The militants of the Islamic State terrorist group are going to occupy the territory of Libya and use it as a beachhead for attacks all over the Southern Europe, reports The Daily Telegraph with reference to revealed letters written by the group's supporters.

According to the edition, the document was written by an IS agitator recruiting extremists in Libya since Muammar Kaddafi's overthrow and the beginning of the internal military conflict.

Jihadists are going to flood Libya with IS militants from Syria and Iraq that will try to cross the Mediterranean Sea passing off as migrants, the document states. This data was provided by the British counter-extremist foundation Quiliam.

Kiev troops surrounded in the city of Debalstevo have started to surrender en masse, Ukrainian rebels have said. President Poroshenko announced a complete withdrawal from the contested city.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko confirmed in a video statement that he has given an order to withdraw troops from Debaltsevo on Wednesdsay.

"We stated and proved that Debaltsevo was under our control and that there was no encirclement. Our units withdrew according to plan in an organized manner. They took military hardware with them - tanks, APCs, artillery pieces, tow-tracks, cars," the president said.

He added that some 80 percent of the troops have already left the city.

Reuters cited a witness who saw the troops, some of them injured, arriving in Artemyevsk, a city northwest of Debaltsevo, through which a road leading to Kiev-controlled areas goes.

Hackers working primarily from Gaza, Egypt, Morocco responsible for attacks on Israeli government, military and infrastructure systems.

Palestinian hackers were behind a series of cyber-attacks on Israeli targets, according to a new report published by the Trend Micro company. The slew of attacks, which began in 2013, were directed at government, Israel Defense Forces, academia and infrastructure websites, and were meant to collect information for the purpose of conducting further cyber-attacks in the future.

The report, entitled Arid Viper, and compiled with cooperation from the U.S. Air Force, reveals that the hackers were working primarily from the Gaza Strip, but also from Egypt and Morocco, and used contaminated emails in order to get harmful programs into Israeli organizations' computer networks. The company did not reveal which companies were attacked, or how much information was stolen.

The hackers' used the tactic, known as Spear Phishing, primarily against employees at Israeli companies. It is a common method among hackers, both those who work for intelligence organizations, as well as hackers with criminal motives. In Israel, the tactic is known for an instance in which it was used to send a fake email, supposedly from outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, to various officials within the Israel Police and the Foreign Ministry.

You can take the leader out of his battalion, but you can't take the battalion out of its leader: a Ukrainian MP has issued outrageous threats against Crimea and threatened to torch its population.

The militantly pro-Ukrainian Dnipro Battalion leader- turned-MP Yuri Bereza has promised to "burn down Crimea, with all of its residents if needed," vociferously refusing to "liberate the peninsula in a somewhat cultural manner." The saber-rattling politician, did not specify who might need the people to be burnt and why.

The threat was voiced in a live broadcast on the Ukrainian national TV channel 1+1.

Although Pennsylvania's new Governor Tom Wolf, who last November unseated Republican incumbent Tom Corbett, cited more than 315 million solid reasons to back his surprise order putting an immediate moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania, law enforcement organizations in the state still castigated his action, calling it an outrageous assault on a criminal justice system that they contend works well.

When Wolf announced his imposition of a moratorium on executions due to a disturbing history of abuses and errors in death penalty prosecutions in the state with the fifth largest death row in the country, he cited a damning statistic overlooked in most news media accounts of his recent action.

Operating the death penalty in Pennsylvania over the course of the past thirty-plus-years has cost the state's taxpayers between $315-to-$600-million, Wolf noted in a memorandum his office released that detailed why he halted executions.

The state of Pennsylvania "has received very little, if any, benefit from this massive expenditure," Gov. Wolf said. An exact cost figure for death penalty prosecutions in Pennsylvania remains elusive because state legislators and top officials in its court system have to date resisted compiling specific such figures.

The enormous expenses associated with the death penalty, from trial through appeals to execution, is a reason why many other states that have halted executions. Death penalty prosecutions cost three times as much or more than non-capital murder prosecutions, repeated studies nationwide have documented.

New Jersey, a state adjacent to Pennsylvania, abolished its death penalty in 2007 due largely to costs. Seventeen other states nationwide have abolished the death penalty, too. Four others, now including Pennsylvania, have imposed moratoriums on executions.

During a CNN internal town hall Tuesday, network chief Jeff Zucker said it's not a conflict of interest for an executive of the network to host the president and First Lady in their home, an insider familiar with the event told TheWrap.

Responding to an anonymous email question from a CNN staffer regarding an unnamed D.C. executive who hosted the Obamas — along with other parents — in their home for dinner, Zucker said there's no issue.

"Zucker said no [it's not a conflict] because he goes to cocktail parties all the time with different parents of his children's friends," the insider told TheWrap.

An insider familiar with the gathering told TheWrap, "The dinner was for parents and kids from Sidwell Friends School [in D.C.], where President Obama sends his kids to school," adding that it wasn't a private dinner for the Obamas.

