Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Secretary Andriy Parubiy has handed in his resignation.

"I have handed in my resignation as secretary of Ukraine's NSDC. I believe it is unacceptable to comment on my resignation in a time of war," Parubiy said on his Facebook page on Thursday.

"I will continue to assist the front, primarily volunteer battalions," he said.

Everyone has an opinion to explain the massacres committed by the State of Israel in Gaza. While in the 70s and 80s, it was seen as a demonstration of Anglo-Saxon imperialism, many interpret it today as a conflict between Jews and Arabs. Reviewing the long period of history - four centuries -, Thierry Meyssan, a consultant to several governments, analyzes the origins of Zionism, its true ambitions and determines who the enemy is.

The war, which has continued uninterrupted for 66 years in Palestine, has taken a new turn with the Israeli operations named "Our Brother's Keeper," followed by " Steadfast Rock " (translated strangely in the Western press as "Protective Border").

Clearly, Tel Aviv - having chosen to instrumentalize the disappearance of three young Israelis in order to launch these operations and "uproot Hamas" to exploit Gaza gas, according to the plan set out in 2007 by the current Minister of Defence [1] - was overwhelmed by the reaction of the Resistance. Islamic Jihad responded by sending medium range rockets, very difficult to intercept, which are added to those launched by Hamas.

US missile cruiser Vella Gulf has entered the Black Sea in what the American Navy described as a move to "to promote peace and stability in the region." Moscow has considered any such acts as "offensive."

The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG 72) entered the Black Sea on Wednesday as part of the effort to "strengthen the collective security of NATO allies and partners in the region," according to a statement by the US 6th Fleet.

"The US Navy's forward presence in Europe allows us to work with our allies and partners to develop and improve ready maritime forces capable of maintaining regional security," the statement reads.

An immediate investigation is needed into mounting evidence that the Israel Defense Forces launched apparently deliberate attacks against hospitals and health professionals in Gaza, which have left six medics dead, said Amnesty International as it released disturbing testimonies from doctors, nurses, and ambulance personnel working in the area.

"The harrowing descriptions by ambulance drivers and other medics of the utterly impossible situation in which they have to work, with bombs and bullets killing or injuring their colleagues as they try to save lives, paint a grim reality of life in Gaza," said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.

"Even more alarming is the mounting evidence that the Israeli army has targeted health facilities or professionals. Such attacks are absolutely prohibited by international law and would amount to war crimes. They only add to the already compelling argument that the situation should be referred to the International Criminal Court."

The resignation of Baroness Warsi highlights deep unrest on the Conservative benches - especially among a group of determined women MPs. Cathy Newman says David Cameron would be well advised to take heed of them

It's been just over a week since I heard the first, low rumble of discontent on Gaza eminating from the Conservative benches. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi was disheartened by the failure to do more to stand up to Israel. Margot James had written a letter to the foreign secretary. Sarah Wollaston too was unhappy.

Now, the grumblings can be contained no longer. Warsi has quit as a Foreign Office minister with a devastating tweet saying: "I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza."

Her resignation letter is all the more powerful for its measured and dignified language. She accuses the prime minister of presiding over a "morally indefensible" approach to the Gaza conflict, which she claims is "not in Britain's national interest and will have a long term detrimental impact on our reputation internationally and domestically".

Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella and Karamlesh emptied of original populations and now under the control of jihadi militants

Jihadists have taken over Iraq's largest Christian town, Qaraqosh, and the surrounding areas sending tens of thousands of residents fleeing towards autonomous Kurdistan, according to officials and witnesses.

Islamic State (Isis) militants moved in overnight after the withdrawal of Kurdish peshmerga troops, who are stretched thin across several fronts in Iraq, residents said.

"I now know that the towns of Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella and Karamlesh have been emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants," Joseph Thomas, the Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah, told AFP.

In his on air interview with HuffPost Live, US investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald criticized the US media coverage of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, called most of the US journalists cowards and gave them the lowest grading for the reports coming from the war-torn Gaza Strip.

Greenwald said that the American coverage of the conflict is based on the principle that Israeli lives are "just inherently more valuable that the Palestinians".

"It takes probably 50 Palestinians being killed to get anywhere near the attention of, say, an elderly Israeli woman being frightened in her home and having some kind of a medical problem because of the trauma," he said.

Greenwald also said that the number of Palestinians killed during the recent military operation, almost 2,000, is approaching the number that America had lost on 9/11, but the media was "essentially calm about it."

The total number of those killed in the course of the four-week long operation in Gaza has reached 1,800 Palestinians, mostly civilians. A total of 66 Israelis and a Thai worker have died.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Tuesday compared Israel's terror campaign against Palestinians in Gaza to a "disgusting form of fascism" that its ally, the United States, is unable to control.

"I think that a new and disgusting form of fascism is emerging with considerable force at this moment in human history," Castro wrote in a column in the newspaper Granma titled "Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza."

Castro's article appeared as a 72-hour truce took hold in the Gaza Strip, with Israel withdrawing occupation forces after a month of relentless attacks on mostly civilian targets that killed nearly 1,900 Palestinians, including over 400 children.

Residents of the Gaza neighborhood of Khuzaa say they were blocked from fleeing during days of intense Israeli shelling last month. Human Rights Watch says the incident appears to be a war crime.

It had been three nightmare nights. Faten Qdeih and her six children had fled Israeli shelling of their home, but were trapped by tanks and soldiers that shot at the crowd trying to escape. Wherever they went, explosions followed.

And it wasn't over.

A mortar shell rocked the building where they had taken refuge on the third day. Ms. Qdeih, bleeding from shrapnel, rushed the family into the street. Dodging shells, they ran to another building. It was hit too. Her seven-year-old son Anas dashed outside in fear just as another strike landed. Qdeih followed him and found his lifeless body.

Her daughters screamed. Dizzy, Qdeih made a heart-wrenching decision: She left her dead son behind and ran with the living. "I would rather I had died than see what I've seen," she said later.

An exile Uyghur leader has claimed that at least 2,000 ethnic minority Uyghurs may have been killed by Chinese security forces following riots last week in a restive county in China's western Xinjiang region, far more than reported by the state media.

Citing "evidence" from the ground, Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC), accused the Chinese authorities of a cover up of what she called a "massacre" of Uyghurs in Yarkand (in Chinese, Shache) county in Xinjiang's Kashgar prefecture on July 28.

Chinese state media had at first said "dozens" of people were killed but revised upwards the death toll to 96 this week, saying the riots erupted after a "gang" of Uyghurs attacked a police station and government offices in Yarkand's Elishku township and that the authorities reacted with "a resolute crackdown to eradicate terrorists."

But Kadeer told RFA's Uyghur Service that information the WUC received from the area was "absolutely different than the accounts provided by Chinese official narrative."

"We have evidence in hand that at least 2,000 Uyghurs in the neighborhood of Elishku township have been killed by Chinese security forces on the first day [of the incident] and they 'cleaned up' the dead bodies on the second and third day during a curfew that was imposed," she said.

"We have recorded voice messages from the people in the neighborhood and written testimonies on exactly what had taken place in Elishku township of Yarkand county during this massacre," she said, adding that the victims were mainly from villages No. 14, 15 and 16 in the township.

"We can share these facts without releasing the source of the information as their security and safety is at risk," said Kadeer, who has been in exile in Washington since being released from a Chinese prison in 2005.