Russia's 1-year ban on food products from the EU, US, Canada, and Norway will force Russia to increase food imports from Latin America, specifically Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina.

Russia will ban meat, dairy, fruit, and vegetable imports from countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, which opens the door to Russia's partners on the other side of the world.

Russia will have to fill an 8 percent gap in its total agricultural imports that it sources from the EU, USA, Canada, Australia, and Norway. The Netherlands, Germany, and Poland are currently Russia's biggest food suppliers in the EU.

Meat and dairy products from Ecuador, Chile and Uruguay may appear on Russian supermarket shelves as early as September, said Julia Trofimova, a at Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia's consumer watchdog.

Rabbis and students of Jewish religious schools from the US, Europe, and Israel have set off on a journey across Russia in special vehicles known as "Mitzvah tanks." As part of the trip, the expedition will visit Crimea to promote Judaism there.

The Mitzvah tanks began their journey on Thursday, with plans to visit nearly 70 cities across Russia - including Volgograd, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Krasnodar, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Orenburg, Vladimir, Simferopol, Yalta, and Sevastopol.

For the first time in history, Crimea was in included on the itinerary.

The book's title is not elusive: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.

Due for release in September, the anticipated new work by Canadian journalist, activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein has now been previewed in a video trailer that appears to lay out its main themes and central argument.

"In December of 2012, a complex systems scientists walked up to the podium at the American Geophysics Union to present a paper," the narrator of the video - Klein herself - says as footage begins of urban high rise developments and burnt out croplands.

And the voice-over continues:

The paper was titled, "Is the Earth Fucked?" His answer was: "Yeah. Pretty much."

That's where the road we're on is taking us, but that has less to do with carbon than with capitalism.

Our economic model is at war with life on Earth.

We can't change the laws of nature, but we can change our broken economy.

And that's why climate change isn't just a disaster. It's also our best chance to demand - and build - a better world.

Change or be changed. But make no mistake... this changes everything.

Watch:

Hundreds of Yazidi sect women have been captured by militants from the Islamic State group, formerly known as ISIS, according to media reports citing Iraqi officials.

Kamil Amin, a spokesman from Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, says hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive. He said that the women are under 35 years old and are being held at a school in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, which is now under IS control.

The ministry learned of the situation from the victims' families, AP reports.

It comes after the US carried out limited airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) artillery, which had been targeting the Kurdish capital Erbil. An end date for the strikes has not yet been established, the White House said in statement on Friday.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has warned former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that leaving Russia could be dangerous, even with his new residence permit.

Speaking via videoconference to an audience at a freedom of speech convention in Mexico City, Assange said that Snowden could face threats to his physical well-being if he decides to leave Russia.

"Of course our advice is that he be extremely cautious in doing so for his physical security," the WikiLeaks founder said, according to AFP.

As RT reported, Snowden was officially granted a residence permit from Russia earlier on Thursday. Effective August 1, the permit will last for three years and allows Snowden to travel anywhere within Russia, as well as beyond the country's borders for up to three months.

Police officers in New Jersey swear to uphold the United States Constitution as part of their oath of office. But one cop has decided that, because ‒ in his eyes ‒ President Barack Obama doesn't follow the document, he doesn't have to either.

Special Police Officer Richard Recine, a part-time employee of the Borough of Helmetta Police Department, was caught on video saying, "Obama has decimated the friggin' Constitution, so I don't give a damn. Because if he doesn't follow the Constitution we don't have to."

The statement was made in response to resident Steve Wronko, who was at the municipal building to serve an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request after being kicked out of the Helmetta Regional Animal Shelter earlier in the week, and to complain about recent health code violations there and nepotism stemming from Mayor Nancy Martin.

In 2011, Martin made her son, Brandon Metz, the head of the Helmetta Regional Animal Shelter. She also appointed him to Animal Cruelty Investigator, Borough Laborer, Water Meter Reader, and Certified Recycling Coordinator, according to the town website. A Facebook page called Reform Helmetta Regional Animal Shelter claims that there are recurring inhumane practices and state health code violations

Voice recordings taken from the cockpit of Air Algérie flight AH5017, which crashed in Mali killing 116 people last month, are "unusable", French investigators attempting to determine the cause of the crash said Thursday.

"The tape was a little bit damaged," Rémi Jouty, the head of France's BEA air safety agency, told journalists.

"The BEA laboratory was able to restore the tape. Unfortunately the recordings are so far unusable."

Flight AH5017, a McDonnell Douglas 83 jet that had taken off on July 24 from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso bound for Algiers, crashed in the Mali desert after asking to turn back as bad weather struck.

