Whatever happened to honor among thieves? When the National Security Agency was caught eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone, it was considered a rude way to treat a friend. Now U.S. intelligence officials are saying - albeit very quietly, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill - that our Israeli "friends" have gone too far with their spying operations here.

According to classified briefings on legislation that would lower visa restrictions on Israeli citizens, Jerusalem's efforts to steal U.S. secrets under the cover of trade missions and joint defense technology contracts have "crossed red lines."

Israel's espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly, counterspies have told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing last January called the testimony "very sobering...alarming...even terrifying." Another staffer called it "damaging."

The Jewish state's primary target: America's industrial and technical secrets.

"No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do," said a former congressional staffer who attended another classified briefing in late 2013, one of several in recent months given by officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence Directorate.

The intelligence agencies didn't go into specifics, the former aide said, but cited "industrial espionage - folks coming over here on trade missions or with Israeli companies working in collaboration with American companies, [or] intelligence operatives being run directly by the government, which I assume meant out of the [Israeli] Embassy."

UPDATE (3:55 PM EST): White House responds to Putin remarks with skepticism, new sanctions

Following remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the day indicating he had ordered his troops away from the Ukraine border, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters, "To date, there has been no evidence that such a withdrawal has taken place." Adding, "We would certainly welcome a meaningful and transparent withdrawal."

The State Department echoed the White House's remarks. Spokesperson Jen Psaki, as quoted by Guardian reporter Paul Lewis, said that Russia should "use its influence" to ensure the May 25 election proceed peacefully. "It is a helpful step, but again there is far more that President Putin and the Russians can do to de-escalate the situation and ensure safe elections."

Following these comments, as the Guardian summarizes, other media outlets report the introduction of new economic sanctions by the White House against Russia on Wednesday:

The White House will remove Russia from a program offering favorable trade rates, meaning certain Russian goods are "now subject to non-preferential import duty rates" ABC's Kirit Radia reports. President Obama told Congress he plans to remove Russia from the program called the Generalized System of Preferences, according to Reuters.

Russia is "sufficiently advanced economically" and no longer needs the special treatment, the White House said. ... "Russia's actions regarding Ukraine, while not directly related to the President's decision regarding Russia's eligibility for GSP benefits, make it particularly appropriate to take this step now," Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in an email.

Additionally, the Kremlin has now released a complete English translation of the comments Putin made during his morning meeting with Swiss President and OSCE head Didier Burkhalter, available here.

The final batch of foreign-backed militants is leaving the Syrian city of Homs as part of a deal between Damascus and militants.

Provincial governor Talal Barazi said on Thursday that at least 80 percent of militants have already left the Old City of Homs under the deal.

The remaining 300-400 militants were due to leave the flashpoint city on Thursday, he added.

The withdrawal of the militants from Homs, which was under a tight militant siege for nearly two years, has handed a major victory to the government of President Bashar al-Assad ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

The agreement was reached between the militants and the Syrian government on May 4.

The deal was mediated by the United Nations, Russia and Iran and would bring almost all major districts of the city under the control of government forces.

Jerusalem's intelligence gathering activity in the America is unrivaled by any other ally, Newsweek reports

Israel's aggressive and widespread espionage activity in the US is increasingly angering American government officials and has "crossed red lines," Newsweek reported Tuesday.

The report anonymously quotes senior intelligence officials and congressional staffers who have been privy to information on Israeli spying activities. Staffers called the extent of Israeli espionage "sobering" and "shocking," far exceeding similar activities by any other close US allies.

Some of the spying was allegedly industrial in nature, conducted by Israeli companies or individuals. But a significant amount appeared to be state-sanctioned reconnaissance gathering, according to the report.

"There are no other countries taking advantage of our security relationship the way the Israelis are for espionage purposes," one former aide who attended a classified briefing on the issue told Newsweek. "It is quite shocking. I mean, it shouldn't be lost on anyone that after all the hand-wringing over [Jonathan] Pollard, it's still going on."

Pollard, a US-born navy intelligence analyst, is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison for spying for Israel. He was captured in 1985.

Now the issue of Israel's spying activities appears to be holding it back from achieving its goal of joining the US visa waiver program, which would allow Israeli citizens to travel to the US with much greater ease.

Several Ukrainian politicians have announced the set-up of new military units for coping with the unrest in the country's East. And one of them suggested bounty-payouts for giving up arms and handing in 'mercenaries.'

The Dnepropetrovsk regional authorities have come up with the idea of offering money to anti-government activists in eastern Ukraine in return for giving up their protest activities.

"I've been thinking a lot about events in Donetsk and Lugansk," Deputy head of the Dnepropetrovsk region, Borys Filatov, wrote on Facebook. "There's only one conclusion - this is a revolution of the poor, the rebellion of tired and desperate people, unheard by the government."

The politician refrained from saying the authorities should at least listen to those "poor" who do not support the new government in Kiev. Instead, he offered a way for the "poor" to get rich by handing in their weapons and getting cash compensation.

In the aftermath of 9/11, when the first pictures of souls detained at Guantanamo Bay were made available, I felt like retching. Forget about the abomination of a legal limbo created in that hell, which I later came to learn: it was the sight of this human beings subjected to humiliation and physical agony I had thought our rule of law had been established to prevent. It was the bulwark, so I believed, that accounted for a certain American exceptionalism, that no matter what crime one may have been alleged to commit, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and a treatment with decency would be safeguarded.

