Israel is carrying out a murderous assault against protesting Palestinians, with its armed forces killing and maiming demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to them, Amnesty International revealed today, based on its latest research, as the "Great March of Return" protests continued in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has killed 35 Palestinians and injured more than 5,500 others - some with what appear to be deliberately inflicted life-changing injuries - during the weekly Friday protests that began on 30 March.

Amnesty International has renewed its call on governments worldwide to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel following the country's disproportionate response to mass demonstrations along the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel.

"For four weeks the world has watched in horror as Israeli snipers and other soldiers, in full-protective gear and behind the fence, have attacked Palestinian protesters with live ammunition and tear gas. Despite wide international condemnation, the Israeli army has not reversed its illegal orders to shoot unarmed protesters," said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

The Syrian government issued Property Law 10 (ar) which will help to rebuild the country. Martin Chulov of the Guardian falsely reported: 10m Syrians at risk of forfeiting homes under new property law. The Syrian-American economist Ehsani explains why the Guardian report is wrong. He summarizes:

Without legislation, imagine people returning to say Jobar in Damascus or Bustan al-Basha in Aleppo and starting to build on their own. What code? What property lines? What legal basis? What about the infrastructure underneath? Law 10 is the State's legislative blueprint.

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In 2012 UN blue helmets from Austria controlled the demarcation line with Israel at the Golan heights. They watched as Takfiris ('smugglers'), likely coming from Israel, set up an ambush. Nine Syrian border policemen pass through the UN checkpoint but are not warned. They drive into the Takfiri ambush. All are killed. An Austrian whistle-blower gave the video (ger) to a local paper in Vienna. The Austrian Defense Ministry is investigating the case.

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Today tribal forces aligned with the Syrian government attacked and captured two villages (map) controlled by the U.S. proxy force in east Syria north of the Euphrates near Deir Ezzor city. The Kurdish U.S. proxy forces SDF vowed revenge. This might be a local incident but could develop into something bigger. While the U.S. claims exclusive rights north of the Euphrates and to fight ISIS in the area zero progress has been made since November. The U.S. wants keep ISIS alive and well to later reuse it for its own purposes. The Syrian government is trying to disrupt that plan.

The great 10th century Iraqi poet Abu Tayyib al-Mutanabbi once lived, O fated city, in the Emirate of Aleppo. He even led a revolt in Syria which was - familiar stuff, this - put down with great ruthlessness. Al-Mutanabbi actually spent two years in prison before reconciling himself to his loss and was subsequently released. Most Arab children in Syria can quote the man by heart and one of their favourite poems begins with these words:

When you see the teeth of a lion,
Don't think that the lion is smiling at you.

I was reminded of this lion while clambering through the ruins on the side of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh last week. This was the centre - now famous from so many satellite pictures - destroyed by Donald Trump's missiles when they struck at "the heart of Syria's chemical weapons programme". Did they? Anything with a Strangelove name like the "Department of Pharmaceutical and Civilian Chemical Research" - the bit of the complex hit by at least 13 missiles - deserves to have its contents studied closely. I'd been refused permission to visit this Syrian institution for three days. If it was all in ruins - which it assuredly is, and on a scale much larger than the photographs suggest - why the delay?

And does it matter? Well, yes. I am reminded of the much more famous Iraqi "baby milk factory" bombed by the Americans in 1991 which General Colin Powell called "a biological weapons factory, of that we are sure". My colleague Patrick Cockburn wrote of this last week, recalling his visit to the factory only hours after the bombing. After the war, it turned out that the building probably had been an infant formula factory after all - although what can't you do with a glass of milk?

Russian officials plan to sue Grigory Rodchenkov, whose testimony played a key part in the country's Olympic bans, after a sports court rejected his claims. But most believe it's too late to reverse the impact of the doping saga.The scandal over Olympic doping has been running since 2014, and most of the allegations have been known for years. What's changed?

In a landmark ruling in February, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the highest legal authority in such cases, reversed the life bans of 28 Russian sportsmen and gave them back their medals, many of them from the Sochi Olympics in 2014.

But it was only this week that a 160-page summary of the session exposed exactly how the allegations that led to the exclusion of entire Russian teams in various sports from Rio 2016 and PyeongChang 2018 failed to stand up to legal scrutiny.

ORIGINAL POST:

This comment from Clive Ponting, doyen of British whistleblowers, appeared on my website and he has now given me permission to republish it under his full name:

I have been reading the blogs for some time but this is my first post. Like Craig I was a senior civil servant but in the ministry of defence not the fco. I had plenty of dealings with all three intelligence agencies. It seems to me that the reason none of the MSM are doing any investigating/reporting of the Salisbury affair, apart from official handouts, is that the government have slapped a D-Notice over the whole incident and it is not possible to report that a notice has been issued.

