Governor Eric Greitens of Missouri has been indicted on a felony charge of invasion of privacy, over the alleged blackmail of his mistress in a nude bondage photo. He is said to be out of custody on a personal recognizance bond.

The charges stem from an affair Greitens had with his hairdresser in 2015, while his wife was either pregnant or had just given birth to their second child. Greitens admitted to the affair and apologized, but denied reports that he had tried to blackmail the mistress into silence by threatening to release a sexually explicit photo of her.

A grand jury in St. Louis indicted the governor on Thursday, accusing him of knowingly taking photographs of the woman and transmitting the image "in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer." He was reportedly taken into custody but soon released on a personal recognizance bond, pending a hearing scheduled for March 16, 2018.

Oxfam. I'm wondering if I should warn this is not for the faint of heart, or say don't read on an empty stomach. If so, hereby. I know I found it hard.

The first and foremost thing the BBC last week felt its audience should know about the sleaziest scandal to come out of Britain in quite some time -and that's saying something- is that an actress had turned her back on the aid organization. Your news in bite-size pre-chewed headlines.

While a guy who 'served' Oxfam in Bosnia claims it's nobody's business if he visited the local hookers in his spare time. The head office even specifically refuses to ban staff from doing that. Not violating a staff member's civil liberties trumps a question like what drives desperate women -girls- into prostitution that same staff member pays for with money donated to aid desperate people.

A police operation is underway in Zurich after two people were shot dead outside a bank.

Officers descended on Lagerstrasse amid reports of a shooting near the Swiss financial capital's main train station.

Pictures have emerged of what appear to be two bodies lying on the ground outside a branch of UBS in the Europaallee area. A pistol could be seen close to the hand of one of the bodies, according to local media.

The circumstances behind the shootings are not yet clear, but police described it as a 'violent crime' and that there is no indication it was linked to terrorism.

Emergency crews found one person dead and a second with serious injuries, who subsequently died.

When it comes to Russia, the Trump administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) pulls no punches. Moscow's military, specifically its modernized nuclear forces, are featured significantly throughout the report. the attention paid to other potential nuclear adversaries, like China, does not come close to that paid to Russia.

The core of NPR's proposed footing vis-a-vis Russia rests on an understanding of Russian nuclear doctrine as offensive, rather defensive. Noted is Russia's monumental advantage in terms of non-strategic nuclear weapons, which the report's authors believe Moscow would use to escalate a conflict so as to intimidate the U.S. into backing down.

This assessment has been understandably controversial in Moscow, where officials have for years promised the nation's sweeping nuclear modernization program was entirely defensive in nature. Indeed, former Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, reiterated that several times at the recent Munich Security Conference.

"We've been trying to listen to the explanations given for that, but to be honest we have not gotten a clear picture," Kislyak said. "On top of that we get the sense that our American colleagues are looking at [low-yield] nuclear weapons more as a war fighting weapon than classical deterrence. It certainly creates additional questions."

A new law in South Carolina would make it unlawful for people to expose skin or underwear by wearing their pants below their hips. The move is an attempt to curb the apparent popularity of saggy pants across the state.

South Carolina House Bill 4957 would make it illegal for a person to appear in public wearing trousers which are "three inches below the crest of his ileum exposing his skin or undergarments". It is presumed the lawmakers meant the 'ilium', (the hip bone) rather than the 'ileum' which is part of the small intestine.

"It's unbecoming, it's unprofessional", Democrat Representative Joe Jefferson from Berkeley County, one of the bill's sponsors, told WLTX.

Violations would not lead to a criminal record however, he assured his audience.

"I understand that some people are assuming that if one is caught, then they won't be allowed to go to college, grants, loans, all these other opportunities will be taken away. That's not the case at all. This is just to prevent these fellas and giving them at least an obligation to realize that they're walking around and they're convincing others to follow them." Jefferson said.

Immediately following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the National Rifle Association did what it always does: It shut up.

The biggest gun rights group in the nation didn't put out a statement on the shooting, which claimed the lives of 17 people. Its Twitter stayed dormant for five days. The group's Facebook page stayed quiet for four days, posting a lone missive on Monday, alerting followers to a billboard in Kentucky that read: "Kill The NRA."

