Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton doesn’t want chatter about Satan getting in the way of his legislation.

His bill to repeal a decades-old ban on crude oil exports was introduced Tuesday as House Bill 666. By Wednesday, Barton had successfully lobbied to get its number changed to a less-Satanic 702, the Hill reports.

“It quickly became clear that the original bill number carried many different negative connotations,” Barton spokesman Sean Brown said in an email to the Hill. “We decided it was best to change it so people will focus on the content of the legislation, not the bill number.”

There’s no word on whether his exorcised bill has any better chance at passage. But if the problem at hand concerns the Book of Revelation, it seems the 114th Congress can really jump into action.

Updated | Not so fast, foie gras connoisseurs. California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced Wednesday that her office would appeal a January 7 decision to lift the state’s foie gras ban.

The ban, which went into effect in 2012, had prevented restaurants and stores from selling the fatty liver that is viewed as a culinary delicacy by some and a product of animal cruelty by others.

Los Angeles U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson deemed the ban illegal in last month’s decision, saying it encroached on the federal regulatory domain of poultry products. Foie gras still can’t be produced in California, but Wilson’s decision made it legal to import and sell it.

Many chefs rushed to fold foie gras back into their menus; with one even creating a four-course all-foie gras tasting menu the same day the ban was struck down.

Animal rights advocacy groups and activists were incensed by the decision.

“Foie gras is French for fat liver, and Fathead is the American word for the shameless chefs who actually need a law to make them stop serving the bloated, near-bursting organ of a cruelly force-fed bird,” PETA wrote in a statement following the decision. “The state will surely appeal the bad part of this ruling, and PETA believes that this decision will be reversed on appeal.”

State lawyers have now filed paperwork with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to begin the formal appeal process.

“Kamala Harris is right to appeal this questionable ruling,” said Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society. “California has the right to prevent the commerce in such a cruel and inhumane product.”

But the pro-foie gras faction disagrees. “We're very confident that the district court’s judgment will be upheld on appeal,” the plaintiffs who had challenged the ban said in a joint statement. “The decision was based on the simple fact that, in the field of meat and poultry, federal law is supreme. California does not have the right to ban wholesome, [U.S. Department of Agriculture]-approved poultry products, whether it’s foie gras or fried chicken. We look forward to having our victory affirmed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.”

The final word on selling foie gras in California is still to come. If the ruling is overturned, California would return to being the only U.S. state where the production and sale of foie gras is banned. More than a dozen countries worldwide have bans on production, says Matthew Strugar, legislative director of the PETA Foundation. Though Chicago instituted a ban on foie gras in 2006, it was quickly repealed, Strugar says, and no other U.S. city or state has passed a similar ban.

Unidentified Palestinian gunmen and Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces today became embroiled in one of their biggest gun battles in recent years in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Before sunrise this morning, a number of residents of the Balata refugee camp took aim at the PA security forces who had been conducting an operation to confiscate a large cache of weapons that had built up within the camp’s perimeter, according to The Times of Israel.  

Security sources told Palestinian outlet Maan News that three officers were injured in the shootout, which went on for several hours. Local police warned residents of the city to remain inside for safety reasons.

Security forces entering West Bank refugee camps is not an unusual occurrence, although residents often resist them by throwing stones or setting tires on fire. In November 2013 security forces exchanged fire with gunmen at Balata camp.

However, analysts say that clashes between residents and Palestinian security forces are on the rise as disillusionment grows towards the Palestinian leadership, headed by president Mahmoud Abbas.

According to Ramallah-based journalist Bethan Stanton, many Palestinians in the West Bank believe that the PA are pandering to the Israelis by carrying out raids on the camps in order to arrest alleged members of armed groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Daniel Nisman, president of geopolitical risk consultancy The Levantine Group argues that the neglection of these Palestinian communities is fostering criminality and terrorism. Nisman explains that residents in the refugee camps are increasingly feeling abandoned by the PA, and believe they are not receiving their fair share of international aid which the leadership receives: “[The gunfight] just shows that they are completely cut off. It has really been building up for months if not the past few years.”

“In the refugee camps in general in the West Bank, they are kind of going into a world of their own. There are multiple factions cooperating with each other against the PA,” he adds. “These are extremist offshoots who basically see themselves as having a shared enemy which is the PA and Israel. They themselves view the PA as functioning as an offshoot of the Israeli security apparatus.”

Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was elected president of the PA in January 2005 but has outlasted his term which was due to end in 2009, leading to militant group Hamas - who control the Gaza Strip - declaring him an illegitimate leader.

Grant Rumley, an expert in Palestinian politics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington points out that there is a growing gap between the younger and older members of Palestinian society in terms of how they view the leadership.

“For Palestinians under 45, all they have known is the PA as this bloated, bureaucratic instrument. They have very antagonistic opinions towards it,” he says.

“Palestinian youths and the middle-aged look at these raids into camps like Balata, and look at protests in the West Bank that are quashed by the PA forces, and they think: ‘What is the point of having a PA like this if this is what it is doing?’ I think moments like these are data points along the path of frustration against the PA.”

Abbas is opposed to armed resistance against Israeli occupation and has so far been unsuccessful in his negotiations to set up an independent Palestinian state. Despite his claims that Israel and Hamas are the parties to blame for the failure of talks, his approval ratings have slumped from 50% last summer to 35% in December 2014.

According to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) figures, Balata is the most populous refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and has an unemployment rate of 25%.

Islamic State’s savage burning of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh demonstrates the strengths and the weaknesses of an organization whose state-like structure makes its vulnerable yet resilient in a turbulent Middle East.

The main takeaway from this latest atrocity is that the fight against ISIS will be a long war, measured not in terms of “defeat” so much as trying to contain its expansion in the region.

Here are other issues pointed up by the latest horrors:

Savage global theater

In recent weeks, ISIS played Jordan, Japan, the media and other would-be mediators like a finely tuned violin. Jordanian military reports published Tuesday say that First Lt. Kasasbeh was killed January 3. This means that the past few weeks have been a carefully staged effort by ISIS to keep itself front and center—and to demonstrate that it will not allow its decision-making to be influenced by others.

Indeed, after news of the murder emerged, King Abdullah II’s decision to return to Jordan following a meeting with President Barack Obama demonstrates that ISIS plays the role of puppeteer, forcing others to react and adjust to its agenda. What better way to manipulate Jordan than by releasing the video during the king’s visit to the U.S.?

The sheer act of burning a man to death in a cage and the way it was orchestrated on the world stage suggest that Islamic State’s objective is to terrorize—regardless of any fear or consequences of backlash. ISIS seeks to demoralize those forces arrayed against it, particularly in Syria and Iraq, by demonstrating what happens to those who oppose it.

The brutal video is designed to recruit sadistic and ideological potential followers who might be motivated by this kind of brutality. The coming weeks will show whether this savage theater bolsters Islamic State’s numbers.

Hostages: a waning resource

Islamic State has succeeded at using hostages to fill its coffers and orchestrate its grisly propaganda. But reportedly only two remain: a British national and an unidentified Western female.

Meanwhile, the extremists’ ground gains in Iraq have been—at least temporarily—checked by coalition military strikes, and the challenges of governance in Syria are mounting. All this means that ISIS needs to find other ways of maintaining its relevance and profile through violent action.

The group may strive to take new hostages or make a more concerted effort to inspire, direct or carry out attacks on Western targets.

Has ISIS miscalculated?

It’s tempting to conclude that the brutality of Lt. Kasasbeh’s murder represents a big miscalculation by ISIS and that the young Jordanian pilot’s execution will mark a significant turn in the battle against the terrorist quasi-state.

Jordan’s powerful reaction—including promises of earth-shattering retaliation—is in many respects more meaningful than similar threats from the West. ISIS is a regional problem. Regional ownership in the fight is critical to limiting its expansion. And this fight needs to be joined by Sunnis in an effort to delegitimize the extremists and expose the group for what it is: a corruption and perversion of Islam.

The key question now is what other Arab and Muslim states say and do—and whether Lt. Kasasbeh’s murder inspires them into a more sustained effort in terms of military participation or through educational and political efforts against ISIS and radical Islam. It’s fine for the White House to convene a summit on countering violence and extremism. But every Arab and Muslim country needs to do the same.

Can ISIS be defeated?

The track record of fundamentalists willing to employ terrorism and violence in pursuit of political power in the Middle East isn’t all that good. The Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was crushed in Algeria; the Muslim Brotherhood were thrown out of power in Egypt; Hamas is confined largely to Gaza; Al-Qaeda's core has been dismantled and forced to go to ground.

