A new proposal would require New York City retailers to keep tobacco products out of sight under a first-in-the-nation proposal aimed at reducing the youth smoking rate, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

The legislation would require stores to keep tobacco products in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in other concealed spots. They could only be visible when an adult is making a purchase or during restocking.

Bloomberg said similar prohibitions on displays have been enacted in other countries, including Iceland, Canada, England and Ireland.

"Such displays suggest that smoking is a normal activity," Bloomberg said. "And they invite young people to experiment with tobacco."

Stores devoted primarily to the sale of tobacco products would be exempt from the display ban.

The mayor's office said retail stores could still advertise tobacco products under the legislation.

In a military museum in Caracas, adorned in the trappings of national mourning, the focus is on grieving for the man who ruled Venezuela for 14 years. But the void left by the death of Hugo Chavez is being filled with polemic and posturing.

Acting President Nicolas Maduro has made fresh claims about an alleged US plot to assassinate one of the candidates in the country's April presidential election - right wing opposition leader Henrique Capriles - and then to put the blame on the Venezuelan government.

The US-led invasion of Iraq overthrew a dictator, but 10 years on the war is seen to have destabilized the Middle East, exposed the limits of military power and left America no stronger than before.

With US forces having withdrawn after the deaths of almost 4,500 American troops and an estimated $1 trillion outlay, there is little soul-searching in Washington today about a war that has faded from public consciousness.

And 10 years after the "shock and awe" that launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, removing Saddam Hussein from power, most analysts and diplomats agree the Iraq war did nothing to improve the US position in the Middle East.

"Regardless of whether genuine democracy is viable or even sustainable, the Iraq war did not serve any strategic net gain for the United States," said Ramzy Mardini, a fellow at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies in Beirut.

On the contrary, "misplaced certainty" about the ability of US military power to do the job and a lack of regard to Saddam's role as an Arab counterbalance to Iran have harmed American interests, he said.

Israel will use President Obama's visit on Wednesday to try to persuade the US to carry out air strikes on Syrian missiles if there is evidence that they are being to handed over to Hezbollah in Lebanon, or at least to give full support to Israeli military action to stop the transfer.

On this week's trip to Israel and the West Bank, Obama will also come under Israeli pressure to lower the US threshold for military action against Iran, while the US president will try to extract greater Israeli commitment to a peace process with the Palestinians. Neither side is likely to be successful, leaving Syria as the most promising arena for US-Israeli agreement.

The Obama administration has made clear that it would intervene militarily to stop the Assad regime using its chemical or biological weapons or transferring them to extremist groups, but Israeli officials say they feel they have been left alone to deal with the threat of the spread of Syria's arsenal of anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles.

Israeli warplanes destroyed a Syrian convoy at the end of January that Israeli officials say was taking sophisticated Russian-made ground-to-air missiles to Hezbollah. The government of Binyamin Netanyahu has made clear that it would strike again in similar circumstances. A senior official said: "Maybe it would be better if Israel doesn't do it, but who is going to deal with it?"

Even though the haircut of bank deposits had been on the agenda of the EU for more than a month now, featuring in Commission memos and being openly discussed by European politicians, most of whom, refused to rule it out, few people thought the Eurogroup would go ahead with it. It was an idle threat, to force Cyprus privatise SGOs and increase the corporate tax, was the prevailing view.

And after all, President Anastasiades had emphatically declared in his inauguration speech that "absolutely no reference to a haircut on public debt or deposits will be tolerated," adding that "such an issue isn't even up for discussion." Finance Minister Michalis Sarris made similarly reassuring statements, arguing that it would be lunacy for the EU to impose such a measure because it would threaten the euro system.

Germany and the leaders of the Eurogroup opted for this lunacy, calculating that Cyprus is too small and inconsequential for the haircut on its bank deposits to cause contagion in the eurozone. Of course, the markets could view the decision differently, perhaps not when they open on Monday, but a few weeks later as it becomes apparent that not even deposits in European banks are safe from raids by the Eurogroup.

It is obvious from the statements made that Anastasiades was blackmailed into accepting this euphemistically called 'solidarity levy'. If he did not accept it, the European Central Bank would not provide Emergency Liquidity Assistance to the Cypriot banks, after the March 21 deadline (it had been extended by two months in January) and the banks would have collapsed on the same day, with people losing much bigger parts of their deposits than the seven to 10 per cent that would be taken now.

