There are three things I remember vividly from when I took my oath of office as a career federal employee in the current administration: the mountain of paperwork required to get signed up for my health benefits, the peppy presentation by the guy who ran the office gym, and the very serious, very clear instructions regarding federal records. The messages were loud and clear. Don't lose or break your equipment, and don't use your own. I don't know what kind of orientation Hillary Clinton got when she joined the administration, but we now know she chose to use her own equipment.

Before I was a career fed at an agency, I was a political appointee at the White House — a staff constantly under scrutiny from the press, more so than most of our non-political colleagues. Because of that pressure, we invoked the "Washington Post test" nearly every day. How would you feel if the email you're writing showed up on A1 of the Post? Did someone send you an email saying something you were uncomfortable with? Respond in writing making it clear you disagree. Did someone ask you over the phone to do something you're even remotely uncomfortable with? Ask them to put it in writing — in email.

In each story there is always a beneficiary. In politics, nothing happens "just like that". And even more so, no political assassinations happen "just like that". In order to understand who would benefit from the death of Boris Nemtsov we need to analyse two things - known details of the crime and the history of similar late incidents in Russia. Then everything will become clear. We'll start with the details.

On February 27, 2015, Boris Nemtsov was shot dead in Moscow. Here are the known details of the crime.

1. On the eve when the opposition march scheduled for March 1, one of its organizers gets killed.
2. Nemtsov was killed right beside Kremlin.
3. He was murdered cynically - in front of witnesses. However, the girl he was with was not killed and was left as a witness.
4. The girl is from Ukraine.
5. The murder takes place February 27 - two days before the president of Russia proclaimed this day as the celebration "Day of special operations forces." People start call this "the day of polite people."
6. On the other side of the bridge, where Nemtsov was shot, there is Bolotnaya - area where the strongest opposition protests of 2011-2012 took place.
7. All of the Western and Russian liberal media is filled with photos of a dead body and place of his death "in colour". Kremlin towers in the background.

Let's summarize: it would be difficult for Kremlin to come up with more unfortunate place, time and the murder scenario should Kremlin be considered the initiator of the tragedy.

In her latest Russophobic outburst, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite called on the Baltic nations to brace for what she described as "Russian aggression," media reports said.

The eyebrow-raising remarks came as Grybauskaite announced that Lithuania will reinstate compulsory military service in connection with "Russia's threats".

"We have realized that the geopolitical situation near our border has changed and that the threat is very real. The threat is real for the entire Baltic regions because we cannot predict actions by our immediate neighbors, namely, Russia," Grybauskaite said.

The 300 US Army military personnel deployed to Ukraine to conduct a joint training mission with the Ukrainian army at a peacekeeping center near Lviv from March 5 until October 21 have already arrived, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative Aleksandr Lukashevich announced on Thursday.

"American servicemen have already been transferred to Lviv region to train Ukrainian soldiers."

The United States has been providing Kiev with economic and non-lethal military support since the beginning of a military operation against independence fighters in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk last April.

The world now faces greater geopolitical risks than since the end of the Second World War as unemployment threatens European welfare and chaos engulfs the Middle East, Lord Rothschild warned investors in the £2.3 billion RIT Capital fund.

World GDP grew at "a disappointing and uneven rate in 2014" following six years of monetary stimulus and extraordinarily low interest rates, the chairman of RIT Capital Partners, Lord Rothschild said in the investment trust's 2014 annual report.

He also described stock market valuations at near an all-time high with equities benefiting from quantitative easing. The value of paper money has been debased as countries sought to compete and generate growth by lowering the value of their currencies, according to Rothschild. The euro and the yen depreciated by over 12 percent against the US dollar during the course of the year and sterling by 5.9 percent. The unintended consequences of monetary experiments on such a scale are impossible to predict, the banker says.

Following attacks by Islamist militants on oil installations and ports in Libya, the National Oil Co. has declared a force majeure at 11 oil fields, a clause in contracts that frees parties from liability in extraordinary situations.

