Hundreds have died in artillery attacks on eastern Ukraine's key city of Luhansk as government troops continue to lay siege to the militia stronghold, according to a senior official of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic.

"As of today, the death toll has climbed into the hundreds. Hundreds of homes have been torn down, including more than a dozen of apartment blocks and hundreds of private houses," LPR Deputy Prime Minister Vasily Nikitin told RIA Novosti Saturday.

Luhansk has been left without running water, electricity and phone communications for 20 days as government troops continue to besiege it, pounding indiscriminately militia positions and residential quarters in and around the city. All deliveries of food, medication and fuel had long been stopped due to heavy shelling.

© AFP
Palestinian mourners cry at Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital after an explosion killed at least seven children in a public playground in the beachfront Shati refugee camp on July 28, 2014.

It is human that the killing of an Israeli boy, a child of ours, would arouse greater identification than the death of some other child. What is incomprehensible is the Israeli response to the killing of their children.

After the first child, nobody batted an eye; after the 50th not even a slight tremor was felt in a plane's wing; after the 100th, they stopped counting; after the 200th, they blamed Hamas. After the 300th child they blamed the parents. After the 400th child, they invented excuses; after (the first) 478 children nobody cares.

Then came our first child and Israel went into shock. And indeed, the heart weeps at the picture of 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman, killed Friday evening in his home in Sha'ar Hanegev. A beautiful child, who once had his picture taken in an Argentinean soccer team shirt, blue and white, number 10. And whose heart would not be broken at the sight of this photo, and who would not weep at how he was criminally killed. "Hey Leo Messi, look at that boy," a Facebook post read, "you were his hero."

Suddenly death has a face and dreamy blue eyes and light hair. A tiny body that will never grow. Suddenly the death of a little boy has meaning, suddenly it is shocking. It is human, understandable and moving. It is also human that the killing of an Israeli boy, a child of ours, would arouse greater identification than the death of some other child. What is incomprehensible is the Israeli response to the killing of their children.

In a world where there is some good, children would be left out of the cruel game called war. In a world where there is some good, it would be impossible to understand the total, almost monstrous unfeelingness in the face of the killing of hundreds of children - not ours, but by us. Imagine them standing in a row: 478 children, in a graduating class of death. Imagine them wearing Messi shirts - some of those children wore them once too, before they died; they also admired him, just like our Daniel from a kibbutz. But nobody looks at them; their faces are not seen, no one is shocked at their deaths. No one writes about them: "Hey Messi, look at that boy." Hey, Israel, look at their children.

An iron wall of denial and inhumanness protects the Israelis from the shameful work of their hands in Gaza. And indeed, these numbers are hard to digest. Of the hundreds of men killed one could say that they were "involved"; of the hundreds of women that they were "human shields." As for a small number of children, one could claim that the most moral army in the world did not intend it. But what shall we say about almost 500 children killed? That the Israel Defense Forces did not intend it, 478 times? That Hamas hid behind all of them? That this legitimized killing them?

The government is ready to spend 1.3 billion rubles ($35 million) to create a French-language service at Kremlin-sponsored television news channel RT, according to a draft bill published Thursday on the government's legislation portal.

The new channel will target audiences not only in France, but also Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, according to the explanatory note accompanying the bill.

"World events in these countries are covered, as a rule, in a way that show Russia in an unfavorable light, which leads to the formation of negative attitudes toward Russia," the note said, adding that the new French service is being created to change this situation.

RT, formerly Russia Today, was launched in 2005 and broadcasts in Russian, English, Spanish and Arabic. It now has an audience of 664 million people spread over more than 100 countries, according to its website.

One of the channel's anchors, Liz Wahl, resigned on air in March, accusing the network - viewed by many as a Kremlin propaganda tool - of "whitewashing" Russia's military intervention in Crimea, which was annexed from Ukraine by Moscow just a few weeks later.

A police officer in a St. Louis suburb has been suspended over a series of Facebook posts, insulting Ferguson protesters, who have been rallying in condemnation of the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer.

The police department in Glendale, Missouri, announced in a Friday statement that it had suspended police officer, Matthew Pappert, due to "several very concerning and inappropriate posts on his personal Facebook page."

