Ben Swann Reality Check takes a look at some stunning new accusations by a high ranking member of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel that Fast and Furious was about the U.S. supporting one cartel while attempting to shut down others:

Friend of the Murdochs, adviser to authoritarian regimes and associate of the super-rich - the former prime minister's reputation is on a downward spiral. And each new revelation manages to be more jaw-dropping than the last

In Tony Blair's uneven but occasionally startling autobiography, A Journey, published in 2010, there is a chapter that makes particularly interesting reading now. It covers his final, slightly besieged years as prime minister, from mid-2005 to mid-2007. "In this time," writes Blair, "I was trying to wear ... a kind of psychological armour which the arrows simply bounced off, and to achieve a kind of weightlessness that allowed me, somehow, to float above the demonic rabble tearing at my limbs. There was courage in [this behaviour] and I look back at it now with pride," he concludes. "I was ... not unafraid exactly, but near to being reckless about my own political safety."

The chapter's title is "Toughing It Out". Last week, during the phone-hacking trial of Rebekah Brooks, an email from the former News of the World editor emerged, sent the day after the disgraced rightwing tabloid was shut down in 2011 and six days before she was arrested. To her then boss, James Murdoch, Brooks wrote: "I had an hour on the phone to Tony Blair. He said ... Keep strong ... It will pass. Tough up. He is available for you, KRM [Rupert Murdoch] and me as an unofficial adviser but needs to be between us."

As Labour leader and prime minister, one of Blair's defining characteristics was his readiness - canny or disgraceful, according to political taste - to make accommodations with powerful rightwing interest groups, not least the Murdoch press. The Brooks email, the latest in a succession of sometimes jaw-dropping revelations about Blair's behaviour since he abruptly left Westminster politics seven years ago, suggested that his ease with the left's traditional enemies had in fact deepened: into an instinctive feeling that he and they were on the same side.

With his salesman's smile and large self-belief, his ex-barrister's ability to accept and argue not necessarily compatible things, Blair has always been a slippery and restless public figure. "He's kind of a freewheeler, and always was," says the historian of the Labour party Ross McKibbin. "Being a freewheeler did him well, initially." Yet since Downing Street, Blair's "journey", already often controversial, has taken him into ever more contentious territories.

A Russian spy ship docked in Havana on Wednesday, and neither Cuba nor Russia offered any mention or explanation of the mysterious visit that is reminiscent of the Cold War.

AFP reported that the Viktor Leonov CCB-175 boat, that measures 300 feet long and 47.5 feet wide, appeared in the section of Havana's port usually used by cruise ships.

The intelligence vessel bristles with electronic eavesdropping equipment and weaponry, including AK-630 rapid-fire cannons and surface-to-air missiles.

Cuba's visitor is from the Vishnya or Meridian-class, which was built for Russia's navy in the 1980s and is still in service today. AFP reports that the Viktor Leonov has a crew of about 200 sailors.

Previous visits by Russian military ships to Cuba have usually been acknowledged by the state's media or authorities.

Meanwhile, the United States warned Moscow over Russia's maneuvers near the troubled Ukraine.

Neo-nazi activists in Ukraine are already setting the agenda on key issues

The extreme right in the Ukraine played a key role in the toppling Victor Yanukovich, and they are already emerging as the most forceful voice in the transition.

On February 25th The Guardian ran a story on the increasing tensions over the Crimean peninsula and the danger posed by separatist elements in Ukraine. Part of that article covers the recent vote by the Ukrainian parliament to send former president Viktor Yanukovych to The Hague. The spokesman that they quoted on the issue was Oleh Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the Svoboda party, an extreme right group which has openly targeted Jews.

Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the nationalist Svoboda party, said: "It is very important that we had a positive vote today. Now we are inviting all the people of goodwill who have any materials including video, photos or papers that we may need to properly submit to the Hague tribunal the papers about crimes against people, crimes against Ukrainians, and violations of human rights that were committed by those criminals in Yanukovych's regime."

