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The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday is expected to approve the declassifying of the findings, conclusions and executive summary of its $40 million report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques, leaving it to the White House to decide just how much of the 6,300-page investigation will actually become public. President Barack Obama’s decision on what to release could either startle the nation with details already described by Sen. Dianne Feinstein as “un-American and brutal,” or offer a sanitized version of the controversial tactics used in questioning terror suspects.

Roughly 20 extreme-left activists and Arab protesters arrived at Hevron in Judea this week, but their plans to spark a confrontation with Jewish residents of the “Peace House” and IDF soldiers were upset, as local Arab residents kicked them out of the city. The activists had arrived with cameras and the flags of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), hoping to spark clashes with Jews in Peace House, the Hevron building that in early March finally was recognized by the Supreme Court as having been duly purchased by its Jewish owners, after a six-year-long trial and a ten-year-long struggle. To the...

Over 150,000 people have lost their lives since the March 2011 outbreak of the devastating civil war in Syria, according to new figures. The London based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which closely monitors the conflict using a network of activists and medical staff in Syria, has documented the deaths of 150,344 people. More than a third of those killed in Syria – by shellfire, air strikes and bullets – are civilians, the rights group said. Now in its third year, the war, which continues, unabated, has ravaged entire cities, leaving whole civilian neighbourhoods flattened by shell fire and...

A student who went to visit family in Iran has been locked up for five months over comments she made to friends on Facebook, her family say. Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, from Stockport, was arrested as she stepped off a plane in the provincial city of Shiraz and accused of being a spy, husband Daryoush Taghipoor told the M.E.N. Daryoush said his 47-year-old wife has been detained at Evin, an infamous prison in Iranian capital Tehran, on suspicion of plotting to commit crimes against security and insulting Islam. He claimed her arrest was over comments she made on an internet...

Islamofascism: With an eye toward the 2016 election, the radical Muslim Brotherhood has built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc. 'Muslim voters have the potential to be swing voters in 2016," said Nihad Awad in launching the benign-sounding U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, whose membership reads like a Who's Who of Brotherhood front groups. "We are aiming to bring more participation from the Muslim community." USCMO also aims to elect Islamists in Washington, with the ultimate objective of "institutionalizing policies" favorable to Islamists — that is, Shariah law....

Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown. If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria's devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi'ite fighters on the frontlines - who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies. From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of the conflict say...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown. If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria's devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi'ite fighters on the frontlines - who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies. From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of...

NATO's foreign ministers ordered an end to civilian and military cooperation with Russia on Tuesday and told their generals and admirals to quickly figure out ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. The 28-member alliance, the keystone of U.S. and European security since the end of World War II, was reacting to its most serious crisis in years: Russia's unilateral annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which the U.S. and its allies have condemned as an illegal land grab. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the other ministers, meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels...

"The Russians are coming...The Russians are coming..." Well, that could have been the headlines in Israeli newspapers until a few days ago, before Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came to Israel. Now, after meeting with Israeli officials, the headlines could be, "Russian FM: Chechen Muslim terror evil, but justifies support for PLO Terror State and help for Iranian Nukes." The day before the Russian Foreign Minister came to Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin, to express his shock at the seizure of the Russian school in Beslan. Sharon told Putin that, "We must concentrate political and...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Battling food shortages, the government is rolling out a new ID system that is either a grocery loyalty card with extra muscle or the most dramatic step yet toward rationing in Venezuela, depending on who is describing it. President Nicolas Maduro's administration says the cards to track families' purchases will foil people who stock up on groceries at subsidized prices and then illegally resell them for several times the amount. Critics say it's another sign the oil-rich Venezuelan economy is headed toward Cuba-style dysfunction.

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid? For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Impresario: Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-Macau casino mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion -- 8th richest man on the planet -- and who dumped $92 million into the election of 2012. Adelson kept Newt Gingrich alive with a $15 million infusion of ad money, gutting Romney, and then sank $30 million into Mitt's campaign. This time Sheldon wants to buy himself a winner. Ari Fleischer,...

A US Navy official warned Sunday that finding the missing Malaysian jet may be impossible, as efforts to locate the plane intensified ahead of the expected failure of its black-box homing beacons. “It all depends on how effective we are at reducing that search area,” Capt. Mark Matthews told reporters at Australia’s Stirling Naval Base near Perth. “Right now, the search area is basically the size of the Indian Ocean, which would take an untenable amount of time to search.”

McCain-Soros: A false trail The Internet and cable TV have been rife with allegations that George Soros funds John McCain. One of the sources for this claim is a book I co-authored last year called The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. What we reported was that Soros made a contribution to McCain's political organization when McCain was devising the McCain-Feingold bill. If you oppose that bill as I did and do, that's the end of the story. Soros is an anti-American radical, who thinks George Bush is responsible for...

LONDON — President Obama spent Wednesday in Brussels talking up the importance of the security relationship between Europe and the United States, but it is considered unlikely that Russia’s seizure of Crimea will prompt increased European military spending at a time of economic anemia and budget cuts. NATO and the European Union regard the Russian move in Ukraine as a wake-up call, a reminder that hard power can easily trump 21st-century assumptions about Europe as a sphere of trade, international law and cooperation. Despite the newly militant tone, NATO members will continue to spend paltry amounts on defense, experts say....

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban assailants apparently thought they were attacking an unprotected Christian-run day care center. But they mistakenly burst into the compound next door, where an American government contractor’s employees were heavily armed and ready, according to accounts that the contractor and the Afghan police gave on Friday of a wild four-hour shootout here.

A Chinese and an Australian ship have failed to identify remains from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight after their first day in a new search area. The two ships retrieved objects from the Indian Ocean but none was confirmed to be from missing flight MH370, Australia's maritime authority said. Chinese aircraft also flew over the area, north-east of the previous zone, and have spotted more objects.

[Excerpted from middle]....The fact that we are supporting the Mubarak regime may not be immediately obvious to most Americans, but it is the central fact about America to every Egyptian alive--to 83 million people in the heart of the Middle East. The Mubarak government is basically friendly to the United States, but it is right now crushing its own people. If it succeeds, we will not be identified with the man who is protesting. We will be identified with the men who are acting on behalf of the government. In fact, we already are. If it doesn't succeed, God knows...

BARACK OBAMA may recall a tricky moment when he first met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia five years ago. Bending to shake hands with the octogenarian monarch, the taller American appeared to bow deeply. Republican snipers in America gleefully blasted the president for “kowtowing” to rich Arabs. Such protocols should run more smoothly when Mr Obama heads to Saudi Arabia on March 28th for his second time in office. Unfortunately, however, relations between the two countries have seldom been more awkward. Their close alliance dates to the end of the second world war, when an ailing Franklin Roosevelt met Saudi...

A research team at University of Western Australia also believes the cabin is in once piece, improving the chances the black box could be found. Scientists believe they know where Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crashed into the ocean and that the cabin sank in one piece. The research by the University of Western Australia, using meteorological and ocean-current data alongside the British analysis from data “pings” recorded by UK firm Inmarsat, has determined the point of impact and the movements of debris in the weeks following the crash. A fresh satellite sighting of 300 floating objects ranging in size from...

Fears of a cover-up over the fate of flight MH370 grew yesterday after claims that a photo of two passengers was tampered with. Images of two men who boarded the Malaysian Airlines jet with stolen passports appear to show them having the same set of legs. CCTV footage stills released by officials three days after the Boeing 777-200 vanished from the skies shows the pair with identical green trousers and brown shoes.