A CNN D.C. bureau spokesperson did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment.

Vice President Joe Biden clearly takes a hands on approach when it comes to his day job.

Tuesday, at Defense Sec. Ash Carter's swearing-in ceremony, Biden got all touchy feely with Carter's wife, Stephanie. From the pictures, it looks like he's whispering sweet nothings into her right ear. He's also getting a good whiff of her shampoo.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt: Perhaps he was trying to be comforting after her spill on the ice at the Pentagon this morning while she was accompanying her husband on his first day on the job.

She doesn't necessarily look uncomfortable, but then again we're not mind readers.

In December, 2013, Biden grabbed the waist of The Hill's White House reporter Amie Parnes at a White House holiday party. As she appeared to protect her underboob, he veered dangerously close to her abdomen. The picture quickly went viral.

Clearly laughs were had by all. Happy holidays!

The Obamas have spent an estimated $2.5 million after Barack and the rest of his family took separate weekend breaks.

President Obama spent Valentine's weekend in California, where he managed to squeeze in three rounds of golf at a California course owned by Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison.

Meanwhile, his wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia flew to Aspen in Colorado for a skiing trip on board a separate presidential aircraft.

According to the White House, President Obama flew to San Francisco on Thursday afternoon where he had several events, before taking Saturday, Sunday and Monday off. He delivered a speech at a summit on cyber security before attending a round-table meeting with business leaders. His final official engagement of the weekend was a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee at the home of venture capitalist Sandy Robinson.

Guests paid $10,000 for dinner and a photograph with the president or $32,400 to co-chair the fundraiser.

While President Obama was in California, his wife was in Aspen, Colorado, where she has spent several Presidents' Day holidays away from her husband.

President Obama used his weekly television address to wish his wife a happy Valentine's Day.

The situation in Debaltsevo, Donetsk, arguably prompted the Minsk talks. The UAF were getting absolutely hammered by the NAF during their January offensive and eventually ended up getting a huge number of their troops encircled in the city: at least 5000 men (with estimates up to 8000). While the Minsk talks were proceeding, Kiev launched a large but ultimately failed attempt to break into the area to free up a corridor for its troops. But there wasn't a word about Debaltsevo in the final Minsk agreement, leading to differing interpretations by both sides of the conflict.

Novorossiya interprets it this way: Since the town is encircled, and thus within territory under NAF control, the Ukrainian troops trapped inside have two options: break the ceasefire in order to fight their way out (and die in the process), or surrender their arms and make their way back to the front peacefully (and thus retain their lives if not their heavy weaponry). Sounds reasonable. However, Kiev has denied the troops are encircled. For them, it is an important strategic 'bridgehead' into Donetsk, and thus 'theirs'. Too bad for them, it isn't, and the rest of the world knows it. The troops there are encircled and have been since days before the Minsk talks. By denying this fact, Kiev has made a safe withdrawal next to impossible, in the hopes that they could break them out without admitting they were doing so. By failing to do so, they have consigned the troops there to death or surrender.

Operation Protective Edge is the killing machine of the 2010s, to Israel's everlasting shame. That is not how Israel perceives it, nor, increasingly, world, and especially American, Jewry. I write as a proud Jew, seeking to rid Judaism of the incubus of a hubristic-militaristic Israel that needn't have taken the form it did, as emulator of Nazi-style practices against a resident population on land which could have been the refuge of both. The nakba was inexcusable, degrading, cruel, immoral, the very antithesis of what Torah proclaims about care for the oppressed and love of the stranger. Israelis, by their actions, have forfeited their claim even to be considered Jewish, so vile their treatment of those they have already reduced to a parlous state. Gaza today is Dresden, rubble as far as the eye can see; only Hiroshima and Nagasaki look worse. Children playing amid ruins, families in tents and caravans, building materials intercepted by sea and turned back, infrastructure, UN schools, hospitals demolished—an Israeli society, passive onlookers, casual, uninterested, deaf to the cries of suffering and privation. Judaism mocked at the highest levels.

My dad, yes, from Pinsk, coming to America after World War One, who worked hard all his life, gave whatever he could in support of Jewish causes, a founding member of Rodeph Shalom in Bridgeport before moving to Miami Beach, used to say that bad news came in threes. Sure enough, in recent days, as I perused today's papers. First, the resignation of William Schabas who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's investigation into possible Israeli war crimes in this past summer's Gaza campaign. Faced with Israel's opposition to ANY investigation from day one (even preceded by Israeli attempts to "starve the beast," lobbying member nations of the International Criminal Court not to contribute to its operations), Schabas had no other choice. Vilified, accused of anti-Israel sentiments and activities (a distinguished international human-rights lawyer and scholar, who, among his many clients, once advised the Palestine Liberation Organization, fee - $1,300), subject to death threats and a barrage of hostile emails, obviously organized, he believed that the commission findings, due next month, should not be lost sight of in this effort at intimidation and obfuscation.