The US Justice Department last year opened an investigation into allegations that employees at The Wall Street Journal's China news bureau bribed Chinese officials for information, the newspaper reported.

But citing government and corporate officials familiar with the case, the paper said a search by the Journal's parent company found no evidence to support the claim.

According to the paper, the Justice Department approached News Corp.'s outside counsel in early 2012 and said it had received information from a person it described as a whistleblower, who claimed one or more Journal employees had provided gifts to Chinese government officials in exchange for information.

No, the world ISN'T getting warmer (as you may have noticed). Now we reveal the official data that's making scientists suddenly change their minds about climate doom. So will eco-funded MPs stop waging a green crusade with your money? Well... what do YOU think?

The Mail on Sunday today presents irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed. The graph on this page blows apart the 'scientific basis' for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.

Steadily climbing orange and red bands on the graph show the computer predictions of world temperatures used by the official United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The estimates - given with 75 per cent and 95 per cent certainty - suggest only a five per cent chance of the real temperature falling outside both bands.

For those who read the previous article on the topic of last minute chaos and confusion in Cyprus, and Europe, it will come as no surprise that the previously scheduled Monday bank holiday (aka Green Monday) has been extended into Tuesday. So prepare to not be surprised.

From Kathimerini:

The Cypriot cabinet has declared Tuesday a bank holiday, for fear of capital flight, and this may even be stretched to Wednesday, as depositors are certain to withdraw huge sums from the Cypriot banks after the haircut imposed.

Nicosia postponed from Sunday to Monday the tabling in Parliament of the bill including the measures for the Cypriot bailout - including a bank account haircut and a tax hike on interest and corporate earnings - but the European Central Bank insists on a rapid voting because there are already signs a domino effect will follow across European lenders and markets from Monday.

There is genuine fear of market unrest on Monday morning when stocks may crumble in the eurozone and bank accounts in other southern European bank may suffer.

Skai radio reported on Sunday that the Bank of Greece has sent between 4 and 5 billion euros to Cyprus in order to help Cypriot banks respond to cash requirements by their clients.

So, if the official name of the March 18 holiday was "Green Monday", will the March 19th ad hoc holiday be called "Red Tuesday"? Inquiring minds want to know.

Book review - Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, by Nick Turse

Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam is not only one of the most important books ever written about the Vietnam conflict but provides readers with an unflinching account of the nature of modern industrial warfare. It captures, as few books on war do, the utter depravity of industrial violence - what the sociologist James William Gibson calls "technowar." It exposes the sickness of the hyper-masculine military culture, the intoxicating rush and addiction of violence, and the massive government spin machine that lies daily to a gullible public and uses tactics of intimidation, threats and smear campaigns to silence dissenters. Turse, finally, grasps that the trauma that plagues most combat veterans is a result not only of what they witnessed or endured, but what they did. This trauma, shame, guilt and self-revulsion push many combat veterans - whether from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan - to escape into narcotic and alcoholic fogs or commit suicide. By the end of Turse's book, you understand why.

This is not the book Turse set out to write. He was, when his research began in June 2001, a graduate student looking at post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam veterans. An archivist at the U.S. National Archives asked Turse whether he thought witnessing war crimes could cause PTSD. He steered Turse to yellowing reports amassed by the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group. The group, set up in the wake of the My Lai massacre, was designed to investigate the hundreds of reports of torture, rape, kidnapping, forced displacement, beatings, arson, mutilation, executions and massacres carried out by U.S. troops. But the object of the group was not to discipline or to halt the abuses. It was, as Turse writes, "to ensure that the army would never again be caught off-guard by a major war crimes scandal." War crimes, for army investigators, were "an image management" problem. Those charged with war crimes were rarely punished. The numerous reports of atrocities collected by the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group were kept secret, and the eyewitnesses who reported war crimes were usually ignored, discredited or cowed into silence.

Every military resource the US has, including nuclear arms, will be available to its ally South Korea in the confrontation with its northern neighbor, US Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter pledged in Seoul.

"We remain steadfast to our commitment to extended deterrence offered by the US nuclear umbrella," Carter said after talks with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-Jin.

"We'll ensure all of our resources will be available to our alliance," he was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. Carter is visiting South Korea as part of a four-nation tour of American allies in Asia, which also includes Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The veiled threat comes amid heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula, which started with Pyongyang's third nuclear test in February. North Korea detonated a nuclear device in defiance of the UN Security Council resolution banning it from developing nuclear weapons.