A nor'easter once billed as "crippling,  and potentially historic" didn't live up to forecasters' predictions in much of the region—but the blizzard hit New England especially hard, dumping up to two feet of snow snow on parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Parts of Long Island also felt the brunt of this winter deluge.

Updated | Minnesotans spending Monday night watching a New Hope city council hearing got more drama than they anticipated when a gunfight between a man and police officers interrupted the broadcast.

Fifteen minutes after the start of a routine city council meeting, an adult male entered city hall and fired at police officers, injuring two. The police shot back and killed the suspect.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office identified the suspect as Raymond Kenneth Kmetz in a press release Tuesday, saying he died "from multiple gunshot wounds.”

It was a scene more fitting for Fargo than the biweekly meetings in New Hope, which has a population of 21,000 and is situated about nine miles northwest of Minneapolis. The city hall, a two-story brick building, also houses the local police department, on a level below the council chambers.

A local television station regularly broadcasts the council meetings on air and online, and footage from last night’s spread quickly. Video from inside council chambers shows city manager Kirk McDonald speaking about a resolution, followed by the sound of seven or so shots fired in rapid succession. Then councilman John Elder, who is a public information officer for the Minneapolis Police Department shouts an expletive and, “Get down, get down, everybody get down.”

“That went right through the door,” the city manager is heard saying.

Elder repeats, “Get down, everyone get down.” The video shows Elder sitting behind a table, panting and gripping a handgun with two hands. Then he says, “If this is being taped, go to commercial, go away from this.” The sound cuts out, though in versions now online, the video feed remains, showing a female officer entering the room with her gun drawn and looking around.

Records show that Kmetz, 68, who lived 40 miles away in Belle Plaine, Minnesota, had a history with New Hope police. In 2009, he was arrested for "making felony terroristic threats" and police knew he "had a history of threatening violence towards others," according to a court document. Kmetz later filed an action against five officers for assault, battery and using excessive force. A judge ruled in favor of the officers.

In April 2013, Kmetz's son Nathan Kmetz wrote on a law website that the county had committed his father to a mental health facility. "My father is NOT mentally ill...Although he may be somewhat difficult to interact with because of his persistence and rigidity, I believe his difficulties are resultant from the combination of an adjustment disorder and his personality," wrote Nathan, who confirmed to Newsweek that he was the author of the post.

Kmetz, the suspect, appeared at a city council meeting in August 2014, where he "alleged he was mistreated by the city attorney and police department," according to meeting minutes. The video from that meeting is online.

According to the planned agenda, Monday's council meeting began with honoring someone for years of service with a local human rights organization, followed by a swearing in ceremony for two police officers. It appears that the council had moved into approving business licenses, financial claims and resolutions when the shooting happened.

A message on the city’s website Tuesday says, “New Hope City Hall is closed due to the shooting incident that occurred on Monday evening, January 26. The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office is conducting an investigation of the incident.”

The sheriff’s office initially did not identify the two officers who were shot, but said in a press release that they were transported to a local hospital and “are both expected to survive their injuries.” That hospital, the local police department tells Newsweek, is North Memorial Medical Center.

Local media reported Tuesday that Joshua Eernisse was one of the officers injured. The council meeting agenda shows that Eernisse was to be sworn in the night of the shooting.

In a press briefing late Monday night, the Chief Deputy Mike Carlson from the sheriff’s office told reporters that investigators were not seeking additional suspects.

Monday night’s meeting is not available on the TV station’s website, though Corey Bork, an assignment editor and producer, says generally those meetings are available online the day after the meetings, so the station likely pulled it.

Bork says the station employee monitoring the feed was told to cut to a pre-set message that states, "Council meeting goes to recess." The council videos, Bork adds, are property of the city.

At the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show held in early January in Las Vegas, I stood in the center of an array of circling cameras, remaining completely still for 12 seconds. Minutes later, a computer connected to the booth produced a near-perfect 3-D representation of myself—almost too realistic. My posture, I saw, reflected the self-consciousness I felt about being made into a statue. In short time, the company behind this contraption, Artec Group’s Shapify, forged this image into a miniature sculpture of my likeness, and I got my very own “Shapie.”

The idea of being sculpturized seemed a little silly at first. But the eagerness of visitors to the Artec booth and the rapid growth of the company—which now has scanning locations in 25 countries—reveal a real desire for the service. Even President Barack Obama had a bust of himself made in December.

From medicine to fashion, 3-D scanning is also taking off in a variety of other fields. A growing number of plastic surgeons and other doctors use scanners for planning procedures and surgery. And a firm called Stratasys uses scanners (and 3-D printers) to create orthodontic devices like retainers. In many major cities, you can also find companies that employ these tools to make customized clothing—no tailor necessary.

Science is also finding novel uses for the technology. For example, paleontologist Louise Leakey and colleagues recently used a handheld scanner to create 3-D images of several fossils in Kenya, in order to create a permanent record for researchers to study—the scans will survive even if the fossils themselves are later destroyed or looted.

While 3-D scanners aren’t new, until recently they’ve been expensive, large and immobile. Several companies, Artec among them, have figured out how to miniaturize the technology, and some devices are within the reach of general consumers. One of Artec’s professional-grade scanners can be had for around $20,000, though other companies make cheaper versions that are basically modified webcams, for as little as $100.

Many of the more affordable devices, including Artec’s, are “structured light scanners,” emitting multiple parallel beams, which are spaced at an exact distance apart. The computer knows the precise dimensions of these light patterns and examines how these appear on the object, using that information to measure and reconstruct the object’s features in precise detail. So if your likeness is about to be captured for posterity, make sure your pants aren’t wrinkled. I learned that one the hard way.

On Tuesday morning, the Islamic State (ISIS) purportedly released a new video showing Japanese hostage Kenji Goto Jogo holding a photograph believed to be of Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh, another ISIS hostage. Al-Kasasbeh was taken captive after his plane went down and he ejected in December, and his life has been repeatedly threatened by the terrorist organization.

According to the message read by Goto, both men could be killed in the next 24 hours if Jordan does not release Sajida al-Rishawi, a prisoner who confessed to attempting to set off a suicide bomb in a hotel in Jordan with her husband in 2005. Al-Rishawi has been in prison for about 10 years and faces execution.

Japan has been working with Jordanian officials to secure the release of two Japanese hostages since last week, when a video showing Goto and another hostage, Haruna Yukawa, surfaced online. Yukawa was beheaded after ISIS did not receive the requested $100 million ransom for his life.

In Tuesday’s video, ISIS claimed Jordanian officials were standing in the way of the hostage swap. “Any more delays from the Jordanian government will mean they are responsible for the death of their pilot, which will then be followed by mine. I only have 24 hours left to live and the pilot has even less. Please don’t leave us to die,” Goto said in the recording.

Yasuhide Nakayama, Japan’s state minister for foreign affairs, told Reuters: “We would like to work together with the Jordanian government to secure the release of Goto.” He noted that “the release of this pilot as soon as possible is also an issue for us Japanese.” In the past, Jordan’s king has said al-Kasasbeh’s release was his country’s top priority.

Two unidentified members of the Jordanian parliament have said Jordan would consider al-Rishawai’s release in exchange for the two hostages. But any negotiations are within a very narrow time frame, as ISIS has said al-Kasasbeh would be killed first and Goto within 24 hours of the video’s release.

It remains unclear whether Jordan ultimately will be willing to make the trade, but having the life of a member of its armed forces on the line complicates the already difficult to navigate hostage situation for both Jordan and Japan. Though the United States has influenced a number of countries, including Japan, to not pay ransoms to terrorist organizations, the U.S. has participated in prisoner exchanges with extremist groups for members of its military. Recently, the Taliban released American soldier Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban members in the Guantanamo prison.

