The United States on Wednesday criticized what it described as Russia's "self-defeating" decision to pull out of a decade-old drug control agreement.

"We are seeking more clarification from the Russian government at the moment with regard to what they see this covering. We obviously regret this decision," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The Russian government published a decree from Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev saying Moscow had informed Washington it was withdrawing because the deal "does not address today's realities and has exhausted its potential."

Moscow said it lacked the money to fight drugs when it struck the deal in September 2002 at a time of warming relations that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Niger said Wednesday it was ready to host a base for US drones monitoring movements by Al-Qaeda-linked groups currently based in northern Mali.

"If Niger has an opportunity to receive support in the shape of aircraft or drones to monitor suspicious movements from Mali, we will not turn our nose up at it," Defence Minister Karidjo Mahamadou told AFP.

He added however that he was not aware of any formal deal allowing the deployment of US drones on Niger's soil.

A US official said Monday that the Pentagon was planning to station drones in the region - most likely in Niger - to bolster surveillance of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its allies.

Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated The New York Times' computer systems over the past four months, stealing reporters' passwords and hunting for files on an investigation into the wealth amassed by the family of a top Chinese leader, the newspaper reported Thursday.

Security experts hired to investigate and plug the breach found that the attacks used tactics similar to ones used in previous hacking incidents traced to China, the report said. It said the hackers routed the attacks through computers at U.S. universities, installed a strain of malicious software, or malware, associated with Chinese hackers and initiated the attacks from Chinese university computers previously used by the Chinese military to attack U.S. military contractors.

The attacks, which began in mid-September, coincided with a Times investigation into how the relatives and family of Premier Wen Jiabao built a fortune worth over $2 billion. The report, which was posted online Oct. 25, embarrassed the Communist Party leadership, coming ahead of a fraught transition to new leaders and exposing deep-seated favoritism at a time when many Chinese are upset about a wealth gap.

[Note: This article from the Daily Mail has since been removed. See screen-shot below for google search results]

Leaked emails have allegedly proved that the White House gave the green light to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that could be blamed on Assad's regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country.

A report released on Monday contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence where a scheme 'approved by Washington' is outlined explaining that Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons.

Barack Obama made it clear to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last month that the U.S. would not tolerate Syria using chemical weapons against its own people.

Aaron Swartz was facing 30 years for the unauthorized downloading of JSTOR articles; David Headley will serve the same number of years for plotting the killing of 163 people. The difference between the government's approach to the two men shows the tiny role that "actual harm caused" matters in the criminal justice system, and testifies to the increasingly unaccountable power of the U.S. prosecutor.

By now, everyone knows the story of Swartz, the idealistic Internet activist who tried to "liberate" millions of for-pay academic articles, was relentlessly pursued by the federal government with the cooperation of MIT, and ultimately killed himself.

But the Swartz case becomes even more scandalous when contrasted with prosecutors' recent conduct in the case of David Headley, the American Islamist who plotted the brutal 2008 attacks in Mumbai in which hundreds of civilians were casually gunned down. On the state's recommendation, Headley has just been sentenced in federal court to 35 years for helping to plot the al-Qaeda-linked attacks. Headley had conducted the extensive surveillance and scouting missions in India that made the killings possible.

Israeli warplanes attacked a military research center in Damascus province at dawn on Wednesday, Syria's military command said, denying reports that the planes had struck a convoy carrying weapons from Syria to Lebanon.

Two people were killed and five wounded in the attack on the site in Jamraya, which it described as one of a number of "scientific research centers aimed at raising the level of resistance and self-defense".

The building was destroyed, the military command said in a statement carried by state media.

It said the planes crossed into Syria below the radar level, just north of Mount Hermon, and returned the same way.

Sources told Reuters earlier that Israeli jets had bombed a convoy on Syria's border with Lebanon on Wednesday, apparently targeting weapons destined for Hezbollah.

U.N. human rights investigators called on Israel on Thursday to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all half a million Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices could be subject to prosecution as possible war crimes.