But that was in the old Middle East—before nation states collapsed or were in the process of failing. It’s understandable that President Obama talks about degrading and ultimately destroying ISIS. But that probably isn’t realistic, at least not for years. That’s because Islamic State’s rise is directly related to the collapse of key Arab states, Syria in particular.

Fundamental issues in the Middle East—including ungoverned spaces; areas with bad or no governance; and the quest for identity in a region where neither secular nationalism, mainstream Islam, nor Western ways have answered the call—will virtually guarantee ISIS’s viability.

The extremists’ own dysfunction in not being able to provide basic services will constrain ISIS somewhat, as will coalition military action. But unless those ungoverned spaces can be governed relatively well, there is little chance of this organization being eradicated.

The fact that groups such as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, operating in Sinai, and others in Libya, have associated themselves with ISIS doesn’t bode well for the future. ISIS’s execution of Lt. Kasasbeh isn’t likely to be the transformative event required to energize Arab and Muslim states into action.

So for now, however imperfect, containment, preemption and prevention will have to do.

Aaron David Miller is Vice President for New Initiatives and Distinguished Scholar, Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This article first appeared on the Wilson Center website.

A Palestinian journalist was reportedly kidnapped and tortured for eight hours in Gaza this week by a group claiming to be part of Islamic State (ISIS), amid signs that the group are gaining support in the enclave and being tolerated, up to a point, by Hamas.

The journalist, Mohammed Omer was allegedly taken by the men and held between 2pm and 10pm, before they dumped him outside Shifa hospital in central Gaza. Omer has since informed police that the men who held him said they were from ISIS.

The reasons behind taking Omer hostage remain unclear - the journalist has written extensively about the Israel-Palestine conflict in the past, but has not reported widely on either ISIS or Hamas so the motivation remains a mystery. However, increased activity calls into question to what extent the terrorist group are operating in the region, and how Hamas will respond to their presence.

While Islamic extremists have been operating in the region for almost 10 years, including Jaysh al-Islam (The Army of Islam) and Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Supporters of Allah‎), Hamas, itself an Islamist group, has been largely able to control and contain these groups, despite there being a few violent clashes in the past. However, with the rise of ISIS and the rapid spread of their propaganda and ideology online, Hamas may now face new, larger-scale opposition.

The scepticism about the terrorist group’s powers in the region may be the reason Hamas have, so far, been fairly passive in their actions towards then. On 19th January they even allowed Salafist militants and supporters, many of whom carried ISIS flags, to protest outside the French Cultural Centre after the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed following the Islamist attack on its offices in Paris.

“They allowed them to do that because those French cartoons were offensive to all Muslims,” Mkheimar Abu Saada, a political scientist at French Cultural Centre , explains that if Hamas are extremely suspicious and watchful of the group’s activities. “Whether Hamas will take a stand against ISIS remains to be seen but I highly doubt they will tolerate them [in Gaza]. Hamas feel that they control Gaza and they will not want to lose that control.”

In November last year, leaflets headed with the ISIS flag were distributed in Gaza, threatening poets, writers and women. One leaflet read: "We warn the writers and poets of their wanton sayings and atheist deeds. We give the apostates three days to retract their apostasy and wantonness and enter the religion of Islam anew."

https://twitter.com/animer/status/530657806450307072

There have also been reports of Islamic State flags being seen at football games and people driving with ISIS stickers on their windscreens.

Despite these signs that ISIS, or at least supporters of ISIS are at work in Gaza, many are dubious about the extent or even legitimacy of these groups. Abu Saada dismisses the idea that they are connected to the terrorist organisation on an operational level.

“What we know about the groups in Gaza is that they have an allegiance and sympathy with the Islamic State, but we don’t have concrete information that shows they are actually part of ISIS. Signs of the Islamic State first appeared in Gaza two or three months ago - some flags, and then people handing out leaflets, but I doubt these people are really connected to ISIS.”

Abu Saada does acknowledge that when the tunnels between the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip were still operating last year about 100 Palestinians did go to fight in Syria and Iraq alongside ISIS. However, most of these tunnels now been destroyed to create a 500m ‘buffer zone’ between the countries and as Abu Saada points out, Gaza remains very cut off from the rest of the world, meaning that most information or support for the Islamic State will be online rather than in physical presence. “You have to remember that Gaza is unconnected from the outside world - the only connection is through electronic tools and mechanisms,” he says.