It was a warm spring day when I first saw Dachau. The fields were green and the birds chirped in the nearby trees. But as my fellow prisoners and I marched through the camp’s gates, a horrific stench overpowered us. We looked around and instantly knew why: Heaps of dead bodies lay scattered on the ground, rotting in the sun.

It was April of 1945, and I was 23 years old. Starvation had shriveled my body as well my hopes. Kazimierz Dolny, my hometown in central Poland, was reduced to a Jewish graveyard. And as I later learned, my parents, grandparents and all my siblings were among the dead.

At this point in the war, the Nazi camps were in complete disarray. Allied bombs had forced the Germans to scramble, and the SS was so worried about surviving, they no longer paid us much attention. There was no roll call at Dachau, no food or anything resembling a functioning prison. If a deranged inmate screamed "bread," all of us would attack each other, flailing our hands and bony elbows, only to discover there was nothing to eat.  

For several days, we lay around the camp, starving, until the front drew closer. One day, the SS herded us into open cattle cars with barbed wire ceilings, then shuttled us away by train. Apparently, there wasn't even time for them to kill us. One night, the train stopped in the middle of the forest. Snow fell from the sky and settled on my eyelashes. I was cold, I was hungry, but I felt strangely at peace.

Portraits: Survivors of Auschwitz

The Nazi death camp was liberated seven decades ago. These are some of the men and women who lived to tell their stories. slideshow

Soon, however, gunfire shattered the stillness. The Germans and the Allies were shooting at each other, and we were caught in the crossfire. Bullets ripped through the cattle cars, and all around me, prisoners dropped. I fell to the floor, listening to the thud of metal piercing flesh. Then, as quickly as the battle started, it stopped. Silence returned. Dawn rose over the hills. The snow continued to fall. My friend Yitzhak and I lay on the floor with our hands over our heads, listening for the slightest sound. In the distance, we heard it, coming from the cars ahead of us: Loud, jubilant voices, speaking in Yiddish.

“Mir zenen frei!”

“We are free at last!”

We lifted our heads. I looked over at Yitzhak. He had a baffled expression on his face and I assumed my own face mirrored his. We looked around and saw that there wasn't an SS soldier in sight. But I was still afraid.

“Let’s not move yet," I whispered to Yitzhak. "We’ve got to be cautious."

We lay there for awhile, listening to the others step down from the trains, running, screaming, singing and laughing in the snow. I raised my head and saw them, my fellow prisoners, my fellow Jews, buzzing in all directions. One man was dragging a huge sack of food on his bony shoulders. Another died in front of me from pure elation, his cold fingers clutching a loaf of bread. I felt the chill in the air. I felt the floor below my body. I felt my friends lying beside me, and then I felt tears on my cheeks. I was starving, I was cold and I was infested with lice. But for the first time since 1939, my life was my own.

My friend Yitzhak and I stepped off the train and stumbled through the cold, looking for food and shelter. Joining us, was another friend named Yakov. Before long, we arrived in Allach, a town northwest of Munich. We knocked on the first door we saw and waited. No one came. Yitzchak turned back for the road, but I sensed that people were home. I knocked again and again. At last the handle turned and the door creaked open.

“Please don’t hurt us,” a feeble voice said from behind the door.

Looking through the crack of the doorway, I saw an elderly woman.  

“Don’t worry,” I said in German. “We are just hoping you can spare us some hot food. Please, we need your help. We are starving.”

She looked at my torn black-and-white-striped prison shirt then tried to close the door. “I’m sorry," she said. "We don’t have enough to eat ourselves.”

I stopped the door with my foot. “We aren’t criminals," I said. "We’re just Jews who have been in the concentration camps. Please, we won’t hurt you.”

I looked at her, and she looked at me. A moment passed, and then she opened the door. When I stepped inside, I saw that she was crying. So was her daughter, a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl of about 16. We kept our distance and assured them in our broken German that we meant them no harm.

As the elderly woman heated water for the tub, we stripped down naked, right there in front of them in the foyer. The older woman took our clothes outside to burn; the lice had infested the fabric to such an extent that you could actually see the bugs. The daughter went to find us clothes from her father and brother's closets (the two had been drafted into the German army some years before). Then the older woman scrubbed us with soap and disinfectant for the better part of an hour.

The woman wasn't lying: There wasn't enough food in the house for all of us, so we promised to steal them groceries from the SS cellars. In exchange, the women said we could stay with them for a few days until we regained our strength. That first afternoon, the mother prepared a small pot of hot soup and some plain oatmeal. Yitzchak and Yakov feasted, but I ate little. My body was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open, let alone lift a spoon to my lips. The young woman led me upstairs to a bed with white sheets and a down comforter, and I instantly fell asleep.

At daybreak, I heard muffled voices coming through the floorboards below. I felt the warm glow of sunlight on my face and slowly opened my eyes. I saw my white bedding and white nightgown and couldn't understand where I was. For several moments, I thought I had died and God had finally taken me to heaven. But as I began to recognize the muffled voices, reality returned. Still in a daze, I crept downstairs and padded across the kitchen where my friends were enjoying breakfast with the two women.

“Welcome back, Pinek,” they laughed. “Did you have a nice rest?”

“I slept through the whole day and night?”

“You slept through two days and nights," Yakov said. "Are you hungry?”

I was famished.

This story has been excerpted from Judith Schneiderman's memoir, I Sang to Survive, which was written with her granddaughter, Jennifer Schulz, and is available on Audible. Judith's husband, Paul Schneiderman, died in 2013. 

In December, a 26-year-old Jordanian pilot crashed in Syria. First Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh was participating in a U.S.-led bombing mission targeting the Islamic State (ISIS) when his jet went down. Though ISIS claimed they shot down his plane, the United States determined the crash was not the result of enemy fire.

After al-Kasasbeh was taken captive, ISIS posted a number of his photographs to social media and threatened his life repeatedly. Many came to his defense, as al-Kasasbeh is a Muslim from a prominent Sunni family, his uncle was a major general in the Jordanian military. His family pled with ISIS in public statements to treat their son like a guest, rather than a hostage.

In late December, al-Kasasbeh was forced to give an interview to ISIS-run propaganda magazine Dabiq. Though the interview was mainly propaganda meant to imply ISIS was using powerful missiles, it also proved the pilot had not yet been killed by a terrorist organization that has targeted opposing military officials harshly in the past.

In the interview, al-Kasasbeh said he believed he would be killed by the terrorists. Following the interview, social media accounts believed to be affiliated with ISIS called for jihadist sympathizers to come up with ways to kill the pilot.

In early January, U.S. Special Forces reportedly attempted to rescue al-Kasasbeh out of the Raqqa, Syria area. It was reported that the mission failed because gunfire prevented helicopter landings.

Shortly thereafter, the Jordanian government began to use third parties from Turkey and Iraq to help mediate discussions regarding the pilot’s release. Turkey has successfully negotiated hostage releases from ISIS in the past.

When the discussions for al-Kasasbeh’s release began, the Times of Israel reported ISIS was interested in freeing “Salafists, adherents of a strict, literal form of Islam to which IS subscribes, held in Jordanian prisons" in exchange for the Jordanian pilot.

The terrorist group now has publicly sought exactly this type of exchange, targeting a particular prisoner. In a video purportedly released by ISIS Tuesday morning, the group said it was willing to trade both al-Kasasbeh and the Japanese hostage Kenji Goto Jogo for Sajida al-Rishawi, a female Al-Qaeda affiliate who confessed to attempting to carry out a suicide bombing in 2005 in Jordan. Al-Rishawi has been held in a Jordanian prison since that time, facing execution. It remains unclear whether Japan and Jordan will work together to secure the hostage exchange before the 24-hour deadline set by ISIS on Tuesday. Other governments, including the United States, which refuses to negotiate with ISIS, have agreed to similar prisoner swaps with other groups to release members of their military in the past.