Moazzam Begg, a native-born British citizen of Pakistani descent, spent three years incarcerated in the most notorious detention camps created in the post-9/11 "War on Terror": all without ever being charged with any crime.

Arrested in Pakistan in 2002, he was transferred to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, where he suffered torture and witnessed U.S. interrogators beat an innocent taxi driver to death, and then onwards to Guantanamo Bay where he would be detained for the next three years in conditions he'd describe as "torturous".

Bitcoin is the world's biggest cryptocurrency and its value remains well in front of the likes of Ripple, Litecoin, Peercoin - and most recently, Dogecoin. But 2014 has been a tough year for the online currency and people are beginning to question how much longer it can survive. We take a look at some of the recent revelations to rock the world of Bitcoin and ask you to consider whether it could be on the way out...

Police officers may enter and search a home without a warrant as long as one occupant consents, even if another resident has previously objected, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a Los Angeles case.

The 6-3 ruling, triggered by a Los Angeles Police Department arrest in 2009, gives authorities more leeway to search homes without obtaining a warrant, even when there is no emergency.

The majority, led by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., said police need not take the time to get a magistrate's approval before entering a home in such cases. But dissenters, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, warned that the decision would erode protections against warrantless home searches. The court had previously held that such protections were at the "very core" of the 4th Amendment and its ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

The case began when LAPD officers responded to reports of a street robbery near Venice Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue. They pursued a suspect to an apartment building, heard shouting inside a unit and knocked on the door. Roxanne Rojas opened the door, but her boyfriend, Walter Fernandez, told officers they could not enter without a warrant.

The final US tanker aircraft supporting military operations in Afghanistan departed a Kyrgyzstan airbase Monday ahead of the closure of the facility later this year, a US army media agency reported.

An agreement with Kyrgyzstan that provides for the United States' transit center at the Manas airport, the country's largest, is slated to expire in July.

A picture of a line of troops saluting the final KC-135 aerial refueling tanker as it taxied to depart the base was posted online by the US Army's Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) website.

The air base opened at Manas, outside the capital Bishkek, three months after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 to support US-led coalition forces in the invasion of Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev said in 2011 that the Central Asian republic would not renew an agreement to extend the lease of the facility.

The head of Russia's top law enforcement agency - the Investigative Committee says the North Caucasus region remains a hotbed of terrorism and blamed external enemies for destabilizing the area.

The Investigative Committee recorded 661 terrorist offences in 2013, Aleksandr Bastrykin reported at the session of the agency's executive council on Thursday. Of these, 31 qualified as fully fledged terrorist attacks, the head of the Investigative Committee added. Terrorist attacks in 2013 claimed about 40 lives and dozens more injured, Bastrykin said.

"The acts of terrorism are very well planned and thought through. A lot of people are involved in their preparation. We are witnessing a destructive anti-Russian activity, the core of which is based abroad," the chief investigator said. "Forces hostile to our nation consider the North Caucasus as a detonator for the stable socio-economic situation in the Russian Federation," he stated.

US-led Western regime change in Syria might be described as a process of creative destruction. Like Schumpeter's economic concept of cyclical creative destruction, so too Washington's political machinations in Syria seem to be playing out likewise.

We begin with the premise that the humanitarian crisis in Syria over the past nearly three years is largely as a result of a Western covert proxy war inflicted on that country. The objective is to destabilize, terrorize and eventuate regime change in the Arab country...

The crisis afflicting Syria with over 130,000 dead and nearly nine million people displaced from their homes - nearly 40 per cent of the total population - would not be occurring if it were not for the infiltration of that country with massive flows of weapons, fighting funds and foreign mercenary brigades. US and NATO Special Forces, along with Western military intelligence, have worked with Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, Israeli and Turk allies to foment this externally driven insurgency. All under the cover of an Arab Spring revolt.