I have to admit that today's move by Putin caught me completely off-guard. My first impression was that by asking the folks in the Donbass to postpone the referendum, Putin was basically tossing aside a valuable bargaining chip. Even more disturbing was his apparent backing for the upcoming May 25th presidential election.

Let me also say, however, that the notion of Putin "caving in" never even crossed my mind if only because categories such as "caving in" are simply not applicable in the real world of international politics - they are only good for the talking heads on the Idiot Tube and their zombified audience.

But if Putin was not "caving in" - what in the world was he doing? I submit that what Putin did is give us his reply to yesterday's quiz. Remember what I wrote?

Let us assume that Russia does not intervene and that, with time and effort, the nationalists regain control of most of the eastern and southern Ukraine. Let is further assume that the referendum wanted by the Russian-speakers is either not held or ignored, while the Presidential election goes ahead and that Poroshenko or Tymoshenko get's "kind of elected" in a farcical election which, however, the USA and its EU protectorate will immediately recognize as "legitimate".

This is *exactly* the option chosen by Putin today. To see why, we have to look at this not from Moscow's perspective, but from Kiev's perspective. From the point of view of the junta this outcome looks something like this:

"So we have managed to get most of the East and South more or less under control. We have stopped the 'terrorists'' referendum and we got our leader Oligarchenko elected President in an election fully backed the US and Europe. What do we do next?"

This is when things get really interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing, the economy is completely dead and nobody, really nobody, has any idea as to what to do about it. Second, the degree of hatred between the western Banderastan and the eastern Donbass is at an all-time high and nobody has any idea as to how to make all these people coexist together. Third, and there are a lot of signs in Kiev and elsewhere that this is already beginning to happen, social unrest triggered by the economic collapse is going to go from bad to worse with each passing week. Fourth, now that the neo-Nazi thugs do not have a "patriotic" job to do anymore - what kind of "activities" will keep them busy next?

BP claims businesses not harmed by the 2010 oil spill have collected hundreds of millions of dollars

BP claims that $500 million of the money it set aside to compensate victims of its 2010 oil spill has been awarded to businesses that don't deserve it. Among the unwarranted claims, says BP, were an escort service in Florida, a surgical practice 300 miles from the spill and a wireless phone company that burned to the ground before the spill occurred. Scott Pelley reports the latest twist in this story that began with an oil rig explosion that killed 11 and polluted the Gulf of Mexico with over 200 million gallons of oil. Pelley's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday May 4 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"Those are all real examples and are, frankly, not exceptions, but rather emblematic of a far larger problem," says BP Vice President Geoff Morrell. "There are more than a thousand claims just like them that had glaring red flags associated with them that should have been picked out by the claims administrator and instead, were ultimately awarded more than $500 million."

Such claims are the result of a new, more lenient compensation agreement BP signed. The oil giant was trying to avoid years of litigation and uncertain outcomes; now the company believes it's being defrauded. The new agreement caught the attention of compensation lawyers who wooed victims with pitches like this highly emphasized line in a flyer: "THE CRAZIEST THING ABOUT THE SETTLEMENT IS THAT YOU CAN BE COMPENSATED FOR LOSSES THAT ARE UNRELATED TO THE SPILL."

"I think that's fraud," says BP Attorney Ted Olson. "We want to compensate legitimate claimants, but this here's an incentive to encourage people to commit fraud and that is wrong."

The United States is quietly expanding the number of intelligence officers in Iraq and holding urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad to find ways to counter growing violence by Islamic militants, U.S. government sources said.

A high-level Pentagon team is now in Iraq to assess possible assistance for Iraqi forces in their fight against radical jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a group reconstituted from an earlier incarnation of al Qaeda, said two current government officials and one former U.S. official familiar with the matter.

The powerful ISIL, which seeks to impose strict sharia law in the Sunni majority populated regions of Iraq, now boasts territorial influence stretching from Iraq's western Anbar province to northern Syria, operating in some areas close to Baghdad, say U.S. officials.

After meeting in Moscow with Swiss Foreign Minister and OSCE Chair Didier Burkhalter, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a number of seemingly unexpected statements regarding Ukraine. Thus, he asked the South-East to postpone their referendum, supported president elections scheduled for May 25 and declared Russian troop withdrawal. Some of Putin's opponents say this is the evidence of his betrayal of Ukraine's South-East and his weakness in face of the sanctions. But in fact, by his declaration Putin pursued two important tasks.

First of all, he demonstrated to the world that Moscow is ready to follow the Geneva agreement on de-escalation of tension in Ukraine. This allows for reducing the risk of new sanctions against Russia: now Washington will have to work even harder convincing Europe to continue their economic pressure. In witness of this fact, the market reaction was very positive: the euro dropped below 49 rubles, the dollar - below 35, and stocks rose by 5%.

Besides, Putin induces Ukrainian coup government to react. Up to now, Kiev's strategy was plain and simple: escalation of violence, confrontation with Russia and constant complaints to Washington and Brussels. This time the Russian president complicated the matter: Kiev will have to respond to Moscow's suggestions. And if Putin's plan works out, the junta will either bury itself or deescalate the situation and consider federalization. Both variants are fine with Russia.