The news that Charles and David Koch and their network of conservative activists plan to spend $889 million on the 2016 elections has sent shock waves throughout the political landscape. Publicized this week at a California gathering hosted by the business group Freedom Partners, this declaration of financial war raises the question of whether billionaires and their allies can buy elections.

As I note in my Brookings Institution Press book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust, the answer in 2012 clearly was no. A few billionaires devoted several hundred million dollars seeking to defeat President Barack Obama yet lost. Republicans nominated a candidate who was easy to caricature as an out-of-touch plutocrat who did not share the values of ordinary Americans. The president was successful in using that stereotype to mobilize voters, expand the electorate and appeal to basic fairness on the part of the general public.

Yet 2014 was a different story. Conservative billionaires were far more successful in helping Republicans regain control of the Senate, boost their House numbers and increase their domination over governorships and state legislatures. The country now has GOP control of the House and Senate, and 31 governorships across the country.

In analyzing why they lost the 2012 presidential campaign, conservative billionaires decided they needed to recalibrate their message and strategy for the midterms. For example, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) focused on ads that employed moving personal stories to deliver policy messages and a robust field operation. Central to their approach was the idea that Obamacare was a failure and hurting ordinary people.

Explaining this communications shift, AFP President Tim Phillips told a reporter that “too often, we did kind of broader statistical ads or messages, and we decided that we needed to start telling the story of how the liberals’ policies, whether it’s the administration or Congress, are practically impacting the lives of Americans every day.”

Media expert Elizabeth Wilner of Kantar Media/CMAG correctly anticipated that those kinds of ads would have a greater likelihood of electoral success. “Ads that tell stories are more compelling than ads that don’t,” she said. “And ads that use sympathetic figures are more compelling, generally, than those that don’t.”

In looking ahead to 2016, there are ominous signs that big money may distort the election outcome. Wealthy interests were far more likely in 2012 to contribute to Republicans than Democrats. Even if Democrats mobilize liberal billionaires, the GOP nominee is going to have a substantial fund-raising advantage.

Money alone, of course, does not dictate elections. Research shows clearly that public opinion, media coverage, campaign strategies, policy positions, and the nature of the times matter as well.

However, during a time of rising campaign costs and limited public engagement in the political process, big money sets the agenda, affects how the campaign develops and shapes how particular people and policy problems get defined. It takes skilled candidates, favorable media coverage and strong organizational efforts to offset the power of great wealth.

There are no guarantees that the future Democratic nominee will replicate Obama’s 2012 success. If Republicans nominate someone who relates well to ordinary voters and they tone down policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, the money story in 2016 likely will turn out very different from the last time. Billionaire activism very well could tilt a close election in favor of conservative interests.

Darrell M. West is vice president and director, governance studies and founding director, Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. This article first appeared on the Brookings website. Follow West on Twitter @DarrWest

Marshawn Lynch, running back for the Super Bowl–bound (and defending champion) Seattle Seahawks, does not want to talk to me. But I’m not taking it personally, because Lynch also doesn’t want to talk to any employees of other media outlets.

For much of this season, Lynch ignored media questions altogether by giving short or unusual replies. The change in his media interaction came after he received a hefty fine from the NFL: He was hit was a $50,000 penalty for skipping out on postgame interviews after a Kansas City Chiefs game. The fine was then bumped up to $100,000, as he had an outstanding media violation from last season that was not enforced because he promised to speak to the press from then on out.

To avoid fines, Lynch did show up at Tuesday's Super Bowl Media Day, but he made it entirely clear he did not want to be there. Wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap indoors, Lynch answered about 30 questions over the course of five minutes with different variations of the phrase: “I’m just here so I won’t get fined.” He even stopped the press questions briefly to blow kisses to a fan and tell her she was “sexy too.” The only genuine press interaction he had was with ESPN’s Josina Anderson, when he asked her, “How are you doing Ms. Lady?” before taking the podium for questions.  

Tuesday featured one of Lynch’s more aggressive replies. After games in the past, he had sillier replies, such as an entire November press conference he spent answering almost every question “Yeah” and “Maybe.”

The next week, Lynch went with “Nope” as the go-to reply:

In December, he answered a number of questions with variations of “Thank you for asking” and “I appreciate it”:

After a January game against the Carolina Panthers, Lynch replied to most questions with “I’m thankful,” and even forewarned media that the interview was not going to go well before they started answering questions, “Y’all wanna try again, huh? Y’all are going to try again? That’s what we are going to do, we are going to try one more time?…Y’all can try all y’all want.”

Lynch isn’t totally question-averse, though. For a price, he’ll happily discuss everything from cat videos to blimps, like in this Skittles ad:

And in a Progressive Super Bowl ad, Lynch discusses saving money with car insurance after deflecting a number of ESPN reporter Kenny Mayne’s questions.

So, if you’d like to talk to Lynch, just be a brand with a lot of money to burn on a curious representative. Lynch even seemingly has spawned an imitator in the NBA, Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook, who recently spent an entire postgame interview discussing only "his execution."

A generation will soon come of age having never heard firsthand testimony from a living Holocaust survivor. The aging ranks of those persecuted by the Nazis during World War II are not yet fully diminished, but one day soon they will be.

“We are at a transitional moment, when the survivors are fading from the scene and there’s a real question of what Holocaust remembrance will be like going forward,” says Menachem Rosensaft, general counsel for the World Jewish Congress — an organization that advocates for the rights of Jews and Jewish communities. Born in the Bergen Belsen displaced persons camp in 1948, he is the son of two Holocaust survivors. “And the real question to me was, ‘What is it that we, children and grandchildren of survivors, are doing with this legacy?’”

In God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors, a recently published book of essays, Rosensaft asked descendants to respond to that question. The book originated with a sermon Rosensaft delivered at the Park Avenue Synagogue on the Saturday between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in 2013, in which he tried to reconcile faith with the horrors his parents and others endured at Auschwitz.

The sermon was later published in the Washington Post’s On Faith blog and received a personal response from Pope Francis. It also caught the attention of Jewish Lights Publishing and eventually became one in the collection of more than 80 essays published in November.

When Rosensaft, 66, and his wife — the daughter of two survivors — attended a conference on children of Holocaust survivors in New York in 1979, they heard from psychologists and therapists talking about the trauma of the second generation. He and his wife didn’t recognize themselves in any of the descriptions. While there are certainly children of survivors who are traumatized by their parents’ experiences, he says, it didn’t reflect the whole population.

From the outset, the book was meant to be life-affirming, he says. He wanted to pull together reflections from children and grandchildren of survivors, about how this legacy has shaped them theologically, politically, culturally and in terms of identity, education and career.

Contributors to the book come from 16 countries on six continents and include rabbis — from ultra-Orthodox to reform and female rabbis — as well as secular Jews and atheists. There are essays by lawyers, doctors, politicians, academics, writers and mental health professionals.

Many of them, though well-known and respected in their fields, are not usually associated with Holocaust memory, such as U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon); David Miliband, former British secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs; and Avi Dichter, former director of Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency.

“What is often forgotten is that the victims of the Holocaust, both the dead and its survivors, were not a homogeneous group,” says Rosensaft. “The fact that you had communists and Hasidic rabbis and secular Jews and rich and poor sleeping in the same barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau or being next to each other in a gas chamber is relevant, because there’s no reason for their children or grandchildren to be any more homogenous than they were.”

