Only a couple of major newspapers in the world have bothered to regularly cover the plight of Syria's diverse religious and ethnic minorities living in rebel held areas. Lebanon's The Daily Star and Al-Akhbar newspapers have featured consistent coverage of Syria's Armenians, Kurds, Iraqis, Druze, Christians, and Ismailis - and the threats these communities face in opposition held parts of Syria. Read the latest Al-Akhbar coverage of two Armenian Christian business owners who dared to stay in Northern Syria, attempting to hold on to their family livelihood in a rebel controlled area. They were arrested, forced to convert, executed with bullets to the head, and denied burial.

The Syrian opposition was sold to the world by mainstream Western press from day one of the Syria conflict as representing democracy, freedom, and a pluralist future for a new Syria. But the last couple of years testify the complete opposite. Anyone who actually spent time in Syria prior to the conflict knows that Ba'athist Syria has always been unique in the region for the high degree of freedom that minorities exercise.

An Israeli municipality plans to demolish al-Mahatta, a historic Palestinian neighborhood in Haifa.

It will be replaced by the expansion of an existing railway, new housing units, nightclubs and restaurants, among other venues designed to bring in increased tourist revenues.

"Since I was five years old, I've been hearing that al-Mahatta is going to be completely destroyed ... but today, I can't imagine that we have more than two or three years left in our homes," George Eskandar, chairman of al-Mahatta's neighborhood committee, told The Electronic Intifada.

Around 160 people from more than 30 families are facing eviction. All of them carry Israeli citizenship.

Eskandar, 34, lives with his wife and four-year-old son in his family's home. He and his wife also work as actors. "This is where I was born and where I've spent my whole life," he said.

The program to demolish al-Mahatta is part of an already approved national plan to develop coastal areas up and down present-day Israel. Haifa's municipality has until the end of 2014 to decide the local details of the plan for al-Mahatta, and another five years to fully implement it.

Only two of the remaining structures - one of which is a local church - will be left standing once Israel's plans for al-Mahatta are carried out.

Until now, the plan has only been implemented in the form of individual housing demolitions and evictions on a home-to-home basis.

Just when it seemed we might escape the political tides pushing the United States toward war with Iran, a group of senators has introduced a bill that would put us back on the path to war. We might as well call it the "give war a chance" bill.

Until recently there had been a general consensus in Washington in favor of sanctions against Iran. Although Washington's two foreign policy factions - arms controllers and regime changers - diverged in their ultimate goals, as long as Tehran kept methodically expanding its uranium enrichment capability (from a few hundred centrifuges in 2005 to 19,000 today and from 5 percent enrichment to 20 percent), the two sides could often agree on a policy of economic strangulation against Iran, backed up with the threat of military attack.

That coalition between Washington's arms controllers and regime changers was shattered, though, following the 2013 election victory in Tehran of a moderate, President Hassan Rouhani, who is aggressively pursuing an entente with the West.

While the arms controllers, led by President Barack Obama, are trying to avert a war by reaching an accord with Iran, the regime changers are doing everything they can to sabotage such an accord through a Senate bill, the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, co-authored by Sen. Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and Sen. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois.

Of course, being against arms control and for an increased likelihood of war is like being against motherhood and apple pie, so the regime changers are pretending to help the arms control negotiations they seek to undermine.

• Michelle Obama alleged to have discovered her husband has been unfaithful
• Reports claim they will separate at the end of his presidency in 2016
• Follows claims in two books that couple neared divorce in early 2000's

With invitations warning guests to 'EBYC' - Eat Before You Come - and rumours they'll be dancing to star turns from Beyonce and her rapper husband Jay Z, it won't be your usual White House knees-up.

Michelle Obama was 50 yesterday and President Barack Obama will be feting his redoubtable First Lady tonight with a party that will give them the chance to let their hair down and forget their troubles for a few hours.

The email inviting guests to the 'snacks & sips & dancing & dessert' advised them to wear comfortable shoes and practise their dance moves.

Purse-lipped Washington etiquette experts have tutted at the informality of it all, but the Obamas have always been keen to appear accessible, even if the stand-offish reality is somewhat different.

The Obamas are the world's most scrutinised couple at the best of times, but it will be rare to find a guest at the bash who won't be secretly watching them with particular interest.

After all, the last time they were pictured together - at Nelson Mandela's memorial - the First Lady was looking none too pleased as the her husband posed for a 'selfie' photograph with the leggy blonde Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

Indeed, if the U.S. tabloids are to be believed, the relationship of Washington's golden couple is facing problems that go far beyond dirty looks.

There is a danger that the Ukrainian extreme right are serving the political purpose of the apparently moderate leaders, who in fact want a revolution, Mark Almond, professor of history at Oxford University, told RT.

The so-called moderate opposition has desired a rise of nationalism during the riots, Almond believes. The Orange Revolution went wrong in 2004-05 precisely because the mass protests were peaceful, they led to a re-run of elections, but although Yanukovich lost, "he lost very narrowly and remained a viable political player with a very large body of support, and won of course the election in 2010." Thus, the opponents of Yanukovich now recognize that "if you simply force fresh elections you don't fundamentally change the political system."

"They want to marginalize Yanukovich and his Party of the Regions, his supporters. So you need a non-constitutional revolution. Remember one of the opposition television stations is now headlined the Revolution station," Almond told RT.

As an example he mentioned Klitchko's rethoric.

"Vitaly Klitchko spoke in forked tongue: when he talks in English or German for the media he talks about the need for peaceful protests, the need for fresh elections; but he then says to his supporters that Yanukovich is like Ceaușescu and Gaddafi. If you say that the president of Ukraine is like Gaddafi, what you are saying is that he is a dictator that should be lynched as Gaddafi was at the end of 2011," Almond said.