Here is another theory as to what happened. The Russians pardoned Skripal and allowed him to leave (spy agencies have an understanding that agents will always be swapped after an interval - it's the only protection they have and helps recruitment). In the UK Skripal would have been thoroughly debriefed by MI6 and MI5 (his ex-handler lives near Salisbury). If at some point they discovered that Skripal was giving them false information, perhaps he was told to do so by the FSB as a condition of his release, lives may have been endangered/lost. If he also was also involved in the 'golden showers' dossier then elements in the US would have a reason to act as well. The whole incident was an inside job not to kill him, hence the use of BZ, but to give him a warning and a punishment. The whole thing is being treated as though the authorities know exactly what went on but have to cover it up.

Addendum

I meant to add that the policeman who 'just happened' to be around was almost certainly the special branch 'minder' who was keeping Yulia under surveillance. The media are not allowed to mention the existence of a D notice.

Those of us who have been in the belly of the beast and have worked closely with the intelligence services, really do know what they and the British government are capable of. They are not "white knights".

I would add it has been very plain from day one that there is a D notice on Pablo Miller.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has published the Anti-Doping Rules Violations report for 2016 featuring 1,595 confirmed doping cases involving athletes representing 117 countries.

Out of 1595 cases indicated in the report, 1,326 offences were labeled as "positive results," while the remaining 269 violations committed by athletes and sports personnel "were derived from investigations and evidence-based intelligence."

Seventy-nine percent of the drug violations registered by WADA in 2016 were committed by male athletes, with track and field being the most doping-affected sport, where 205 cases were revealed. It is followed by bodybuilding (183), cycling (165), weightlifting (116), and football (79).

The list of the worst offenders was topped by Italy, whose athletes committed 147 violations over the course of 2016. Italy is followed by France and the US, which have 86 and 76 doping offences respectively. Australia, with 75 doping cases, and Belgium, with 73, are in fourth and fifth places in the report. Russia, which has repeatedly been accused of doping by Western countries, tied for sixth place with India, with 69 officially confirmed violations.

The Twittersphere had just stopped trolling Donald Trump & Emmanuel Macron over their tree-planting ceremony when it went nuts again - this time after the oak planted by the leaders apparently vanished from the White House lawn.

Photos released by Reuters on Friday evening allegedly show a perfect yellow spot where the tree planted by the presidents on April 23 once stood on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. The oak sapling, which the French leader brought from a historic battlefield in Europe, seems to have vanished.

Since there has been no official statement, the reason is unclear. People on Twitter started with simple explanations, saying that the oak "might have hidden" in a nearby forest.

Others said it might have simply been a joke or that the gift from Macron was "dead."

An Indiana school district has issued an apology after a middle school teacher was accused of letting her disdain for President Trump and Fox News influence her teaching.

As Fox News Insider reports, Sarah Ford, an eighth-grade Spanish teacher at Blackhawk Middle School in Fort Wayne, Ind., allegedly assigned a student a report on Trump's "many lies."

The student, Jacob Hein, told his father about the homework, prompting an official complaint. According to Todd Hein, his son was given the assignment after the teacher rejected - and reportedly ridiculed - his translation of a Fox News article for class on March 20.

Cops arrested 14 people during a protest outside Sen. Chuck Schumer's Midtown office Thursday.

The group Jewish Voice for Peace held the demonstration outside the New York senator's Third Ave. office near E. 49th St. about 9 a.m.

Approximately 40 people showed up holding signs and lambasting Schumer for keeping silent on the killings by Israeli forces during a month-long Palestinian protest in the Gaza Strip.

France asked the United States in 2014 not to bomb a Lafarge cement plant in northern Syria, an area which was at the time controlled by Islamic State, emails that are part of an investigation into the company's Syria operations show.

French prosecutors last year launched a probe into the suspected "financing of a terrorist enterprise" by the cement group in Syria. The company admitted last year it had paid armed groups to keep a factory operating.

"This French investment should be protected," France's Syria envoy, Franck Gellet, who is based in Paris, said in a Sept. 19, 2014 email to senior foreign ministry officials, referring to the Lafarge plant about 87 km (54 miles) from Raqqa.

"It seems legitimate that we ask Washington not to do anything about this site without checking with us first," Gellet said in the email, that included the plant's GPS coordinates.