In his essay, Alexander Soros, son of billionaire investor George Soros — a survivor of Nazi persecution in Hungary — wonders what he would have done had he been born a German or Hungarian and not a Jew during the time of the Holocaust.

Richard Primus, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, writes about how the cold makes him think of his grandfather’s winter experiences at Auschwitz, which makes him think of those who suffer in different ways today. That in turn makes him hope that his own children will think of those who suffer today even if they do not first think of their great-grandfather in Auschwitz. Like many of the other members of the second and third generations who contributed to the book, Primus has grappled with how to pass on the legacy of memory to subsequent generations.

Tali Nates, the director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre and daughter of a Holocaust survivor, recalls the day in 1994 when she stood in line to vote in the first free elections in South Africa, while in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were being slaughtered in another genocide.

“The words ‘Never Again’ always make me very upset,” she writes. “After the Holocaust, the survivors truly believed that when the ‘world’ saw what had happened to them, surely it would never happen again. But it did. There is much work to be done by all of us to make those words a reality.” As a second-generation Holocaust survivor, she feels it is, in part, up to her.

Remembering the Holocaust, Seven Decades Later

Survivors, world leaders gathered to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the liberation of Auschwitz. slideshow

Rosensaft says that while the book is written by descendants of Holocaust survivors, it is meant to address survivors of other genocides and atrocities and their descendants. Part of the legacy, he feels, is to recognize, call attention to and assuage the suffering of others.

He quotes his boss Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, who last spring wrote an op-ed in The New York Times titled “Who Will Stand Up for the Christians?” In it, Lauder says, ”The Jewish people understand all too well what can happen when the world is silent. This campaign of death must be stopped.”

The book is also published at a time of growing concern over the rise of anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe. On Thursday, the U.N. held its first-ever meeting on the increase in violence against Jews following the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris earlier this month.

As for the children and grandchildren of the Jews who escaped death at the hands of their persecutors, Rosensaft says: “We did not experience the Holocaust, we are not survivors…. We did not see our families murdered, we were never cold, we were never starved, we were never beaten. We grew up in comfort. And yet what we do have, what sets us apart, is that we grew up with our parents and grandparents. We absorbed their stories firsthand.”

He adds: “We can’t take the place of the survivors in telling their experiences from a first-person perspective. But we can talk about what their experiences meant to them and how their experiences and their memories were conveyed to us.”

Their responsibility is to pass on these memories “not just to our own children and grandchildren but to others of our generations, Jewish and non-Jewish, in order to make sure that this legacy and memory becomes an inheritance that belongs to humankind as a whole.”

Elie Wiesel, a survivor of both Auschwitz and Buchenwald who went on to become a prolific writer, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and a teacher, contributed the prologue to God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes, adapted from a speech he gave to children of survivors in 1984.

“Now you are being summoned to do something with pieces of words, with fragments of our vision, with remnants of our broken, dispersed memories,” wrote Wiesel, for whom Rosensaft served as a teaching assistant in the 1970s. “The testimony of our life and death will not vanish. Our memories will not die with us.”

The Justice Department is building a national database that tracks vehicles’ movements around the U.S. in real time using information obtained from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) license plate scanning program, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The program not only tracks car, driver and passenger locations via high-tech cameras along highways, but uses data mining “to identify travel patterns.”

According to the newly uncovered documents, the primary goal of the program is to seize assets, such as cars and cash, to combat drug trafficking. But former and current officials told the Journal that the database’s use has expanded to hunt for automobiles associated with a slew of other crimes.

Asset forfeiture has been widely covered in the news in recent months after a Washington Post investigation showed that police have seized almost $2.5 billion in cash from drivers without search warrants or indictments since September 11, 2001. In April 2013, for example, two professional poker players had $100,000 seized by Iowa state troopers at a traffic stop on their drive home to California. The troopers had no warrant but suspected the men may be involved in drug trafficking.

Asset forfeitures often go toward paying for salaries, equipment and perks in many jurisdictions. The American Civil Liberties Union contends that, “when salaries and perks are on the line, officers have a strong incentive to increase the seizures, as evidenced by an increase in the regularity and size of such seizures in recent years.” Federally, it provides a stream of revenue.

Though Attorney General Eric Holder’s new policy to limit the practice was met with praise earlier this month, further analysis of the policy’s language shows the limits will only apply to a small number of cases, meaning the database can continue to be used for warrantless asset forfeitures.

When the program began in 2008, little information was shared with the public. Information did trickle out overtheyears, but a 2013 ACLU report called You Are Being Tracked found that license plate reader technology was being widely adopted by local and state law enforcement agencies.

New documents obtained by the ACLU confirm that these agencies contribute data to the program, as do federal agencies such as Customs and Border Patrol, which collects “nearly 100 percent of land border traffic,” or more than 793.5 million license plates between May 2009 and May 2013.  

The DEA also shares the information it collects with other agencies of all stripes, which are allowed to conduct searches in the database.

Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, responded to the news by telling the Journal that Americans shouldn’t have to fear that “their locations and movements are constantly being tracked and stored in a massive government database.”

“The fact that this intrusive technology is potentially being used to expand the reach of the government’s asset-forfeiture efforts is of even greater concern,” he said.  

Israeli airforce jets struck Syrian army artillery positions near the Israel-occupied Golan Heights on Wednesday, the military said, in retaliation for rockets launched in the area the previous day.

Tensions have escalated in the border region in the 10 days since an Israeli air strike on territory under the control of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed an Iranian general and several Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

On Tuesday, at least two rockets from Syria hit the Golan Heights and Israel responded with artillery fire, the army said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket fire and no casualties were reported.

"We will not tolerate any firing towards Israeli territory or violation of our sovereignty and we will respond forcefully and with determination," Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the strikes on Wednesday targeted "Brigade 90" of the Syrian army and other positions held by the military in Quneitra province, which borders Lebanon and Jordan as well as Israel.

In the Israeli air strike on a Hezbollah convoy near Golan on Jan. 18, Iranian Revolutionary Guard general, Mohammed Allahdadi, was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group's late military leader, Imad Moughniyeh.

Both Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, and the Revolutionary Guards vowed to avenge the deaths.

Since that air strike, troops and civilians in northern Israel and the Golan Heights have been on heightened alert and Israel has deployed Iron Dome rocket interceptors near the Syrian border.

Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. The area has been hit by mortar shells and rockets numerous times in four years of civil war in Syria.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the United States called "upon all parties to avoid any action that would jeopardize the long-held ceasefire between Israel and Syria".

"We support Israel's legitimate right to self defence and have been clear about our concerns over the regional instability caused by the crisis in Syria," Psaki said.

Russia's government intends to spend at least 2.34 trillion roubles ($35 billion) to help the economy withstand Western sanctions and the collapse in oil prices, according to a plan which implies the final cost could be much higher.

Only 22 of the 60 items were costed, suggesting that the final cost of the plan may be much more than 2.34 trillion roubles, which is the combined costs of the items that had been assigned financing. The plan said that these costs were still subject to government discussion.

Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Tuesday that the plan wouldn't add to total budget expenditures, because of budget reserves and cutbacks elsewhere.

Some major items are being financed from the National Wealth Fund, an $80 billion sovereign fund that had previously been assigned to fund infrastructure projects.

Among the priority measures, the largest single item is a 1 trillion rouble programme to recapitalize banks through the issue of government bonds, which has already been funded from last year's federal budget.

The plan included a separate scheme to help recapitalize some banks with 250 billion roubles from the National Wealth Fund.

The National Wealth Fund would also provide 300 billion roubles to Vnesheconombank, the state development bank, to increase "lending to organisations of the real sector".

The plan included 200 billion roubles in state guarantees of loans of bonds needed "for carrying out investment projects," as well as other goals approved by the government such as debt restructuring.

