Russia's Public Chamber has asked Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to launch an international probe into allegations Ukrainian National Guard units used child soldiers in the restive regions in the East and southeast of the country.

"We are writing to Sergey Lavrov because we are convinced international law mandates Ukrainian conscripts aged under-19 must be given the right to leave the war zone. These servicemen and their parents must know about this fact," the deputy head of the Russian Peace Foundation Yelena Sutormina said in an interview with the Izvestia daily.

"One years' difference might seem a purely bureaucratic detail, but not today, when life and death depend on it. In reality Ukrainian mothers have a carte blanche for saving their sons," Sutormina said. The move was prompted by Kiev authorities confirming on July 28 the death of an 18-year old army conscript who fought against federalist forces in the Donetsk Region.

Russian activists said in their letter they had about 17 and even 16-year old boys taking part in military operations in Ukraine. "It is unthinkable that cynical politicians and instigators are literally hiding behind the backs of young lads," the Public Chamber's letter reads.

For Switzerland to copy and paste EU sanctions against Moscow is unwise, and would jeopardize the country's role as a mediator, said Swiss Economy Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann.

The Swiss government has no plans to follow in the EU's footsteps and impose sanctions against Russia, Schneider-Ammann said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag.

Schneider-Ammann said that choosing a side would undermine the country's neutrality in the matter.

"This role [as mediator] will be weakened, if we duplicate EU sanctions," Schneider-Ammann said, adding that Switzerland holds the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is vitally important for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Another main concern for Switzerland, home to many Russian nationals, is any economic blowback from sanctions.

The economy minister warned that shutting out Russia could "result in a domino effect" which will "have a negative impact on our economy."

Dear All of You:

I sense I'm breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can't keep quiet any more.

Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He'd been shredded (the hospital's word) by an Israeli missile attack - apparently using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You probably know what those are - hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was 4 years old.

I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.

Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won't sign up to it.

What is going on in America?

Following are a few short questions for the New York Times in regard to a recent news report:

1. When are you going to cover the killing of Palestinians the same way you cover the killing of Israelis?

Israel's killing of at least 8 civilians in one day was relegated to the second half of the story and not mentioned in the headline.

The murder of a father of three children, a staff member for Defense for Children International, got two sentences in the 17th paragraph. Israeli forces' killing of a 17-year-old got one sentence in the 25th paragraph. The killing of a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old got a half sentence - between them - in the 27th paragraph.

Israeli forces in the southern Gaza town of Khuza'a fired on and killed civilians in apparent violation of the laws of war in several incidents between July 23 and 25, 2014. Deliberate attacks on civilians who are not participating in the fighting are war crimes.

Seven Palestinians who had fled Khuza'a described to Human Rights Watch the grave dangers that civilians have faced in trying to flee the town, near the Israeli border, to seek safety in Khan Younis. These included repeated shelling that struck apparent civilian structures, lack of access to necessary medical care, and the threat of attack from Israeli forces as they tried to leave the area.

"When will there be justice for the civilians in Khuza'a, who suffered shelling for days, then faced deadly attacks by Israeli soldiers after being ordered to leave the town?" asked Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director.

About 550 Army majors, including some serving in Afghanistan, will soon be told they have to leave the service by next spring as part of a budget-driven downsizing of the service.

Gen. John Campbell, the vice chief of the Army, acknowledged Friday that telling troops in a war zone that they're out of a job is a difficult task. But he said some of the soldiers could join the National Guard or the Army Reserve.

The decision to cut Army majors comes on the heels of a move to slash nearly 1,200 captains from the ranks. Army leaders were criticized at the time for giving 48 of them the bad news while they were deployed to Afghanistan.

The Army declined to say how many majors will be notified while they are at the battlefront.

"The ones that are deployed are certainly the hardest," Campbell told reporters. "What we try to do there is, working through the chain of command, minimize the impact to that unit and then maximize the time to provide to that officer to come back and do the proper transition, to take care of himself or herself, and the family."

The Ukraine crisis is just one pretexts being used by NATO to create tensions with Russia as the alliance seeks a reason to exist, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. As NATO expands, it tries "to drive" all Europeans under its "roof," he said.

NATO "is looking for a new sense of existence," Lavrov told Russia's Itar-Tass news agency in an interview. "Russia turned up. If there was no Ukraine, I assure you, there would be another aspect of Russia's inner or foreign politics used for speculations."

Speaking about NATO, Lavrov recalled Russia's urgent withdrawal of troops from Europe 20 years ago on August 31, saying that while there was no reason to rush, post-Soviet officials hoped to become"partners with the West and Europe."

"And if there is no Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and the troops had left, then what is NATO for here? Why bother with all the attributes that belong to the era of the Cold War?" he said.

"These hopes," however, never came true and NATO keeps expanding, Lavrov said.

US officials have confirmed Swedish media reports of a mid-July incident in which an American spy plane invaded Sweden's airspace as it was evading a Russian fighter jet. The maverick plane was spying on Russia when it was intercepted.

The incident, which happened on July 18, went public last Wednesday after a classified document from Sweden's Defense Ministry was leaked to the press.

The plane, a Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint, entered Sweden's airspace after permission to do so was denied by traffic control, Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper said. It passed from the east over the island of Gotland and flew more than 200km over 90 minutes before leaving.

The aerial incursion was caused by a Russian fighter jet, which scrambled from a base in the exclave Kaliningrad Region and approached the American reconnaissance plane.

Neither party involved in the incident confirmed or denied it, but a source in the US military told CNN on weekend that it indeed happen.

"Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little." - "Rough Justice in America," The Economist

Why are we seeing such an uptick in Americans being arrested for such absurd "violations" as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room?

Mind you, we're not talking tickets or fines or even warnings being issued to these so-called "lawbreakers." We're talking felony charges, handcuffs, police cars, mug shots, pat downs, jail cells and criminal records.

Consider what happened to Nicole Gainey, the Florida mom who was arrested and charged with child neglect for allowing her 7-year-old son to visit a neighborhood playground located a half mile from their house.

For the so-called "crime" of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised, Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4000 in bond in order to return to her family.

Gainey's family and friends were subsequently questioned by the Dept. of Child Services. Gainey now faces a third-degree criminal felony charge that carries with it a fine of up to $5,000 and 5 years in jail.

For Denise Stewart, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether or not she had done anything wrong, was sufficient to get her arrested.

The 48-year-old New York grandmother was dragged half-naked out of her apartment and handcuffed after police mistakenly raided her home when responding to a domestic disturbance call. Although it turns out the 911 call came from a different apartment on a different floor, Stewart is still facing charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

And then there are those equally unfortunate individuals who unknowingly break laws they never even knew existed. John Yates is such a person. A commercial fisherman, Yates was sentenced to 30 days in prison and three years of supervised release for throwing back into the water some small fish which did not meet the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission's size restrictions. Incredibly, Yates was charged with violating a document shredding provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was intended to prevent another Enron scandal.

2000 dead and counting...As the world watches Israel continues...