A three-member U.N. panel said private companies should stop working in the settlements if their work adversely affected the human rights of Palestinians, and urged member states to ensure companies respected human rights.

"Israel must cease settlement activities and provide adequate, prompt and effective remedy to the victims of violations of human rights," Christine Chanet, a French judge who led the U.N. inquiry, told a news conference.

The settlements contravened the Fourth Geneva Convention forbidding the transfer of civilian populations into occupied territory and could amount to war crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations report said.

"To transfer its own population into an occupied territory is prohibited because it is an obstacle to the exercise of the right to self-determination," Chanet said.

In December, the Palestinians accused Israel in a letter to the United Nations of planning to commit what it said were further war crimes by expanding Jewish settlements after the Palestinians won de facto U.N. recognition of statehood, and said Israel must be held accountable.

The UK Jewish Lobby is in a state of panic - the Holocaust Memorial Day boomerangs. If anything it turns the floodlight on the deeply problematic inclinations that are sadly inherent to Jewish political culture and collectivism.

Last weekend it became clear that in the light of the crimes that are committed by the Jewish State in the name of the Jewish People, many Brits find it somehow difficult to genuinely empathise with Jewish suffering. If anything, it is the other way around, more and more people expect the Jews and their State to become more empathic.

The day before Holocaust Memorial Day, MP David Ward expressed his dismay with the lack of Jewish empathy. He wrote on his blog:

"I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."

MP Ward had to issue an immediate apology following some relentless pressure mounted by the ' non existent' Jewish Lobby. In short, MP Ward and the British public were also privileged to examine the 'imaginary' Lobby performing one of its power pirouettes, bringing an elected British politician on his knees.

The French military operation in Mali has brought to the fore the blatant double standards in the approach of certain Western nations to the whole question of terrorism. In the case of Mali, France, with the support of Britain, Germany and the United States, has committed itself to combating diehard militants who are determined to use violence to establish their power and authority. Yet in Libya, these countries and their allies in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) had no compunctions about colluding with militant groups to oust Muammar Gaddafi in a bloody and brutal campaign which killed tens of thousands of people in 2011.

Their hypocrisy becomes even starker in Syria. Western powers and groups from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Turkey have been providing funds, logistical support and sophisticated weapons to rebels within Syria and mercenaries from a number of other countries, to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad government. Many of these armed groups, like their counterparts in Libya and Mali, justify their acts of terror and violence in the name of Islam --- albeit a distorted and perverted interpretation of the religion.

Different armed groups in Iraq at different times in the course of the US led occupation of that country have also, it is alleged, received material assistance from countries in the region and the US. It is an established fact that the US under Ronald Reagan gave enormous financial and military aid to so-called "jihadist" groups fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The US has often condoned acts of terror perpetrated by its close ally, Israel, against Palestinians and other Arabs. Indeed, the US itself is regarded in some circles as a "terrorist state", given its record of killing innocent civilians in various parts of the world, including Latin America, West Asia and Southeast Asia.

In testimony before Senate and House committees, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enthusiastically endorsed increased U.S. intervention in Africa. When government officials seem incapable of learning obvious lessons from the recent past, maybe their incentive is not to learn but to keep doing the same destructive things.

President Obama's inaugural speech contained this line, which has gone quite overlooked: "America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe. And we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad."

That's a recipe for perpetual war and perpetual fiscal crisis.

The latest locale for American intervention is the west African country of Mali. Aside from whatever covert activity the U.S. government may be conducting there, the American role is said to consist of logistical support for France, Mali's former colonial overlord, which has intervened militarily to defend a central corrupt government. (The deadly hostage-takings in Algeria may have been retaliation for France's action.) As The New York Times reports, "The Pentagon is airlifting a French battalion to join the fight in Mali against Islamist militants, Pentagon and administration officials said." Ominously, the Times adds, "The airlift expands the involvement of the United States in support of a NATO ally, but officials stressed that the American military footprint on the ground in Mali would remain small." That is, there's already an American footprint on the ground.