Headlines

Beirut/United Nations, Feb.24.– The U.N. Security Council on Saturday demanded a 30-day truce across Syria as rescuers in the country's eastern Ghouta region said bombing would not let up long enough for them to count bodies during one of the bloodiest air assaults of the seven-year war.

Shortly after the unanimous vote by the 15-member council, warplanes struck a town in eastern Ghouta, the last rebel enclave near Syria's capital, an emergency service and a war monitoring group said. Warplanes have pounded the region for seven straight days while residents holed up in basements.

Topics to be discussed: 

Crimea

Libya Arms Embargo;

Situation in Afghanistan;

Syrian National Dialogue Congress;

Chemical Weapons Use in Syria;

US Jerusalem Decision;

North Korea Sanctions;

Nuclear developments in Iran.

New York, Feb.10.– Moscow is ready for dialogue with Washington which "is necessary to both sides and the international community", Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia told journalists.

"We behave with restraint toward our American partners. We constantly say that we are ready for a dialogue to the extent that they are ready for it," Nebenzia said. "This dialogue is necessary — not only for us, but for them as well and for the whole international community."

• The world can look to Latin America as a source of inspiration for how citizens can reclaim and advance democracy.
• More than 600 initiatives in L.A. are trying to close the gap between citizens and governments by increasing political participation.

Feb. 8.– For the past decade, as trust in institutions has declined around the globe, politics in many countries has seemingly turned into a contest pitting self-interested “elites” against everyone else. And as the conviction that “elites” don’t represent the interests of “the people” has become increasingly common, two alternative ways forward have become ascendant, too.

One path is rooted in populism and represented by the building of walls, both literal and figurative. The other is inclusive, and founded on collaboration and trust.

On Friday, February 2nd, the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Republican Representative Devin Nunes, released a four-page memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI. Earlier this week, Republicans on the Committee had voted to make the document public.   

Washington DC, Feb.3 (DP.net).– The HPSI Majority Staff memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance authority became public after requests by House Republicans to President Trump, who authorized the memo's release, even after the FBI expressed "grave concerns" about the "accuracy" of the document, authored by House intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

However, the “grave concerns” expressed by top Democrats and some Justice Department officials in a public campaign to block the release of this memo highlighting alleged intelligence abuses appear to have been unfounded, and the document revealed none of the “sources and methods” the memo’s opponents claimed would be compromised.

The White House explained its justification for fully declassifying the memo as follows: that public interest in the disclosure outweighs the need to protect the information. That public interest was explained in a statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders last Friday.

“The memorandum raises serious concerns about the integrity of decisions made at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the FBI to use the Government’s most intrusive surveillance tools against American citizens,” Sanders said.