"I'm sick of these protesters," one of the posts says. "You are a burden on society and a blight on the community." The screenshots of an apparently deactivated account have been obtained by The Daily Caller.

"These protesters should have been put down like a rabid dog the first night," Pappert says in another post.

Glendale, MO cop Matthew Pappert. #Fergusonpic.twitter.com/HjnbHdLxiO
- 3ChicsPolitico (@3ChicsPolitico) August 23, 2014

The Glendale police learnt of the posts on Friday morning and immediately launched an investigation into the matter, according to a statement by Police Chief Jeffrey Beaton, who specified the views expressed in the posts were not shared by the department.

Court documents show that Fairfield Police Officers Stephen Ruiz and Jacob Glashoff used company time and equipment to search for women on internet dating sites.

The documents also show that two used the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System - a statewide police database - to screen the women they liked.

"I feel like it's an abuse of their power, using it for their own personal gain," said Fairfield resident Carlos Thompson.

The court documents allege another Fairfield officer reported the incidents to his superior back in June.

The reporting officer alleged that both Ruiz and Glashoff found women's profiles had been browsing women on dating websites like Tinder, eHarmony, and Match.com while working at the investigations bureau office of the Fairfield Police Department.

"Downtime during their breaks or whatever, that's their own thing. But not on the clock," said another Fairfield resident.

An unarmed man was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer in Dallas, Texas on Sunday.

According to Dallas police, the suspect charged at the officer before being shot.

The slain man is Andrew Scott Gaynier, 26, and the officer is Senior Corporal Antonio Hudson.

Corporal Hudon was on Extended Neighborhood Patrol when the incident happened. He was called to the scene in response to a report that Gaynier was making lewd comments to passing females.

When Hudson arrived, he saw Gaynier stop a vehicle with a family inside and try to get in the car. Hudson gave loud verbal commands to Gaynier telling him to step away from the car. Gaynier turned away from the car, but then started rushing towards Hudson. Hudson shot Gaynier multiple times, killing him.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that new sanctions against Russia are not on agenda at the moment but they are possible in future if the situation in Ukraine deteriorates.

"We cannot rule out thinking about further sanctions if things do not progress," the chancellor said, following talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev.

The European Union, the United States and some other countries have imposed sanctions against Russian companies, banks, politicians, as well as the financial, energy and defense sectors of the Russian economy over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

In response to Elie Wiesel advertisement comparing Hamas to Nazis, 327 Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants publish New York Times ad accusing Israel of 'ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people.'

Hundreds of Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors have signed a letter, published as an advertisement in Saturday's New York Times, condemning "the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza" and calling for a complete boycott of Israel.

According to the letter, the condemnation was prompted by an advertisement written by Elie Wiesel and published in major news outlets worldwide, accusing Hamas of "child sacrifice" and comparing the group to the Nazis.

The letter, signed by 327 Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors and sponsored by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, accuses Wiesel of "abuse of history" in order to justify Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip:

The police chief of a small south Texas town was shot dead during a traffic stop on Saturday, a county sheriff said.

Michael Pimentel died of multiple gunshot wounds suffered in a confrontation with a motorist shortly before noon in Elmendorf, a rural community of about 1,500 people just southeast of San Antonio, said Bexar County Sheriff Susan Pamerleau.

"We don't know exactly what ensued between the two individuals but it did result in the suspect firing a weapon that hit the chief several times," Pamerleau said.

Pimentel was taken by air ambulance to a San Antonio hospital where he died a short time later, she said.

Venezuela's food shortage is so bad the country is mandating that people scan their fingerprints at grocery stores in order to keep people from buying too much of a single item.

President Nicolas Maduro says a mandatory fingerprinting system is being implemented at grocery stores to combat food shortages. He calls it an "anti-fraud system" like the fingerprint scan the country uses for voting.

In announcing the plan late Wednesday, Maduro did not say when the system would take effect, but other administration officials suggested it could be in place by December or January.

The move was met with skepticism. Critics said the new system is tantamount to rationing and constitutes a breach of privacy. Others simply wondered if anything short of a systemic overhaul of the economy could help the socialist South American country's chronically bare shelves.

Venezuela has been grappling with shortages of basic goods like cooking oil and flour for more than a year. In the spring, the administration tried out a similar system in government-run supermarkets on a voluntary basis.