The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them "too big to fail." Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve in order to support through the policy of Quantitative Easing the prices of financial instruments on the banks' balance sheets and in order to finance at low interest rates trillion dollar federal budget deficits associated with the long recession caused by the financial crisis.

The Fed's policy of monetizing one trillion dollars of bonds annually put pressure on the US dollar, the value of which declined in terms of gold. When gold hit $1,900 per ounce in 2011, the Federal Reserve realized that $2,000 per ounce could have a psychological impact that would spread into the dollar's exchange rate with other currencies, resulting in a run on the dollar as both foreign and domestic holders sold dollars to avoid the fall in value. Once this realization hit, the manipulation of the gold price moved beyond central bank leasing of gold to bullion dealers in order to create an artificial market supply to absorb demand that otherwise would have pushed gold prices higher. The manipulation consists of the Fed using bullion banks as its agents to sell naked gold shorts in the New York Comex futures market. Short selling drives down the gold price, triggers stop-loss orders and margin calls, and scares participants out of the gold trusts. The bullion banks purchase the deserted shares and present them to the trusts for redemption in bullion. The bullion can then be sold in the London physical gold market, where the sales both ratify the lower price that short-selling achieved on the Comex floor and provide a supply of bullion to meet Asian demands for physical gold as opposed to paper claims on gold.

The evidence of gold price manipulation is clear. In this article we present evidence and describe the process. We conclude that ability to manipulate the gold price is disappearing as physical gold moves from New York and London to Asia, leaving the West with paper claims to gold that greatly exceed the available supply.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford called a news conference last week in his ongoing quest to rehabilitate his tattered image as he heads into an election year. At the beginning of the year, Ford was the first off the mark to register his candidacy for next October's mayoralty election, declaring himself "the best mayor that this city has ever had."

Ford hopes that he will be able to use the intervening eight months to push to the background last year's sordid spectacle of drug and alcohol abuse, criminal associations, habitual lying and outright buffoonery that saw him stripped of much of his executive authority by city council and his outlandish antics splattered across the television screens and front pages of the world's media outlets.

At his recent press conference, the ever-mendacious Ford boasted that "I have made job creation and economic growth a key pillar of my administration, and I have fulfilled exactly what I said I was going to do...Toronto is booming today. We're a global powerhouse."

This news would certainly come as a surprise to the hundreds of thousands of city residents who languish in poverty and unemployment. At 10.1 percent, Toronto currently has the second highest jobless rate among the country's municipalities. Unemployment amongst the city's youth is at 20 percent and rising. Those who still have jobs have had to contend with major rent, electricity and food price increase, while wages have stagnated and public services have been cut.

Nearly a quarter of Toronto's 2,750,000 residents live below the poverty line. Ford's constituency in Etobicoke North - which he represented as a city councilor for ten years prior to his 2010 victory in the mayor's race - has the highest rate of both child and overall poverty in the city.

Ford's response has been to slash social spending, attack city workers and privatize garbage pick-up - all with the support of the city council.

President Barack Obama believes smoking marijuana is a "bad habit" but thinks legal penalties now fall disproportionately on minorities and that states legalising pot should go ahead with their plans, he said in a profile released on Sunday.

"As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life," he is quoted as saying in a New Yorker magazine article. "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."

The president said he has told his two daughters that smoking marijuana is "a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy".

However, he said he is concerned that marijuana-related arrests fall far more heavily on minorities than on others. Legalisation of pot should go forward in the states of Colorado and Washington because "it's important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished," he said.

Marijuana remains illegal in the United States under federal law, but 21 US states allow or are about to allow medical marijuana use, and Colorado and Washington have decriminalised use of pot entirely. Alaska and the District of Columbia are considering following suit.

The Obama administration said last year that federal law enforcement will not target users in Colorado and Washington, as long as they comply with their respective states' laws. The Department of Justice says it will not interfere with states' efforts to regulate and tax marijuana provided they are able to meet a set of requirements, including keeping it from children and restricting its flow into other states.

Police chiefs say water cannon are needed because 'austerity measures are likely to lead to continued protest'

Chief constables are shortly to press the home secretary, Theresa May, to authorise the use of water cannon by any police force across England and Wales to deal with anticipated street protests.

The Association of Chief Police Officers says that the need to control continued protests "from ongoing and potential future austerity measures" justifies the introduction of water cannon across Britain for the first time.

The London mayor, Boris Johnson, has already announced a consultation on the introduction of water cannon on to the streets of London ready for use by this summer.

A new Acpo/College of Policing briefing paper makes clear that chief constables across England and Wales have also been asked to discuss water cannon with their police and crime commissioners and "it is anticipated that the home secretary will be approached in early 2014 in respect of water cannon authorisation".

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon articulated publicly what Israeli leaders say privately: Give us your tax money, weapons and your veto power but "leave us alone."

He called the US peace efforts "not worth the paper it is printed on," and accused US Secretary of State John Kerry of being a glory hound "messianic" and "inexplicably obsessive."

His statement - likely with the tacit approval of Israeli prime minister - was quintessential Israeli tactics to publicly influence American policy, and it did.

Receiving the message loud and clear, Kerry cancelled a visit scheduled this week to the region. Failing to commit the Israelis on a written framework agreement, his aides are already talking about extending the negotiation past the April deadline.

Each of Kerry's visits was greeted by an Israeli policy decision to undermine his efforts. Since last July it has authorised building 7,500 "Jewish only" homes on occupied West Bank and demolished 200 Palestinian residences. A ministerial committee led by the governing Likud party has overwhelmingly voted to annex the occupied Jordan valley.