts."

Before making them official, Obama called the cuts "dumb" and "arbitrary" following a meeting with GOP and Democratic party leaders. A report that 700,000 jobs would be lost on account of the spending cuts, Krugman said, was conservative, given the effects of similar cuts across Europe.

"This was designed to be stupid," Krugman said. "The whole point was, this was supposed to be a doomsday device that would force the [Democratic and Republican] parties to reach an agreement. Of course, they didn't, and here it goes."

Speaking Wednesday in Vienna at a United Nations summit for tolerance, Erdogan said, "Just like Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it becomes unavoidable that Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity," Anatolia News Agency and other Turkish media reported.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights group, called on Erdogan to apologize for his "shocking" statements and urged U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the speech publicly. UN Watch said Ban was on stage while Erdogan was speaking.

A joint resolution set to be introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC) and Robert Menendez (NJ), a Republican and Democrat, respectively, declares U.S. support for an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear program. The resolution, which expresses the sense of the Congress, will be supported by the thousands of delegates to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee annual conference that will stream through the Capitol this weekend. With prominent liberal Democrats already signing on, AIPAC's lobbying heft will likely propel a bill that, in Congressional sentiment at least, commits the U.S. to active support of a potential Israeli attack that experts think could have consequences as grave as further destabilization in the region, adverse global economic consequences, and even a hardening of Iranian resolve to get a weapon.

According to a copy obtained by Open Zion, the resolution, while affirming increasingly harsh sanctions, also "urges that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence." Tempering some fears about the bill, the authors added that the resolution shouldn't "be construed as an authorization for the use of force or a declaration of war" by the U.S. Though the caveat will surely placate some members of Congress, it seems potentially at odds with a pledge of "military... support" in the event of an attack - language that, though unlikely for now, if actuated into policy could suggest the U.S. would be dragged into a war based on an Israeli decision to strike.

"Initiating a war is the gravest step any nation can take," said Columbia University professor Gary Sick, an Iran expert and former White House official. "This legislation would effectively entrust that decision to a regional state. Such a decision is an American sovereign responsibility. It cannot be outsourced."

Russia is back. President Vladimir Putin wants the world to acknowledge that Russia remains a global power. He is making his stand in Syria.

The Soviet Union acquired the Tardus Naval Port in Syria in 1971 without any real purpose for it. With their ships welcomed in Algeria, Cuba or Vietnam, Tardus was too insignificant to be developed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia lacked the funds to spend on the base and no reason to invest in it.

The Russian return to the Middle East brought them first to where the Soviet Union had had its closest ties. Libya had been a major buyer of arms and many of the military officers had studied in the Soviet Union. Russia was no longer a global power, but it could be used by the Libyans as a counter force to block domination by the United States and Europeans.

When Gaddafi fell, Tardus became Russia's only presence in the region. That and the discovery of vast gas deposits just offshore have transformed the once insignificant port into a strategic necessity.

The US State Department, and to a greater extent, US foreign policy itself, having exhausted completely their collective credibility, has attempted yet another "reset." By bringing in John Kerry to pose as the next US Secretary of State, it is hoped global opinion will see US foreign policy in a new, more tolerant light. Kerry, however, has wasted no time attempting to simply resell verbatim the same failed, absurd policy US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton destroyed her career peddling, spinning, and covering up - as finalized in the case of Benghazi, Libya.

The Washington Post's piece, "U.S. announces expanded battlefield aid to Syrian rebels, but not arms," rehashes the same tired, patently false narrative that has been used throughout the duration of the US-fueled Syrian conflict. The Washington Post reports:

The Obama administration will provide food and medicine to Syrian rebel fighters, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Thursday, announcing a cautious U.S. foray into front-line battlefield support that falls far short of the heavy weapons or high-tech gear the rebels seek.

"The stakes are really high, and we can't risk letting this country - in the heart of the Middle East - be destroyed by vicious autocrats or hijacked by the extremists," Kerry said following discussions among a group of Western and Arab nations that are funding, and in some cases arming, the fighters.

The United States will, for the first time, send supplies through the rebels' central military headquarters, with U.S. advisers supervising the distribution of food rations and medical supplies, U.S. officials said. The shift is intended to give the U.S.-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition greater say over the aid, but it is also a test of the rebels' ability to keep donated supplies out of the hands of extremists in their midst.

The Washington Post report is a verified lie. US assistance, cash, weapons, and covert military support had been ongoing in Syria since 2007 - in other words - before the current conflict even began. And the US has been providing this support not for moderates, but specifically and intentionally for the ideological foundation of Al Qaeda itself, the sectarian extremist Muslim Brotherhood, since the Bush administration.

At the beginning of the year 2013, the operation of undercover Israeli agents within the West Bank came to light once again. On January 1, soldiers dressed as vegetable vendors arrested Murad Bani Odeh, a member of the Islamic Jihad political party in the West Bank village of Tamoun, south of Jenin.

Ynet news reported that Muhammad Basharat, the local village council head said that the soldiers entered the village in a van bearing a Palestinian license plate, adding that the men inside it did not arouse anyone's suspicion. Israeli media reported that the soldiers were part of Israel's Mistaarvim, or 'Arabized' elite undercover unit.

Little is known about the internal operations of the Israeli undercover units. The group 'Mistaarvim' in Hebrew or "Musta'rabeen" in Arabic is an undercover unit whose members serve in various sections of the Israeli army. Translated from Hebrew it literally means 'Arab pretenders.'

The Mistaarvim are an elite branch of a supposed 'counter-terrorism' unit who impersonate Palestinians and infiltrate West Bank communities in an attempt to find information that may be of interest to the Israeli government. Members are indistinguishable amongst Palestinian communities, as they dress the same way Palestinians do, speak Arabic in the local dialect, and drive cars with Palestinian licensed number plates. According to a study by the Palestinian Human Rights Information Center (PHRIC), disguises include stage props such as crutches and fake babies, with members undergoing extensive training on cultural habits to help them blend in successfully.