Had the Europeans known the facts, had they wanted to know the facts — they certainly would not have voted as they did. The legend that the "Palestinians" are the "natives" and we are the big, bad conqueror, is revealed as baseless after 10 minutes of candid conversation with a "Palestinian", or after a look at the new stones with which they built their villages. Aerial photographs also demonstrate the fact that the Arabs of Judea and Samaria came here late. If you ask them they will tell you: We came from Jordan. We came from Saudi Arabia. We came because there is money here, and a chance for a better life.

KOBANI, Syria (AP) — One of the few signs of life in this northern Syria border town is the old bakery, revived by Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State group.

Closed down for some 20 years, the production line now bakes two tons of doughy bread every day to energize the fighters and feed the spatter of civilians left behind.

"We came and fixed up (the bakery) for use in these difficult times," said Fathi Misiro, a fighter with the People's Protection Units, or YPG, who works in the bakery. "Ten days ago...it was worse here. We've been helping people and sending bread to them daily."

An exclusive report shot by videojournalist Jake Simkin inside Kobani late last month offered a rare, in-depth glimpse of the destruction that more than two months of fighting has inflicted on the Kurdish town in northern Syria by the Turkish border.

Outside the bakery, children playfully jump in and out of foxholes — barely fazed by the thunderous explosions nearby. Kobani as it was has been virtually erased. Rubble is all that remains of people's homes and their memories. Shops are gutted. Schools are flattened.

Kurdish fighters backed by small numbers of Iraqi peshmerga forces and Syrian rebels are locked in what they see as an existential battle against the Islamic State group, which swept into their town in mid-September. The advance was part of a summer blitz after the Islamic State group overran large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

The YPG, an armed secular faction, is at the forefront of the struggle to save Kobani.

Helped by more than 270 airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition and an American airdrop of weapons, the Kurds have succeeded in halting the militants' advance and believe that a corner has been turned.

But the battle comes at a heavy price for the town's remaining residents. While most managed to flee across the nearby border with Turkey, some 2,000 Kurdish civilians opted to stay with the hope that fighting will soon subside. It is a small fraction of the population of 50,000 that once filled these streets.

They sleep in their cars or makeshift tents on the outskirts of the town, where barbed wire and land mines mark the Turkish border. Militant-fired mortars rain down on them regularly.

Some farmers escaped with their machinery and livestock. Others lost everything.

"My sheep were taken. I lost my cow, for God's sake, my hens, my bedding, our sacks of wheat were stolen," said one woman interviewed in the video report, expressing gratitude for the bread the YPG fighters are providing.

Then, there are those who lost loved ones as the militants moved in. Another woman named Parvin had to carry her two injured daughters to safety after they were hit by mortar fire. Her 7-year-old was then sent to Turkey and died there.

"We brought her body back and buried her here in Kobani," said Parvin, her heartache written on her face. She and the other farmer spoke on condition they remain anonymous or be identified only by first name for fear of reprisals.

___

The Associated Press is running a series of five exclusive reports with video, text and photos to illustrate ongoing fighting and daily life inside Kobani, Syria. The third part will move on Tuesday, Dec. 2.

AP EXCLUSIVE: The Battle Inside Kobani (video)

Wochit
Ferguson Protesters Lawyer up After Scores of Arrests

By Emily Flitter

FERGUSON, MO. (Reuters) - The young man and woman waiting in the dark outside the St. Louis county jail were bundled up in scarves and hats to ward off a light freezing rain, but still they were shivering. Every time someone emerged from the jail they would scurry with the person to a nearby car, which had the engine running and the heat blasting.

The pair were one of several teams working in shifts to help some of the more than 100 people who were arrested during last week's sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Their job was to help the newly released individuals get legal aid for upcoming court appearances.

Each person received a flyer with numbers to call for lawyers and legal advice. They were also offered a ride home.

The volunteers, who will return to the jail again on Monday after the holiday weekend, are part of a centralized team of lawyers and law school students pitching in from around the United States.

They are tapping into a sophisticated network of legal experts established over the past decade in the wake of high-profile mass demonstrations, including protests at the Republican National Convention in 2004 and the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. The network includes seasoned lawyers who routinely handle cases stemming from protests and civil disobedience, and who say they have learned from each protest.

"Occupy Wall Street is the gift that keeps on giving," said Wylie Stecklow, a New York-based lawyer. Stecklow's firm, Stecklow, Cohen & Thompson (formerly Wylie Law), represented 200 people who were arrested during the Occupy protests in New York.

He learned valuable lessons from the Occupy and RNC protests. For example, how best to centrally fund bail payouts and how to work together to represent large numbers of people.

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Police take a man into custody, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. Missouri's governor ord …

Some of the volunteers deployed in Ferguson have acted as legal observers, who are tasked with documenting each arrest that is made at a protest and serving afterward as a witness to the events leading to charges.