Other major items included 160 billion roubles in federal loans to help regional governments, as well as 188 billion roubles to finance an indexation of pensions.

Dozens of smaller or uncosted items in the plan included subsidies and tax breaks to industrial enterprises, small businesses and agriculture.

Among the uncosted items, the plan said the government would collect proposals for creating a 'bad bank' to ring fence problematic banking assets by Jan. 30.

The plan also said that the government aimed to cut "the majority" of its planned expenditures by 10 percent in 2015 except for defence, social spending and debt repayments, with a view to balancing the budget by 2017.

It said that investment resources in the budget would be concentrated on projects that had already been started, with some new projects to be delayed.

A prisoner swap has reportedly been agreed between Japan, Jordan and the Islamic State, which could see an exchange happen within hours. ISIS are demanding the release of Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman who took part in a 2005 bombing in Jordan which killed 57 - she survived after her suicide belt failed to detonate.

In return for al-Rishawi, ISIS will release Japanese freelance journalist Kenji Goto who went missing in Syria in October last year. Yesterday the militant group released a video in which Goto warned that he and Muadh al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot also imprisoned by ISIS, would be executed unless al-Rishawi was released.

A spokesman for Jordan’s government has now confirmed that the country have agreed to the prisoner swap in order to secure the release of the pilot, although he did not mention Goto: "Jordan is ready to release prisoner Sajida al-Rishawi if the Jordanian pilot Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh was released and his life spared.”

Earlier Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe had urged his ministers to work together to secure Goto’s release and also said that they were working with Jordanian officials.  “[We have] been asking for the Jordanian government's cooperation towards the early release of Mr Goto, and this policy remains unchanged,” he said. It is unclear whether ISIS are to release Goto as part of the deal.

ISIS originally released a video last week featuring two Japanese hostages, Goto and self-styled security consultant Haruna Yukawa in orange jumpsuits, and threatened to kill both unless they received a $200 million ransom. An audio clip was then released suggesting that Yukawa had been executed as Japan had missed their 72-hour deadline by which to deliver the payment. The group then demanded the release of al-Rishwani.

A prisoner exchange could cause friction between the nations currently working together to fight extremist groups. The UK and U.S. both take a hard line on negotiating with terrorists - refusing to pay ransoms or mediate with terrorist groups while other countries are more willing to.

Earlier this year, two young Italian aid workers were released by Syria’s largest al-Qaeda-affiliated group, Jabhat al-Nusra, after Italy reportedly paid a multi-million dollar ransom, which may have been as high as $12 million.

The UK foreign office did not respond for comment on its opinion on a potential prisoner exchange.

Jamal Benomar was worried. Late last month, he was talking to me on the phone as he waited to fly to the Persian Gulf. Yemen was on the verge of collapse, and Benomar, the United Nations special envoy to the country, was hoping to bring its warring factions together.

For years, the Moroccan-born British diplomat had been warning international leaders that stabilizing Yemen’s internal politics was critical to defeating Al-Qaeda. But as he landed in Yemen last month, the country, which is heavily divided over religious, tribal and other alliances, continued to crumble. “Maybe now,” Benomar said, the world “will listen.”

In January, the Houthis, an armed group in northern Yemen, allegedly with ties to Iran, tightened their grip around the capital city of Sanaa. Gunmen surrounded the presidential palace and trapped the Western-backed leader, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, at his nearby residence.

The news sent shudders across the region, where many already fear Iranian influence. After speaking with Benomar, the U.N. Security Council released a unified statement, supporting Hadi. The Saudi-backed Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional body of Arab countries, later did the same, calling Hadi’s ouster a “coup” and vowing “all necessary means” to return him to power.

To no avail. On January 22, Hadi, along with Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and the rest of the Yemeni government, resigned. And Benomar began scrambling to meet with local leaders—from tribal elders to business tycoons—to try to peacefully end the crisis.

His task remains daunting. Not only are many in the Gulf and the West worried about Iran gaining a foothold in Yemen; they’re also concerned the Houthis may be able to exploit sectarian tensions and hinder America in its war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Benomar—and Yemen—have been at this crossroads before. In 2011, the Arab Spring spread to the streets of Sanaa, as protesters forced longtime strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. He was once considered a linchpin in the fight against terror, but the U.S. turned against him after the protests and now considers him untrustworthy.

Not long after Saleh’s ouster, Benomar, along with other diplomats and a coterie of Yemeni leaders, helped steer the country toward peace. In 2012, the nation elected Hadi in what many observers called a remarkably inclusive political process. Yemen, a country largely known for chaos and qat, a local stimulant, was now being hailed as a promising experiment in democracy. And the government in Sanaa seemed even more committed than Saleh was to fighting terror.

Indeed, with Hadi’s backing, the CIA and U.S. Air Force increased their use of killer drones to hunt down suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists. As President Barack Obama put it in a September 2014 speech, the U.S.’s “strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen.”  

But not everyone was happy with the new government. Namely the Houthis, who objected to a proposed constitution that would set up a federal system and divide the country into six regions. “They wanted more territory, with natural resources and access to the sea, under their control, and they couldn’t get it,” said Nidaa Hilal, a former U.N. consultant in Yemen.

The Houthis are members of Yemen’s Zaydi sect, a Shiite offshoot, which some observers compare to Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, which boasts both a militant and a political wing. The comparison isn’t completely apt (unlike Hezbollah, the Houthis operate only inside Yemen). But like Lebanon’s Party of God before it, the Houthis’ rise came by way of force, not democracy. Last year, armed Houthis started moving south from their mountainous enclaves in the north, an operation that culminated in January’s coup.

For those who once had high hopes for the Arab Spring in Yemen, the Houthis’ takeover has left them feeling bitter and jaded. “The Houthis almost want to make Yemenis regret overthrowing Saleh,” said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni writer and activist.

Washington is also concerned. Despite news reports to the contrary, the U.S. hasn’t halted its drones program in Yemen. Late January, American drones killed three suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in the Marib province in northern Yemen. But with the Houthis in control of Sanaa, the White House may be forced to try coordinating counterterrorism moves with a group whose slogan is “Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.”

As we spoke on the phone, Benomar mentioned Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the brothers who attacked French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January. Several years ago, at least one of them reportedly traveled to Yemen to train with Al-Qaeda. The 12 people the Kouachis killed in Paris were painful reminders of how chaos in the Middle East can easily reach Western shores.

With armed gunmen patrolling the streets, the turmoil in Yemen is unlikely to subside anytime soon. Because the Houthis are a Shiite offshoot, their power grab has put Yemen’s majority Sunnis on edge, which could be a recruitment boon for Al-Qaeda, a predominantly Sunni group.

Not everyone is pessimistic. Some say the Houthis will find it hard to govern and stoke sectarian tensions at the same time. “The Houthis will increase the pool [of recruits] for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the short term,” said Al Sharjabi, a member of Yemen's reformist Al-Watan party. “But eventually, you can’t run the country this way.”  

Perhaps. But for now, Benomar must try to communicate with 16 political groups that agree on practically nothing. Going forward, he said, the Houthis will try to plant their loyalists as “No. 2’s” in a variety of government ministries. And the trick will be to find a credible leader who can run the country without being intimidated by the men with guns.

Saleh, the fallen dictator, apparently has some ideas. He’s kept his hand in Yemen’s politics from afar and has been working with some members of the Houthi leadership. He’s allegedly pushing for an early presidential election so that his son, Ahmed, can emerge the winner. That, reformers say, would almost certainly bury any hope for political progress.

After years of trying to get everyone to pay attention to Yemen, Benomar finally has a captive audience. The only problem: It may be too late.