The announcement follows attacks on Al-Bahi and Al-Mabrouk fields by alleged Islamic State affiliates earlier this week, and a brief capture of a third one at Al-Dahra, a spokesman for the Libyan oil industry's security service told AFP.

In Dahra the attackers engaged with the guards and managed to blow up residential and administrative buildings before retreating from the oil facility. "They surrounded the site from three different directions, and when guards ran out of ammunition, they stormed the place, looted everything and then bombed the buildings, leaving them in ruins," Mashallah al-Zewi, the oil minister in the Tripoli-based government told AP.

Belhadj, a Libyan national and former head of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, was considered by President Barack Obama's administration and some members of Congress as a "willing partner" in the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011.

"Now, it's alleged he is firmly aligned with ISIS and supports the training camps in eastern Libya," Catherine Herridge, chief intelligence correspondent for Fox News, said Tuesday on "America's Newsroom."

Also on Tuesday, Sara Carter of The Blaze tweeted: "Abdelhakim Belhadj is now the leader of #IslamicState in #Libya. At CIA rendition camp — let go, later participated overthrow #Qaddafi."

The American Ambassador to Cyprus, John Koenig, has been promptly 'relieved of duty' after he posted on his Twitter account what was essentially a clever ploy to link Cyprus President Anastasiades (who recently visited Moscow) to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov.

Bonehead move...oh yeah!

But considering that John Kerry, America's top diplomat, almost bombed Syria over a fake Youtube video, and sanctions have been placed on Russia over tweets that say Putin has invaded Ukraine...I guess Ambassador Koenig's social media mishap is tiny in the grand scheme of American propaganda goofs.

Nonetheless it was still a bonehead thing to tweet about.

A stop to gas supply to Donbas by Ukraine may be interpreted by all impartial onlookers as a sure sign Kiev no longer regards the area as its territory, Russia's EU envoy said on the eve of trilateral gas talks in Brussels on March 2.

The problem of gas supplies to Donbas is confined to the need for Kiev to make a choice: how it sees this region, and if it still considers the people living there as Ukrainian citizens. If this is so, from the standpoint of logic the Ukrainian government and Naftogaz are obliged to supply gas there. If they suspend gas supplies to Donbas, every observer will clearly see that Kiev no longer regards this territory as its own," he said.

And from RIN:

Kiev never resumed gas supplies in the Donbass. Donetsk national Republic considers these actions as an economic blockade, said the Commissioner DND on Minsk talks Denis Putilin.


"At this point in time, delivery [from] Ukraine has not resumed. The situation is that they are looking for ways to justify destroyed pipelines gas transmission and more. In reality, it's just one of the elements of the blockade, "said Putilin. Remember, on February 19, Naftogaz said that they had stopped the flow of gas in the Donbass due to critical damage inflicted on transmission infrastructure during combat operations, but then said that delivery began after the break [ceasefire]. Because of this, the Prime Minister of Russia Medvedev D. A. ordered a study of the issue of gas supplies from Russia to the Donbass in the form of humanitarian aid. According to him, citizens in these regions should not be allowed to freeze. Then the head of the Board of Gazprom, Alexey Miller said that the Russian gas company increased supplies of natural gas to the area of Ukraine on Friday. The head of Naftogaz of Ukraine Andriy Korolev said that the Ukrainian Company will not pay for the gas that Gazprom supplies in the Donbass, because, in the opinion of the Ukrainian side, it is contrary to the contract.

This was never said officially before! "They gave money to save German and French banks, not Greece," Paolo Batista, one of the Executive Directors of International Monetary Fund told Greek private Alpha TV on Tuesday. Batista strongly criticized not only the euro zone and the European Central Bank but also the IMF and the Fund's managing Director Christine Lagarde for defending Europe much too much..

He urged Greece to directly negotiate with the IMF and favored the restructuring of the Greek debt that is being held by the European partners.

Video: English with Greek subtitles: