More than 200 civilians have been killed in air strikes and shelling on government-held and rebel-held areas in the last seven days of fighting in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said on Friday.

As a ceasefire agreed between the opposing sides in the Syrian conflict continues to collapse, air strikes killed at least 123 civilians, including 18 children, in rebel-held areas in the city in the last week.

In the same period, shelling from rebels targeting government-held areas killed at least 71 civilians, including 13 children, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group that uses a range of sources on the ground to assess the Syrian conflict.

Government shelling killed a further eight civilians, including three children, in areas it does not control in the city.

The death toll continued to rise as the international community put out a call for both parties to end hostilities and return to the negotiating table.

The United Nations (UN) warned on Thursday that the situation in the northern Syrian city is becoming “catastrophic” as fighting intensifies and the U.N. envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said that the ceasefire between the two sides was now “barely alive.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday denounced a deadly strike on a pediatric hospital, run by the charity Doctors Without Borders, in a rebel-held area of Aleppo that left at least 50 people dead, including six hospital staff—two doctors, two nurses, one guard and a maintenance worker.

"We are outraged by yesterday's airstrikes in Aleppo on the al Quds hospital supported by both Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which killed dozens of people, including children, patients and medical personnel," he said in a statement.

"It appears to have been a deliberate strike on a known medical facility and follows the Assad regime's appalling record of striking such facilities and first responders,” he continued. “These strikes have killed hundreds of innocent Syrians."

Elsewhere on Thursday, 150 U.S. troops arrived in the northern Syrian town of Rmeilan, controlled by Syrian-Kurdish forces, in Hasakah Province. The Syrian regime called it an “illegitimate intervention.”

(Newsweek)

Russia says the US military intervention in Syria is illegal, ultimately aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheterthat the intervention without the authorization of the "legitimate" Syrian authorities was a "big mistake."

"I've told our American partners repeatedly that this is a big mistake. Just like they received approval from the Iraqi government, they should have obtained approval from Damascus or come to the UN Security Council," he said.

"The fact that they went there illegally reflects, firstly, the arrogant stance that Syrian President Assad heads an illegitimate regime," Lavrov said in remarks published on Thursday.

"And, secondly, in my opinion, the desire to keep their hands untied and be able to use the coalition to attack not only terrorist positions, but perhaps also the regime's forces later on in order to overthrow it, as it happened in Libya."

Lavrov said Russia is "the only country engaged in anti-terrorism activities in Syria legally."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said Friday that the deployment of US special forces to Syria without coordination with Damascus violates Syria's sovereignty.

Since September 2014, the US and some of its allies have been carrying out airstrikes against purported Daesh positions inside Syria.

The Syrian government has charged that the airstrikes had targeted the country's infrastructure in many instances and done little to stop the advances of terrorists.

US 'aggression'

On Thursday, Damascus denounced the arrival of 150 US special forces in Syria, calling it a blatant violation of the country's sovereignty and an aggression.

A statement issued by the Foreign Ministry said the troops arrived in the town of Rumeilan in Syria's predominantly Kurdish province of Hasakah in the north.

President Barack Obama announced this week the deployment of 250 more troops to Syria, which would bring the number of US special forces in the war-torn country to 300.

The Syrian statement said the deployment of the troops is a "rejected and illegitimate intervention that was done without the Syrian government's consent."

Russia, meanwhile, said it wants detailed information about the US plan, including the precise purpose of the deployment.

“We would like to comprehend what this is all about; whether this is a one-time action, who these people are and where they will be stationed,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in Moscow.

"What they are dispatched there for and whether this is part of a program or a plan," she added.

A US State Department spokesman said earlier in the week that Obama’s promise not to put US boots on the ground in Syria was never a promise.

'Don't attack Nusra affiliates'

The US also appears to have rejected a Russian request for the UN to blacklist a major militant group, which has attended UN-brokered Syria peace talks in Geneva.

Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said Wednesday he had asked the UN to add Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham to a blacklist that includes Daesh and al-Qaeda.

The US admits that the two groups are fighting alongside and are “intermingled with” al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, but has rejected the Russian request to classify them as terrorist.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner made it clear that the "US wants Russia & #Syria not to target terror grps AhrarSham & Jaish al-Islam even though they fight alongside Nusra" pic.twitter.com/yUG9RF1lhg.

Washington's acknowledgement of the groups “intermingling” with Nusra Front follows Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren's claim last week in a press briefing that “it’s primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo.”

The US State Department has also urged a cessation of hostilities against militant forces holding Aleppo while the Pentagon has said it is primarily Nusra Front that is in charge of Syria's second largest city.

The Syrian army is pushing to drive out terrorists from Aleppo with the Russian air support but the deaths of civilians in a recent airstrike in the city have become a lightening rod for criticism.

On Thursday, Damascus and Moscow vehemently denied accusations from the opposition that they carried out the strike on the al-Qudos hospital, in which nearly 30 people were killed.

The US State Department, however, said Syria's government was solely responsible for the airstrike on the hospital in Aleppo.

US officials' call for a halt on attacks in Aleppo come after State Department spokesman Toner said in a February 22 press briefing that groups who fight alongside Nusra Front or other terrorist groups in Syria would be legitimate military targets.

"We...have been very clear in saying that al-Nusrah and Daesh are not part of any kind of ceasefire or any kind of negotiated cessation of hostilities," he said.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. According to a February report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the crisis in the Arab country has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people so far.

The Takfiri militants, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.

(PRESS TV)

If the rest of the world ate like Americans, the planet would have run out of fresh water 15 years ago, according to the world’s largest food company.

In private, Nestle executives told U.S. officials that the world is on a collision course with doom because non-Americans eat too much meat, and now, other countries are following suit, according to a secret U.S. report titled “Tour D’Horizon with Nestle: Forget the Global Financial Crisis, the World Is Running Out of Fresh Water.”

Producing a pound of meat requires a tremendous amount of water because farmers use tons of crops such as corn and soy to feed each animal, which require tens of thousands of gallons of water to grow. It is far more efficient when people eat the corn or soy directly.

The planet is on a “potentially catastrophic” course as billions of people in countries such as India and China begin eating more beef, chicken and pork like their counterparts in Western countries, according to the 2009 report released by WikiLeaks and first reported by Reveal at The Center for Investigative Reporting in a cache of water-related classified documents. The Chinese now eat about half as much meat as Americans, Australians and Europeans, a figure that continues to rapidly rise as more Chinese are lifted out of poverty and into the middle class.

And Nestle—which makes Gerber baby food, Nescafe, Hot Pockets, DiGiorno pizza, Lean Cuisine, Stouffer’s, Nestea, Dreyer’s and Haagen-Dazs ice cream— is deeply concerned.

Here are some of the takeaways, with key quotes from the secret report:

Global water shortages are just around the corner.

“Nestle thinks one-third of the world’s population will be affected by fresh water scarcity by 2025, with the situation only becoming more dire thereafter and potentially catastrophic by 2050.”

Major regions, including in the United States, are being drained of their underground aquifers.

“Problems with be severest in the Middle East, northern India, northern China, and the western United States.”

Excessive meat-eating is driving water depletion.

“Nestle starts by pointing out that a calorie of meat requires 10 times as much water to produce as a calorie of food crops. As the world’s growing middle classes eat more meat, the earth’s water resources will be dangerously squeezed.”

There’s plenty of water to feed everyone a diet that’s not so meat-centric.

“Nestle reckons that the earth’s maximum sustainable fresh water withdrawals are about 12,500 cubic kilometers per year. In 2008, global freshwater withdrawals reached 6,000 cubic kilometers, or almost half of the potentially available supply. This was sufficient to provide an average 2,500 calories per day to the world’s 6.7 billion people, with little per capita meat consumption.”

