The giant French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, known for his ardent advocacy of the contemporary music, has died. He was 90.

Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor who was a dominant figure in classical music for over half a century, died on Tuesday at his home in Baden-Baden, Germany. He was 90. His death was confirmed by his family in a statement to the Philharmonie de Paris.

Pierre Boulez was born on March 26, 1925, in Montbrison, a town near Lyon, the son of an industrialist, Léon Boulez, and the former Marcelle Calabre. He studied the piano and began to compose in his teens.

Mr. Boulez belonged to an extraordinary generation of European composers who, while still in their 20s, came to the forefront during the decade or so after World War II. They wanted to change music radically, and Mr. Boulez took a leading role. His "Marteau Sans Maître" ("Hammer Without a Master") was one of this group's first major achievements, and it remains a central work of modern music.

Mr. Boulez gradually came to give more attention to conducting, where his keen ear and rhythmic incisiveness would often produce a startling clarity. (There are countless stories of him detecting, for example, faulty intonation from the third oboe in a complex orchestral texture.)

He reached his peak as a conductor in the 1960s, when he began to appear with some of the world's great orchestras, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. His style was unique. He never used the baton, but manipulated the orchestra by means of his two hands simultaneously, the left indicating phrasing or, in much contemporary music, counterrhythm.

The ethnically Kurdish Yazidi minority in Iraq is on the run from Islamic State in Syria, which continues to systematically hunt down and enslave them. RT's Murad Gazdiev made the perilous journey to Nowrooz camp in Syria to hear the stories firsthand. The camp is home to hundreds of Yazidis lucky enough to have escaped the intolerant wrath of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Syrian Kurds with the YPG in Al-Hasakah gave them shelter, where the camp is located.

Del Shad recalls the harrowing scenes of August 2014, when a mass exodus took place. Over 50,000 Yazidis made the trek from war-torn Iraq to higher, safer ground. Plenty were abducted and at least 5,000 were massacred. For 12 days they walked without food or water. Del Shad and his mother were among the escapees who he says were offered a simple choice: convert to Sunni Islam, or die. "We are Yazidi, and we will stay so... We tried to resist, but we didn't have weapons," he says. "They came for all of us. The men were killed, the women and children were taken. In the village of Kocho, they never got a chance to run. ISIS took thousands there."

While Western nations criticize Russia's airstrikes in Syria, every day Syrians are praising Moscow for pushing back against terrorist groups like Daesh, also known as IS/the Islamic State. Local businesses are all too happy to oblige their new Russian friends.

Since September 30, the Russian Defense Ministry has launched a devastating air campaign against Daesh targets in Syria. Operating out of an air base in Latakia, Russian bombers have carried out over 5,000 sorties.

But the presence of the Russian military is good for more than just security; it's also helping the country economically, and local shops are more than happy to cater to the soldiers who have kept their country safe.

Simply put, the War on Drugs is a war on people. One of the more despicable ways in which it manifests is the manipulation of vulnerable school kids by undercover cops. These "drug stings," better known as entrapment, typically prey on special needs students who have a hard time making friends.

The case of Jesse Snodgrass, a student at Chaparral High School with autism, bipolar disorder and social problems, recently gained attention again when a Riverside County Superior Court Judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Jesse's family against the school district.

"The suit alleged that the Temecula Valley Unified School District had breached its mandatory duties by allowing a deputy from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department to manipulate Snodgrass - a friendless student who had bipolar disorder, trouble keeping up with conversations and a history of being bullied - as part of an undercover drug sting."

The National Assembly of Venezuela, in its final session before a neoliberal dominated opposition takes the helm of legislative power on January 5, passed one of the most progressive seed laws in the world on December 23, 2015; it was promptly signed into law by President Nicolas Maduro. On December 29, during his television show, "In Contact with Maduro, number 52," Maduro said that the new seed law provides the conditions to produce food "under an agro-ecological model that respects the pacha mama (mother earth) and the right of our children to grow up healthy, eating healthy." The law is a victory for the international movements for agroecology and food sovereignty because it bans transgenic (GMO) seed while protecting local seed from privatization. The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy - the people as legislator - in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country's National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions. This essay provides an overview of the phenomenon of people as legislator, a summary of the new Seed Law, and an appendix with an unofficial translation of some of the articles of the law.

Greek company Aegean Airlines says it was forced to make two Arab-Israelis disembark from a flight, after two Jewish passengers accused them of being terrorists and incited other passengers to demand their departure.

An argument broke out between the Arab and Jewish men on Monday's return of a tourist flight to Tel Aviv from Athens, and lasted for an hour. Aegean said that their crew could not follow the row in Hebrew, but that the Jewish men appealed "very vocally and persistently" to conduct additional security checks on the Arabs.

The background check produced no red flags, and the crew returned, attempting to get the parties to simmer down, with the plane running over an hour behind schedule.

A California police officer was recently busted after driving 247 pounds of marijuana all the way across the country. Yuba County Deputy Christopher M. Heath was caught in York, Pennsylvania with a shipment of marijuana that was worth over $2 million. Heath was reportedly on vacation from his job at the Yuba County Police Department at the time of his arrest.

The York County Police Department has been cautiously silent about the investigation, and they have refused to comment on the details of the arrest, and how they became aware of the shipment.

York County District Attorney Tom Kearney admitted at a recent press conference that this arrest was a part of a large investigation that included various different police departments. Penn Township Police, West Manheim Township Police, Hanover Police, Northern York County Regional Police, York Area Regional Police, Springettsbury Township Police and the York barracks of Pennsylvania State Police were all involved in the arrest and present at the press conference.

The US Department of Homeland Security has made good on its late-2015 promise of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants from Central America. Immigration enforcement officers detained 121 people, mostly in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina.

Eleven families were part of the weekend deportation operation, which targeted people caught crossing the US-Mexico border after May 1, 2014. The families have been issued final orders of removal by a federal immigration court and have no further opportunities for appeal or prolonged legal action.

On Saturday, at least five families in the Atlanta area were detained, including Ana Lizeth Mejia, 30, and her 9-year-old son, according to reports. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents entered the home of Mejia's aunt, Joanna Gutierrez, claiming they were seeking a man Gutierrez did not know. After searching her home, the agents asked about Mejia, who had fled Honduras in the summer of 2014 after her brother was killed by a gang, according to the Los Angeles Times. Mejia had attended every court date, and was wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor, Gutierrez said.

"Why abuse a person who is already in the control of the court?" Gutierrez said.

More than 400 acres of crops have been destroyed by the IDF near the fence surrounding Gaza, in a lethal no-go zone maintained unilaterally by Israel on the Palestinian side of the border. They say they sprayed pesticides to enable a security operation.

The no-go area is volatile and many explosives are found in it. The IDF told RT this was such a case, as it continues to patrol the area for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and signs of border infiltrations. Israel's ground forces have also been regularly entering the Gaza Strip to clear obstructions and for other purposes.

The IDF added the spraying of the pesticides did not harm the environment, but Palestinian farmers say hundreds of acres have been laid to waste, and showed evidence of this.

The year 2015 ended with further falls in oil prices.

As is now traditional, this have given rise to more predictions of disaster for Russia's economy.

This whole subject is much misunderstood. The major effect on the oil price is on interest rates - not the Russian budget, which gets all the attention.

Oil prices are anyway likely to stabilise - and even rise - before long, whilst the effect of their fall on the Russian economy is diminishing.

To explain all this it is necessary to begin with oil prices, since they are the heart of the story.