The refugee who arrived by himself in Sweden last year gave his name as Han Song. He said it was an alias as he fears reprisals from the North Korean government. Home, Han told Swedish authorities, is North Korea, a place he has reportedly escaped. Via a string of helpers and smugglers, Han says he managed to reach China and then traversed Russia hidden in a Trans-Siberian Railway car, finally crossing into Sweden in a truck, hidden behind its cargo. But Sweden’s migration board, Migrationsverket, has ruled that the young man is lying and plans to deport him to China. Han’s growing number of supporters say the officials have made a terrible mistake.

The first question is whether Han is really North Korean. If, as he claims, he really is a street child who managed to not just cross into China but to journey all the way to Sweden, his would be the most spectacular North Korean escape in history, more remarkable even than that of Shin Dong-hyuk, who claimed to have escaped into China from a North Korean prison camp and who  has since recanted several aspects of his story. But following an analysis of Han’s speech, Migrationsverket has ruled that he didn’t speak with the accent of his purported home region and is, in fact, Chinese.

His lawyer disagrees. “After getting to know Han intimately over a long period of time, my team and I are completely convinced he’s North Korean,” says Arido Degavro. “Only somebody who has spent a long time in North Korea can have the detailed knowledge that he has. But he knows close to nothing about China and doesn’t speak Chinese.” Han says that his mother died of cancer when he was little and that his father is a political prisoner. That left the boy, who gives his current age as 17, a de facto orphan.

Tim Peters, an American based in Seoul, from where his HHK/Catacombs network helps North Koreans to escape, has been providing expertise on North Korean defectors’ escapes and accents to Han’s legal team. “Our efforts have centred on helping find the truth about his identity as well as suggesting ways to avoid the most dangerous outcome,” he explains. “We found that veteran activists and former defectors alike from his claimed home area responded conclusively that the boy’s patterns of speech were consistent with the North Hamgyeong dialect and with someone who had spent time in China as a wandering orphan.”

That analysis contradicts the findings of Sprakab, the language identification contractor used by Migrationsverket, which, after interviewing the teenager, decided that he was not a native (North) Korean speaker. In interviews with Migrationsverket, Han also appeared to be unfamiliar with his purported home region. But when queried by Swedish Radio, the linguist who conducted Sprakab’s analysis said she was sure that the young man does in fact speak North Korean at a native-speaker level. (Sprakab could not immediately be reached for comment.) According to Degavro, the reason Migrationsverket couldn’t find the towns Han had mentioned was that the official who transcribed them had taken the names down incorrectly. Degavro says that the towns can easily be found on Google Maps.

Despite this apparently glaring error, Migrationsverket insists on deporting Han to China because he hasn’t been able to prove his identity, as required by Swedish law. Degavro, who has now filed a second appeal against Migrations­verket’s decision, and is awaiting a final ruling by the end of February, notes that a frightened teenager from a totalitarian regime is hardly in a position to prove his identity in interviews with officials. Adds Peters, whose underground network has in the past several weeks helped three North Korean families escape: “Migrationsverket’s apparent unflagging determination to send him to China, of all places, where he will face the spectre of forced repatriation to North Korea, is the kind a response that we have come to expect from Vietnam, Myanmar or Laos, who all have cosy relationships with North Korea, not a Western nation with the sterling human rights record of the likes of Sweden.”

Still, Migrationsverket’s scepticism is not irrational. Over the past decade, the number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum has grown from 388 in 2004 to 7,049 last year. During the first two months of January, the figure has doubled compared with January 2014, with the majority of the children arriving from Eritrea and Syria. According to EU statistics, Sweden is now Europe’s most popular destination for child asylum seekers, with Germany a distant second. The vast majority of child asylum seekers arriving in the EU are male teenagers. Unaccompanied children have better chances of being granted refugee status than adults and families arriving together, and receive more support from the Swedish government once they’ve been given asylum.

Dentists and doctors are frequently called in to help determine the age of arriving children  through examination of their teeth and wrist bones. “It’s often hard to determine whether a young person is 17 or 19,” Migrationsverket’s head of legal affairs, Fredrik Beijer, says. “They do have to prove their identity, but we also have to take into account that they’re young and may not be able to explain every detail. We can also ask paediatricians for their judgements, but they feel uncomfortable about participating beyond putting a tick in a box.” Beijer says Migrationsverket couldn’t determine Han’s age but nevertheless categorised him as minor.

Based on such exams, Migrationsverket ruled that 280 of the unaccompanied minors who arrived in Sweden last year were, in fact, adults. Degavro sees why the immigration agency might be sceptical of the claims of a male teenager arriving in Sweden alone, but notes that claiming North Korean nationality wouldn’t help an asylum seeker stay in Sweden, as such cases are typically referred to South Korea. Here Han’s story takes a new turn. As his supporters note, North Koreans caught in China are habitually sent back to their home country, where an uncertain fate awaits them. But, Beijer says, even though Migrationsverket has determined that the young man is Chinese, Sweden may never extradite him to China. That’s because Swedish immigration laws require proof. With few other details known about the young man, Migrationsverket will have to undergo a lengthy investigation, during which Han is entitled to stay in Sweden. Beijer adds: “If he proves that he’s from North Korea, we may be able to send him to South Korea.” The two Koreas immediately grant citizenship to refugees from the other side.

The threat of a full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah increased on Wednesday after the Lebanese militant group fired a missile at an Israeli army vehicle along the frontier, killing two soldiers and wounding seven, the biggest escalation since a 2006 war.

The attack, which Hezbollah said was carried out by one of its brigades in the area, was in apparent retaliation for a Jan. 18 Israeli air strike in southern Syria that killed several Hezbollah members as well as an Iranian general.

It came hours after air strikes by Israeli jets near the occupied Golan Heights overnight, which Israel's military said was in response to rocket fire from Syria.

Tensions in the region, where the frontiers of Israel, Lebanon and Syria meet and militant groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are active, have been bubbling for months but have boiled over in the past 10 days.

There were initial reports on Lebanese media that an Israeli soldier was captured during the attack, but the Israeli army denied it, as did a Lebanese political source.

A member of a United Nations' peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon was killed as Israel conducted airstrikes after the attack, a UN spokesman said. Officials in Spain said the peacekeeper was Spanish.

Israeli medics confirmed that seven Israeli soldiers were wounded but said none of the injuries were life-threatening.

The frontier has largely been quiet since 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war in which 120 people in Israel and more than 500 in Lebanon were killed.

Since the end of a 50-day conflict with Hamas militants in Gaza last year, Israel has warned about friction on the northern border, including the possibility that Hezbollah might dig tunnels to infiltrate Israel. In recent days it has moved more troops and military equipment into the area.

A retired Israeli army officer, Major-General Israel Ziv, said he believed Wednesday's assault was an attempt by Hezbollah to draw Israel more deeply into the war in Syria, where Hezbollah is fighting alongside forces loyal to President Assad.

"Israel understands that we need to contain things," he said. "Israel needs to protect its interests but not take any unnecessary steps that may pull us into the conflict in Syria."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made security his top priority ahead of parliamentary elections on March 17, said Israel was "prepared to act powerfully on all fronts," adding: "Security comes before everything else."

His office accused Iran of being behind what was described as a "criminal terror attack". Iran is a major funder of Hezbollah, a Shi'ite group headed by Hassan Nasrallah.

In Beirut, celebratory gunfire rang out after the attack, while residents in the southern suburbs of the city, where Hezbollah is strong, packed their bags and prepared to evacuate neighborhoods that were heavily bombed by Israel in 2006.

In Gaza, Palestinian militant groups praised Hezbollah.