But the job of the legal team working in Ferguson goes far beyond the duties of protest observers. Once people have been arrested and charged, lawyers from the same central network offer their services to each individual with a court case.

"HUGE APPARATUS OF INVISIBLE PEOPLE"

Since August, roughly 300 people, including local residents and activists as well as organizers and journalists who traveled to Ferguson, have been arrested amid the protests, which have been marred by looting and arson attacks.

Those arrested face charges ranging from unlawful assembly and trespassing, interfering with police activity and resisting arrest to felonies including second degree burglary, arson, unlawful firearm possession and assault.

Many who were charged in the tumult that followed the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in August are set to appear in court in January, while others arrested last week and unable to post bail are still in jail.

The team of lawyers working on Ferguson protest cases is led by Arch City Defenders, a St. Louis-based group that provides free legal representation to poor St. Louis residents.

Volunteers are manning a local legal aid hotline for protesters who have been arrested and their families, and various local and national non-profit groups have formed a central defense team to handle the cases.

"There's a huge apparatus of invisible people working on this," said Purvi Shah, director of the Bertha Justice Institute at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

She is one of around a dozen lawyers who have made regular trips to Ferguson from around the country since August. She estimated there were more than 100 lawyers offering help from afar and 10 or 15 people working in shifts on the ground. That number does not include the law students and recent law school graduates volunteering in Ferguson.

"Having a mass defense coordinating efforts is the best way to do things because you've got lawyers and paralegals sharing information," said Martin Stolar, a New York lawyer who represented people arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

"You can also tell the prosecutors, 'You should dismiss all of these cases unless you can go through and prove every individual one is valid.'"

(This version of the story corrects the name of law firm in paragraph six.)

(Editing By Ross Colvin)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gestures as he speaks during a news conference in Riga November 20, 2014. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

By Gabriela Baczynska

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia accused NATO on Monday of destabilizing northern Europe and the Baltics by carrying out drills there and announced new military exercises of its own, increasing tension over the Ukraine crisis.

NATO responded by blaming Moscow for instability in the region, while British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said he was concerned by "extremely aggressive" probing of Britain's air space by Russian planes.

"It is entirely appropriate for NATO countries in particular to work together to respond to what is a change of Russia's dealings with NATO and indeed the non-NATO European countries," he told a parliamentary committee in London.

Russia announced it would hold more military exercises in 2015 than this year -- including one in the Central military district that includes Moscow, and another involving Belarus.

NATO says it has beefed up defenses of its members since Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March and began backing separatists in parts of Ukraine the Kremlin now calls "New Russia". At least 4,300 people have died in the conflict.

Throughout the Ukraine crisis, Moscow has accused the Western military alliance of promoting instability and has staged war games at critical junctures.

"They are trying to destabilize the most stable region in the world -- northern Europe," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said of NATO in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax. "The endless military exercises, transferring aircraft capable of carrying nuclear arms to the Baltic states. This reality is extremely negative."

NATO says Russia has sent troops and weapons to Ukraine in recent days to aid the pro-Moscow separatists in violation of a ceasefire. Moscow denies sending troops, although many of its soldiers have died there.

"We see a significant military buildup in and around Ukraine," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels. "Large transfers of Russian advanced weapons, equipment and military personnel to violent separatists."

Most former Communist countries of Eastern Europe have joined NATO since the 1990s, although the three Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are the only parts of the former Soviet Union itself to join. Ukraine is not a NATO member.

BALTIC STATES CONCERNED

NATO said in late October that British, Danish, German, Norwegian, Portuguese and Turkish planes had all intercepted Russian air craft in a flurry of incidents.

The U.S. ambassador to NATO said on Monday additional measures taken by the alliance were defensive.

"If you look at the scale of Russian activities in Crimea, first in Crimea and now in southeastern Ukraine, it's quite evident that they are destabilizing," the envoy, Douglas Lute, told a news conference in Brussels.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told Reuters that Russia was to blame for instability by "carrying out aggression against its own neighbor" in Ukraine. The Latvian and Estonian defense ministries expressed concern about Russia's "increased activity in the Baltic Sea region".

Ukraine said on Sunday a convoy of 106 vehicles had entered its eastern territory from Russia. A Ukrainian military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said on Monday Russian special forces were now taking part in attacks on Donetsk airport in the east.

Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said in an interview that Europe and the United States should begin supplying arms to his country, as this would deter the rebels.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk and Ludmila Danilova in Moscow, Adrian Croft in Brussels, Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Dabiel Flynn in Dakar, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev and Kylie MacLellan; Writing by Gabriela Baczynska and Timothy Heritage; Editing by Peter Graffand Crispian Balmer)

Will fund 50,000 body cameras for police officers.