France bore the brunt of the tragedy, with nearly half of the victims. Other passengers came from Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Algeria, Spain, Canada, Germany and Luxembourg.

French food trader Jean Selverro will lose €200 thousand a month because of Russia's import bans on food from the European Union, announced this week. Normally, 90 percent of his apples and pears are exported to Russia.

"I'm shocked," he told FRANCE 24. "I think it's a nightmare I need to wake up from. It's just not possible. I have to tell my employees, some who have been with me for nine years. Tomorrow or the day after, it's over."

A truck loaded with 22 tonnes of Selverro's fruit now has to be emptied.

President Xavier Beulin of a French farm union said the Russian import ban could seriously affect France's fruit and vegetable industry. "Russia is a significant market for us and one that grows by about 10 percent each year. It's not trivial," he told a European television network.

But it is not just fruit and vegetables. At the Rungis food market outside of Paris, cheese exporter Sabah Quartau was working the phones trying to determine the fate of her company's next shipment. She has been told that trucks transporting food are likely to be stopped at the border.

Shares in some of Russian food producers have added almost 40 percent by midday on Friday. The surge comes a day after Moscow imposed a one-year ban on imports of food products from the West.

Shares in one of Russia's biggest agricultural holdings Razgulay shot up 39.87 percent by Friday afternoon, according to Moscow Stock Exchange data.

Stocks in the Russian Sea fish and Seafood producer surged 34.85 percent, GlavTorgProduct stocks also rose 35 percent.

Meat manufacturer Cherkizovo saw an 8.25 percent rise, the Ostankino meat processing plant had an 18.5 percent boost.

This increase has far outpaced the overall dynamics of Russia's key indices, the RTS and MICEX, which were up 0.92 percent and 0.38 percent respectively.

On Thursday Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree banning all imports of beef, pork, poultry meat, fish, cheese, milk, vegetables and fruit from Australia, Canada, the EU, the US and Norway.

At the time of writing this, almost 1900 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army's assault on Gaza. Around 80% of those killed are civilians, with almost 400 children and over 200 women. Over 80 families have been completely wiped out; killed in single strikes. The operation, entitled "Protective Edge", has been more destructive, in its claim of human life and urban infrastructure, than Israel's 2008/09 assault, Castlead. There is very little to suggest that Israel, in all its misunderstood morality and goodwill, plans to stop its cleansing of Gaza any time soon.

Lifeless, bloodied Palestinian bodies, severed Palestinian limbs and wailing Palestinian mothers have become near staple daily viewings. I don't volunteer to see these images but their ubiquity makes them unavoidable. And as common as these images have become in all the online spaces I occupy and frequent, the characterization of "both sides" has become far more widespread. Wherever I click, I see calls for "both sides" to stop fighting and agree (and stick to) a ceasefire; condemnations of "both sides" in causing so much suffering; distribution of blame to "both sides" and the lamenting of suffering on "both sides."

But there are no "both sides."

See, the problem with this talk of "both sides" is that is assumes a semblance of equality - equality in the position of power and thus ability. Yes, there are two sides in this conflict: there are the Palestinians and the Israelis. Well, there are more than two sides if we take history and geopolitics into consideration, but who wants more nuance on a Sunday. But that characterization of "both sides" ends there; it ends with drawing out who the involved people are.

"Both sides" don't have the right to self-defense.

"Both sides" do not receive billions in military aid.

"Both sides" do not enact apartheid laws to ensure ethnic hegemony.

"Both sides" do not exist at the systemically violent prerogative of the other.

"Both sides" do not ethnically cleanse.

"Both sides" haven't lost almost two thousand lives in less than a month.

"Both sides" do not have the deliberate and mass targeting of civilians engrained into their military doctrine.

"Both sides" are not states.

"Both sides" do not have their their homes, their hospitals, their schools, their places of worship and their shelters destroyed.

"Both sides" are not under land and naval siege.

"Both sides" haven't had their electricity and access to water severed.

"Both sides" do not have their daily calorie intake counted.

"Both sides" aren't occupied.

"Both sides" aren't compassionate headlines.

And the lives on "both sides" are not equal in the weight and worth.

So don't talk about the responsibility of "both sides" to make peace; don't talk about how the blame of the suffering is on "both sides."

The slave and the master weren't "both sides"; the tyrant and his subjects were never "both sides". The native and the settler were never "both sides" - so why do we treat the Palestinians and Israelis as "both sides"?

Until and unless there is some pretense of actual 'balance' in the positions of the Israelis and Palestinians - there are no "both sides". It is an uncomfortable confrontation, but it is a confrontation with the right side of justice and history.