But outside of that, there was zilch. It was a case study in the public relations strategy known as "riding out the storm."

But not everyone under the NRA umbrella stayed silent. In the hours after Parkland, NRA TV, the television channel run by the gun rights lobby, continued producing content. At first, its anchors struck a conciliatory tone, noting that they shared the objective of making schools a safe place for children. Then they began pushing the company line: that school resource officers needed to be tactically trained and armed to prevent such shootings from being more gruesome.

Then, it turned aggressive.

Over the past two days, NRA TV has gone after both law enforcement for bungling the shooting and media outlets for calling for more expansive gun laws. Host Dan Bongino accused the New York Daily News of being both "pure filth" and "not worthy of collecting dog excrement" - aka actual filth. Host Dana Loesch called for protesters to march "to the FBI offices" for its failure to act on the numerous reports it received that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was dangerous and potentially unstable. Grant Stinchfield, another NRA TV host, added his thoughts on the Fourth Estate on Monday, suggesting reporters were eager for another shooting to push a gun control agenda.

After a series of close encounters between Russian and NATO military aircraft over the Black Sea in recent months, the waterway is now seeing a ramping up of naval activity as well. According to a statement released by the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Carney has now joined its sister ship, the USS Ross in the waterway that sits on Europe's eastern flank.

Our decision to have two ships simultaneously operate in the Black Sea is proactive, not reactive," US Navy Vice Adm. Christopher Grady, the commander of 6th Fleet, said in a press release.

"We operate at the tempo and timing of our choosing in this strategically important region. By nature, ships are flexible, mobile forces, and the Navy is uniquely capable of providing credible and capable forces to defend our nation's interests throughout the world."

Russian warplanes have gone all-out over the skies of Damascus' East Ghouta region for another night, carrying out consecutive relay bombings against militant targets for hours on end.

According to military-affiliated sources, Russian airpower conducted a general strike mission across all of militant-held East Ghouta, targeting rebel tactical positions, movements and gathering points with precision weapons.

The night operation saw four to six warplanes - all airborne at the same time - deliver at least 30 strikes in relay to one another in a 'scout-designate-attack' fashion similar to how US airpower conducts itself.

The up-scaled Russian bombardment effort over East Ghouta follows the very recent reinforcement of its air group in Syria represented by the arrival of ten new warplanes (as far as visual confirmation confirms) among which are two Su-57 stealth fighters.

The chaos on the ground is providing opportunities for the Russians and Americans to come to blows, writes Alan Philps

It was only two months ago that Vladimir Putin declared victory in Syria and announced - not for the first time - that he would start withdrawing Russian forces. It was understood that Mr Putin, facing an election campaign next month, was keen to move the Syrian war to a new stage, that of diplomacy where Russian diplomats and generals would oversee a difficult peace process.

The war has indeed reached a new stage - but it is one of escalating violence and grotesque chaos as the cast of outside powers and foreign mercenaries clash in a blood-soaked scramble for power and influence. How has this come about, and when might the longed-for endgame come to pass?

The salient feature is that Russia and the US are more deeply engaged in Syria than ever. Despite their premature claim of victory, the Russians are there to stay as the leading outside power. It had been thought that the Americans might withdraw from Syria now that the Salafi-jihadists of ISIL have been defeated there and in Iraq. But Washington has made clear that the 2,000 military personnel will remain for the foreseeable future to counter Iran.

A 13-year-old student has died after shooting himself in the restroom of an Ohio middle school. The teen managed to take a large-caliber rifle unnoticed all the way to school just days after a horrific school shooting in Florida.

Seventh grade student Keith Simons died on Wednesday, the day after he had shot himself inside the bathroom of Jackson Memorial Middle School.

"I have a student who shot himself in the bathroom. He has a strong pulse but I need an ambulance," a person seeming to be a school official told the 911 operator right after the incident, according to a recording circulating in local media. The 13-year-old took the 22-caliber long rifle from his mother's house and smuggled it into school by concealing it beneath his clothes, according to police. The student took a school bus, but no one noticed the gun despite the boy having multiple conversations on the way.