The American diet is eating the world dry.

“The current U.S. diet provides about 3,600 calories per day with substantial meat consumption. If the whole world were to move to this standard, global fresh water resources would be exhausted at a population level of 6 billion, which the world reached in the year 2000.”

This is an even bigger problem now that other countries are eating like America, and the global population’s set to grow by 2 billion by 2050.

“There is not nearly enough fresh water available to provide this standard to a global population expected to exceed 9 billion by mid-century.”

So what’s Nestle’s prediction for the future? Think “Mad Max.”

“It is clear that current developed country meat-based diets and patterns of water usage do not provide a blueprint for the planet’s future. Based on present trends, Nestle believes that the world will face a cereals shortfall of as much as 30 percent by 2025. (Nestle) stated it will take a combination of strategies to avert a crisis.”

Why is this the first time you’re hearing this from the world’s largest food company?

“Sensitive to its public image, Nestle has maintained a low profile in discussing solutions and tries not to preach… the firm scrupulously avoids confrontation and polemics, preferring to influence its audience discretely by example.

(Newsweek)

By Brianna Blaschke

For the first time in U.S. history, the CIA and U.S. government will not exercise immunity for war crimes and other atrocities.

Numerous CIA officials are being charged with war crimes against humanity and human experimentation in a court case lawyers are calling “literally unprecedented.”

The case was filed last October by four former detainees, all of whom claimed to be subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA. The prisoners were captured and held in the days following the September 11th terrorist attacks. Conditions at the CIA black sites were so dismal that one plaintiff and Afghan refugee, Gul Rahman, froze to death while detained and interrogated in CIA custody.

So what makes this case so obscure? For the first time ever, the United States government is not blocking all legal action against the agency, which has been the case in previous instances. Namely, the U.S. Senate granted the CIA total immunity for the sake of national security. This immunity, however, ended in December 2014 following the release of the 6,700-page Senate Torture Report, in which specific details of methods used to interrogate persons of interest were revealed. Since then, the concept of enhanced interrogation has arrived at the forefront of many political minds, with both support and rejection expressed by prominent leaders.

The American Civil Liberties Union is bringing the case forward, adamant that “neither the United States government nor the CIA is a defendant in this case.” Rather, it explains that the plaintiffs are seeking action against “two individual psychologists, whom Plaintiffs allege worked as contractors for the CIA and, in that capacity, designed, implemented, and participated in the detention and interrogation program.” The nature of this action is likely due to the virtually unlimited access to funding and power of both the government and the CIA; and it is more tactful to target individual people.

Plaintiffs Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed, Ben Soud, and Gul Rahman all allege to have been subjected to a host of abuses, including extreme darkness, cold and noise; solitary confinement; starvation; repeated beatings; sleep deprivation and water torture, among several other methods. The suit explains the plaintiffs have “multiple claims for violations of international law under the Allen Tort Statute” against psychologists James Mitchell and John Jessen “for their commission of torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; nonconsensual human experimentation; and war crimes, all of which violate well-established norms of customary international law.”

Unsurprisingly, the two are denying all personal responsibilities, claiming actions they performed were sanctioned by the U.S. government; and their lack of physical participation of interrogation pardons them against all charges. According to their lawyer, Christopher W. Tompkins, the pair “did not create or establish the CIA enhanced interrogation program” and had absolutely no part in decisions made about the plaintiffs’ “capture, treatment, confinement conditions, and interrogations.” Essentially, the stance the defendants will take is that if anyone should be held accountable it should be the United States government, not the individuals hired to proceed in the direction sought.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages and the monumental case is set tomove forward as planned. As Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer representing the case stated, “For the first time people who were involved in implementing and designing the CIA’s torture program will be compelled to answer for their conduct in federal court.”

Perhaps this is a step in the right direction for finally holding the government and its agencies accountable for their crimes.