Russia's partners in BRICS that are Brazil, India, China and South Africa have expressed an understanding of the Russian position on Crimea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"As far as a meeting of the BRICS foreign ministers is concerned, we have heard the understanding of the current situation and of historic aspects of the whole situation here in The Hague, and we are thankful to our partners for this," Lavrov told a news conference in The Hague on Monday.

Commenting on media reports that Australia may fail to invite Russia to the G20 summit, Lavrov said that the foreign minister of South Africa, the current president in BRICS read out a communique that "states our approach to the situation in the world."

"The common position was stated: we altogether not just Australia formed the G20 and we will work in this mechanism just as we have once concluded," he said

The G8 is once again to become the G7.

Leaders of the so-called Group of Eight announced Monday they would cancel their planned June meeting in Sochi, Russia, and suspend their participation in the international group, following Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and threats toward Eastern Ukraine.

The smaller group announced its plans in a joint statement after meeting in The Netherlands. Instead, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States will meet with European Union leaders in Brussels as the G7, in the latest blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. President Barack Obama convened a meeting of the G7 on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit at The Hague, with the goal of increasing pressure on Russia following its actions in Ukraine. The G7 nations had previously suspended preparations for the Sochi conference following Russia's takeover of Crimea.

The George W. Bush administration had a stated policy of trying to isolate Venezuela from its neighbors, and the strategy ended up isolating Washington instead. President Obama, in his first meeting with hemispheric leaders in Trinidad in 2009, promised to turn a new page. But today, his administration finds itself even more isolated than that of his predecessor, and for much the same reasons.

Consider the lopsided vote on Venezuela at the Organization of American States earlier this month. Not only did the OAS reject Washington's attempt to get the organization to intervene in Venezuela, but to add insult to injury, 29 countries passed a resolution expressing their solidarity with the government of President Nicolás Maduro, with only 3 against. It is hard to imagine a more resounding diplomatic defeat in a body where the US government still has a disproportionate influence.

The Obama administration seems surrealistically unaware that this is a different hemisphere than it was 15 years ago. Governments representing the majority of Latin America are now from the left, including Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Venezuela in South America and El Salvador and Nicaragua in Central America. These governments emphatically reject Washington's depiction of the recent events in Venezuela as a government trying to "repress peaceful protesters." Instead, they share Maduro's view that the protests are an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government, which has been the stated goal of the protest movement's leadership from the beginning. Even President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, who is reluctant to criticize Washington, used the word "destabilization" to describe the protests. These governments see that Washington is using its muscle to support this effort.

The Western nations have spent a tremendous amount of time and effort in influencing Ukrainian society and leading it to the present situation, believes Konstantin Kosachev, the head of Russia's federal agency for foreign cooperation.

Rossotrudnichestvo has been doing everything it can to maintain Russian cultural influence in Ukraine, but the European Union and the United States have incomparably greater resources, Kosachev said in an interview with the business daily Vedomosti (Rossotrudnishestvo is the federal body in charge of humanitarian cooperation and the welfare of the Russian Diaspora within the Foreign Ministry).

The Russian side has worked to maintain the existing level of its cultural presence - it organized events promoting Russian language, helped Ukrainian students study in Russian universities, organized exhibitions, concerts and other events, Kosachev said in the interview.

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden emerged from his Russian exile Tuesday in the form of a remotely-controlled robot to promise more sensational revelations about US spying programs.

The fugitive's face appeared on a screen as he maneuvered the wheeled android around a stage at the TED gathering, addressing an audience in Vancouver without ever leaving his secret hideaway.

"There are absolutely more revelations to come," he said. "Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come."

Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who has been charged in the United States with espionage, dismissed the public debate about whether he is a heroic whistleblower or traitor.

Instead, he used the conference organized by educational non-profit organization TED ("Technology Entertainment Design"), to call for people worldwide to fight for privacy and Internet freedom.

Internet creator Tim Berners-Lee briefly joined Snowden's interview with TED curator Chris Anderson, and came down in the hero camp.

Complaints of miscarriage of justice as judge takes just two sessions to find defendants guilty of police officer's murder

A judge in southern Egypt has taken just two court sessions to sentence to death 529 supporters of Mohamed Morsi for the murder of a single police officer.

Sixteen people were acquitted after lawyers said they had not been allowed to present a proper defence before the judgment was made.

The defendants were arrested last August during a wave of unrest in which supporters of the former president react violently to the clearance of a pro-Morsi sit-in in Cairo during which more than 900 people were killed. In addition to the murder, the 529 were accused of attempting to kill two other police officers and attacking a police station.

The death sentences are not final and appeals are likely; similar sentences have often been commuted in Egypt. But families of the accused and rights lawyers described the process as a miscarriage of justice.

Waleed Sultan, whose father was among those sentenced to death, said: "Nothing can describe this scandal. This is not a judicial sentence, this is thuggery."

The Russian Lower House has approved an amendment allowing the annulment of election results if voters complain of irregularities.

The bill changing the federal law on the basic guarantees of voters' rights has been presented following last year's ruling of the Constitutional Court confirming that ordinary citizens can contest election results, though only in the constituencies in which they cast their votes.

Previously, the processes of investigating violations at elections could only be started after complaints from candidates or participating parties.

The new bill stipulates that any voter can turn to the courts with complaints over the decisions, actions or inactions of the district elections commissions. The new rule applies to elections to state bodies and to referendums. If a court finds the election results invalid a recount of votes is automatically ordered, but only in the constituency where the proven violations took place.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) now says she has some serious privacy concerns about domestic drones, but it might have been nothing more than a children's toy that put her over the edge.

Feinstein - who also serves as the head of the US Senate Intelligence Committee - has since last year been advocating for her congressional colleagues to implement privacy safeguards to protect Americans from any potential surveillance threats brought on by the small, unmanned aerial vehicles expected to soon invade local airspace.

"The administration is looking at a rules playbook as to how these won't be used and how they will be used," Feinstein told MSNBC a year ago this month. "So it's a very complicated subject of new technology and I think we have to take a pause and get it right."

But speaking to journalists at the CBS News program 60 Minutes recently, Sen. Feinstein shared a personal story that put into better perspective why exactly she's so worried about spy drones. During an episode that aired Sunday evening, Feinstein said an experience that she recently had with a "drone" outside of her home had something to do with how she now views UAVs.

French voters went to the polls on Sunday in the first round of local elections set to represent a landmark for women in politics and, possibly, for the far-right National Front.

The first nationwide vote since Francois Hollande's 2012 election as president took place with the ruling Socialists battling record unpopularity and the main opposition UMP party grappling with scandals embroiling former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Against that backdrop, polls have suggested around one in four voters are considering casting their votes for Marine Le Pen's National Front (FN), setting the scene for what could be a breakthrough election for the anti-immigration, anti-EU party led by the daughter of its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The US Navy has been discharging sewage and waste water into the British-owned and protected Diego Garcia coral lagoon since the 1980s, according to a new report by the UK-based Independent.

The base in question - located on the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - has been the focus of intense lobbying by supporters of the native residents, who were resettled elsewhere in the 1970s in order to make way for a US naval establishment. The British government has stated on multiple occasions that those Chagossians could not return to the island due to its effort to maintain the area's unspoiled habitat.

Despite these claims, however, scientists have found the state of the coral in the lagoon to be deteriorating, and have singled out increased levels of nitrogen and phosphate as the possible culprits. According to the Independent, the presence of these elements is likely the result of the US Navy dumping treated sewage water and other waste into the lagoon for the last three decades.

Although the British government was aware of the Navy's behavior in 2013, it has only now been revealed to the public.