It remains to be seen whether Israel and Hezbollah, having both drawn blood, will back away from further confrontation. With Israel weeks away from an election and Hezbollah deeply involved in support of Assad in Syria, there would appear to be little interest in a wider conflict for either side.

Dozens of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters have infiltrated a Saudi Arabian border town via Iraq before melting away into the general population, according to claims by the terror group’s supporters on social media.

A famous anti-government Saudi tweeter known as ‘mujtahidd’, not known for ISIS sympathies, posted to his 1.2m followers that an attack was carried out on border guards with the help of a cell inside the Kingdom before they reached the town of Rafha, sparking a search by Saudi intelligence services.

التفاصيل: هجوم على حرس الحدود من مجموعة قادمة من العراق مدعوم بهجوم خلية من الداخل أدى لهروب حرس الحدود ثم ذوبان المجموعتين في ضواحي رفحا

— مجتهد (@mujtahidd) January 27, 2015

ISIS-affiliated social media accounts started circulating a photo of a border checkpoint they claimed had been captured by the terror group’s militants.

“They claim that they control [the border gate],” says Kovan Direj, a Syrian-Kurdish journalist monitoring the Twitter war. “They [claim they] went to the border gate and after that group melted into the city and now the secret service of the Saudi Arabians are looking for them.”

a dozens of #Islamicstate fighters just entered Saudi lands from a crossing near Rafha and thy vanished without a trace inside #Saudi Arabia

— الخلافة قادمة (@Caliphate101) January 27, 2015

While analysts have cautioned that no official confirmation of the border infiltration has been released by Saudi Arabia or ISIS, there has been a large-scale propaganda war between ISIS supporters and Saudi citizens using the hashtag #Rafha to claim that the raid either did or did not happen.

Charlie Winter, researcher at the anti-radicalisation thinktank Quilliam Foundation, revealed that there appears to be a “heavy campaign” from Saudi social media accounts to prevent the hashtag “becoming something dominated” by the Islamic State.

“You have people in Saudi Arabia saying ‘be careful with this, it’s just a rumour, it’s just the Islamic State trying to destabilise the Kingdom’,” he said.

However, when asked if ISIS and its supporters had previously fabricated an attack of this kind, Winter admitted that he could not recall another instance.

“They will always exaggerate but I have not seen something like this completely pulled out of the bag before.”

If confirmed, the border infiltration into the conservative Kingdom would increase concerns about ISIS among the ruling Saudi elite. Riyadh is already constructing a 600-mile-long wall along its northern border with Iraq in an attempt to keep the terror group at bay.

The wall, which will stretch from the northwest town of Turaif near Jordan, to the northeastern town of Hafar al-Batin near Kuwait, will hold 40 watchtowers, 38 communication towers, 32 military response stations and 240 armed rapid response vehicles to patrol the border.

On the weaknesses of the Saudi border from such attacks, analysts note that there is little resistance on the Iraqi side of the border in what is essentially barren desert in the provinces along the frontline.

“[ISIS] are able to move freely without any issues all the way from northwestern Iraq to southwestern Iraq, as long as they avoid where they know where the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) are,” says Iraq expert and Director of Research at Integrity, Sajad Jiyad.

“Saudis cannot do anything as they are not allowed to operate in Iraq,” he added.

On the timing of the alleged attack, experts are split on why the radical Islamists would conduct the raid.

Some believe that any attack may have been orchestrated to coincide with the death of King Abdullah and the succession of King Salman, capitalising on instability, while others feel border attacks stem from a longstanding hatred of the ruling Saudi elite.

“In the wake of King Abdullah’s death, it would make sense for IS to try and destabilise them in this way, whether it was an incursion or whether it was just by disseminating rumours to scare people,” says Winter.

However, Jiyad says that for ISIS, any attack would be “an opportunity to project power, to actually show that they are in Saudi”.

“To be able to carry out those attacks reaffirms that it’s not just guys holding up a flag. It’s a powerful recruiting tool and a message that they are working beyond borders.”

Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal MENA analyst at global risks analytics company Verisk Maplecroft, believes that the rumoured raid and the dissemination of its details across social media could be attributed to the terror group’s losses in the Syrian town of Kobane and territory in northern Iraq to Kurdish forces.

“Perhaps this is a way for them to maintain some momentum and some positive focus. They are clearly concerned about losing momentum and the impact that has on morale within the group. So an audacious attack on the Saudi border would be a propaganda coup for them.”

The terror group view the Saudi elite as its “arch-nemesis”, says Winter. “They are seen as the tyrants above all tyrants.”

Last November, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called for attacks within Saudi Arabia in a rare speech, causing a heightened terror threat within the Kingdom.

ISIS militants carried out another border attack earlier this month near the town of Arar, on the border along from Rafha, killing a Saudi general and two border guards.

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed on Wednesday in an exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel that has raised the threat of a full-blown conflict between the militant Islamist group and Israel.

In the biggest escalation since a 2006 war, the soldiers were killed when Hezbollah fired a missile at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles on the frontier with Lebanon.

The peacekeeper, serving with a U.N. monitoring force in southern Lebanon, was killed as Israel responded with air strikes and artillery fire, a U.N. spokesman and Spanish officials said.

Hezbollah said one of its brigades in the area had carried out the attack, which appeared to be in retaliation for a Jan. 18 Israeli air strike in southern Syria that killed several Hezbollah members and an Iranian general.

Tensions in the region, where the frontiers of Israel, Lebanon and Syria meet and militant groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are active, have been bubbling for months but have boiled over in the past 10 days.

The Israeli military confirmed the death of the soldiers, who were driving along a road next to the fence that marks the hilly frontier. Hospital officials said a further seven had been wounded, although none had life-threatening injuries.

Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which employs more than 10,000 troops, said the peacekeeper's death was under investigation.

The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon urged all parties to refrain from any further destabilization of the situation, while Lebanon's prime minister said his country was committed to the U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war.

The 80 km (50 mile) frontier has largely been quiet since 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war in which 120 people in Israel and more than 500 in Lebanon were killed.

Since the end of the war with Hamas militants in Gaza last year, Israel has warned of frictions on the northern border, including the possibility that Hezbollah might dig tunnels to infiltrate Israel. In recent days it has moved more troops and military equipment into the area.

RISING THREAT

A retired Israeli army officer, Major-General Israel Ziv, said he believed Wednesday's assault was an attempt by Hezbollah to draw Israel more deeply into the war in Syria, where Hezbollah is fighting alongside forces loyal to President Assad.

"Israel needs to protect its interests but not take any unnecessary steps that may pull us into the conflict in Syria," he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces a parliamentary election on March 17, said Israel was "prepared to act powerfully on all fronts", adding: "Security comes before everything else."

His office accused Iran of being behind what was described as a "criminal terror attack". Iran is a major funder of Hezbollah, a Shi'ite group headed by Hassan Nasrallah.

In a communique, Hezbollah described Wednesday's operation as "statement number one", indicating that a further response was possible. Nasrallah is expected to announce the group's formal reaction to Israel's Jan. 18 air strike on Friday.

In Beirut, celebratory gunfire rang out after the attack, while residents in the southern suburbs of the city, where Hezbollah is strong, packed their bags and prepared to evacuate neighborhoods that were heavily bombed by Israel in 2006.

In Gaza, Palestinian militant groups praised Hezbollah.

It remains to be seen whether Israel and Hezbollah will back away from further confrontation. With an Israeli election looming and Hezbollah deeply involved in support of Assad in Syria, there would appear to be little interest in a wider conflict for either side.

Regional analysts said they did not expect events to spiral.

"Netanyahu most likely realizes that a prolonged military engagement in Lebanon could cost him the election," said Ayham Kamel and Riccardo Fabiani of the Eurasia Group.

"Instead, Israel will pursue limited actions targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, but the low-scale, tit-for-tat exchanges will not broaden into a wider war."

Jordanian officials reportedly agreed to release prisoner Sajida al-Rishawi to the Islamic State (ISIS) in exchange for Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh. ISIS offered to release both al-Kasasbeh and Japanese captive Kenji Goto Jogo in exchange for al-Rishawi in a video message distributed through social media on Wednesday. Though Jordan tentatively agreed to the exchange, the deal may have stalled as officials await confirmation al-Kasasbeh is still alive.

According to the AFP news service, Jordanian officials sought proof al-Kasasbeh is still alive in captivity but received no confirmation. "We asked a while ago for proof that hero [Muadh al-Kasasbeh] is alive but we have not received anything," foreign minister Nasser Judeh said on Twitter, as translated by AFP.

Social media accounts believed to be linked to ISIS claimed al-Rishawi was released early Wednesday morning. Judeh denied these claims and said she was still in captivity pending the finalization of the deal. Al-Rishawi is facing execution in Jordan for her involvement in a 2005 bombing on a Jordanian hotel that killed dozens. She has been linked to Al-Qaeda. 

Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian army officer and pilot who was captured in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and spirited to prison in Moscow, may die in captivity there on the hunger strike she has pursued for 45 days, her lawyer wrote on January 26.

As her attorney, Mark Feygin, urged Russian President Vladimir Putin in a letter to release Savchenko, her supporters mounted a global campaign of rallies and Twitter messages, and European parliament members voted a resolution in her defense.

Savchenko was captured by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine’s Luhansk province last summer, and then hustled secretly across the border into Russia, while handcuffed and with a bag over her head, she has told a Ukrainian consul. On July 9, Russia’s main prosecutorial agency—the Investigative Committee, which answers directly to Putin’s office—charged her with complicity in the killing of two Russian journalists, alleging that she transmitted their location to Ukrainian fighters who then targeted them with a mortar round.

Savchenko is one of several Ukrainians, including documentary filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, facing trial in Russia—Sentsov is accused of bombings, arson and terrorism—for their opposition to its occupation of Crimea and invasion of southeastern Ukraine.

Putin declined to discuss Savchenko’s case when questioned about her last month in his annual press conference, saying simply that a Moscow court would decide her fate. And it is unclear whether he recognizes or cares that her continued detention has become one of the great public relations disasters of his war in Ukraine, along with last summer’s destruction of a Malaysian airliner by a Russian-built missile.

Savchenko has become a Ukrainian national hero, been elected to parliament and been designated a Ukrainian delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

In his letter, published on the website of Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy, Savchenko’s lawyer Mark Feygin calls on Vladimir Putin “for law and justice.” He writes to Putin: “You, as a lawyer, should well know the one banal rule of jurisprudence … ‘When you don’t know how to proceed, act according to the law.’” (See a full translation of Feygin's letter, below.)

Savchenko is weakening physically, Feygin writes. “It is frightening that during my last conversation with her in prison, I heard directly from her that she wants to die.”

Feygin says that proof of Savchenko’s innocence has not been seriously addressed by the court. Savchenko’s lawyers have submitted records from Savchenko’s cellphone showing that she made no calls, as she is accused of doing, to arrange the targeting of the journalists; that she was too far away from the mortar attack to have been involved; and that when the journalists died in the attack, she already had been in the custody of the Russian-backed separatists for more than an hour.

In September, the Investigative committee subjected Savchenko to a psychiatric evaluation at the Serbsky Center, a Moscow psychiatric institute where Soviet authorities for years performed abusive treatments on political dissidents.

As Feygin’s letter was published, Ukrainians worldwide held rallies to demand Savchenko’s release. Using the hashtag  #FreeSavchenko, they created a Twitter storm that aimed to reach 1 million tweets. In Strasbourg, France, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe challenged the credentials of the Russian delegation over what members said is Russia’s violation of the principles during the January 26 session for violations “of the basic principles of the Council of Europe.”

The independent Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda reported that Russia was ready to release Savchenko if Moscow’s credentials to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly are honored.

Here is a translation of Mark Feygin’s letter:

To the President of the Russian Federation, V. V. Putin – an Open Letter

I am compelled to turn to you because of the exceptional situation of my client, Ukrainian officer and pilot Nadezhda Viktorovna Savchenko. She is accused of being involved last summer in the deaths of the Russian journalists Korneliuk and Voloshin in eastern  Ukraine.

As her lawyer, I had hoped for an unbiased and lawful investigation of the case. As I saw it, even a not particularly bright student could figure this case out, not to mention the professional prosecutorial department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. Moreover there is more than enough procedural evidence to arrive at a well-grounded conclusion of Savchenko’s role in the above mentioned events.

The defense has presented proof of Savchenko’s innocence in court.  At the time of death of the two Russian journalists, Savchenko already had been held captive for more than an hour by the militant separatist battalion “Zarya”(Dawn) which is waging war against Ukrainian armed forces in Luhansk.  This is proof that Savchenko is completely innocent of the death of the journalists.

Seven months is more than enough time to check the billing records of the accused’s telephone, review the testimony of eyewitnesses and carry out the required procedural measures.  Nevertheless, Savchenko continues to be held in prison.

Is it any wonder that the reaction to such glaring injustice was the election of Savchenko to the Ukrainian parliament, her delegation as a Ukrainian representative to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the demand for her release that has been made by governments, foreign ministries and leading politicians of a number of states.

They perceive Savchenko’s persecution by Russia as a personal punishment of Ukraine’s defiance, whereas Russia’s prosecution and courts view their demands for the liberation of the innocent Savchenko as an unacceptable concession to Ukrainian “punitive forces.” Since when is duty and valor punishable? Unless of course you are a soldier and bravely stand in the face of certain death, does this deserve punishment? This is exactly how she behaved while in captivity in Luhansk.

The above circumstances have forced Savchenko to resort to a hunger strike, as a last attempt to secure a fair and just trial.

As I write to you, her refusal of food is reaching 45 days. That is a long time, a very long time. It is frightening that during my last conversation with her in prison, I heard directly from her that she wants to die. My words are not an exaggeration, all this can be confirmed by inquiring in the Federal Security Service’s Office for the Protection of the Constitutional System, which is are providing operational support in the Savchenko case.

What's next? During your press conference on December 18 in answering a question about Savchenko’s fate you planted some hope that the court case would be resolved according to the law.  But the court’s subsequent appeal hearing dashed those hopes completely.

We could continue listening to standard answers such as “the court will decide,” but we are very, very short of time.

The court took no notice of Savchenko’s abduction, did not address the in validity of her arrest, did not examine her charges. The overall impression is that the rulings pouring forth from the pages of decisions taken by various courts in this case are not reasonable and considered, but sound more like thunderous laughter, as if to say, “Why are you idiots bothering with this?”

Let’s imagine the unimaginable: You are my client and I am defending you; you can potentially be sentenced to life imprisonment. Try to imagine my situation, as I helplessly try to protect your rights, appealing to the rule of law, appealing to the media, and all I get is “to the court, to the court.” But there is no court, there is only the “troika” [the secret police masquerading as a court; Soviet troikas in the 1930s sentenced a quarter-million people to execution by firing squads].

I appeal to you for justice, and for the law. This is a public case, I would even say that it is widely known abroad, and that is why this case can no longer be “decided” secretly. You, as a lawyer, should well know one banal rule of jurisprudence (I learned this well while studying law): “When you don’t know how to proceed, act according to the law.”

So then you know what to do….

[signed] The lawyer Feygin

Irena Chalupa covers Ukraine and Eastern Europe for the Atlantic Council. This article first appeared on the Atlantic Council website.