Grant Rumley, researcher of Palestinian and Jordanian politics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is also doubtful of ISIS’s position in Gaza: “Some of these jihadi groups may be sympathetic with al-Baghdadi [the Islamic State leader], but if this translates to an operational level is questionable. I don’t think these people are necessarily credited - they’re more like fanboys,” he adds.

Rumley, in contrast to Abu Saada, believes that the appearance of support for the Islamic State in Gaza might actually be a useful tool for Hamas. “Having ISIS in Gaza shows that Hamas aren’t the worst group - they can say to the West:  ‘Look, we’re keeping them in check’,” he says although admits that on a domestic front Hamas will not look kindly on any challenges to their authority.

And will Israel be stepping in at any point? “Israel will let Hamas deal with the ISIS problem in Gaza,” Abu Sadda says. “But if there’s any real threat to them the Israeli military will take action. They don’t wait around.”

Senator Rand Paul and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie must feel as if they've been thrown under the bus. They were just doing what every red-blooded Republican would have done.

In saying parents have the right to choose whether their kids are vaccinated for measles and other preventable illnesses, as Christie did, and in saying state-mandated immunizations have been categorically linked to mental illness, as Paul did, these (unofficial) presidential hopefuls were merely following the GOP playbook. They were teaching the controversy.

Teaching the what? It's easy. They were taking something politically neutral, like vaccinations to stop communicable diseases, and fabricating another side. Then they took the "side" of the "debate" that most reflects the values of voters they are courting.

Another thing they were doing that every Republican does, especially when gunning for the White House, was finding the freedom angle to something that's long been settled politically. That's easy too. Take any kind of law or policy that affects personal behavior and suggest, or even claim outright, that such requirements could infringe on individual liberty.

In Christie's case, he was suggesting parents are oppressed by state laws requiring children to be vaccinated. They need freedom from the regulatory state. In Paul's case, he was tapping into the vast, murky and truth-defying realm of conspiracy theory. If the government wants you to do something, there must be a host of conspiratorial forces behind it. "The state doesn't own your children," Paul said. Conclusion: Freedom equals the absence of government.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, Paul and Christie found themselves on the outside looking in. On Tuesday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner said every child should be vaccinated. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who once contracted polio, said he was grateful for vaccinations. And Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly said, with no small amount of passion, that vaccinations should be federally mandated: "Some things do require Big Brother."

These same strategies work so very well when the subject of conversation is climate change, gun violence or food stamps. Now Paul and Christie have lost even Fox News. What happened?

Apologists will say that both went too far in their hunger for a voter base and that the Republican leadership had to step in and bring them back in line. Right now that's especially important to party bosses, as they are trying to convince anyone listening that they can govern.

The most likely answer is the simplest. Unlike an environmental cataclysm, out-of-control firearm distribution and bureaucratized transfer payments, contagious diseases aren't abstract. More important, they are concrete to a majority of white, affluent senior-citizen suburbanites who make up the GOP's base of power.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Paul and Christie of being anti-science and anti-governance. That's totally true and totally irrelevant. Science and governance never won the presidency for any Republican. Ever. What does matter, however, is what propertied and privileged Republicans say, and what they said was, What the hell are you doing!

Such rare disunity presents an opportunity for Democrats to cut into the GOP's base. Nancy Pelosi already took the first step by appealing to Republicans who are educated, informed and approving of good governance, especially when it comes to issues of public health.

This opportunity is ideological as much as it is tactical. It's also historical.

Freedom from big government made a kind of sense 35 years ago when taxation was high, inflation was high, and the marketplace was highly regulated. So-called Reaganomics was once "voodoo economics," according to George H.W. Bush. Now it's orthodoxy. Movement conservatism won.

But times change. We are now at another impasse in which orthodox methods are making matters worse. Yet conservatives still believe the solution is attacking big government. Consider this from North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who seriously suggested that a way to achieve greater economic growth is to get rid of laws requiring food service employees to wash after using the restroom.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says we don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom," Tillis said with earnest. "The market will take care of that.”

Some ideologies are historically contingent. They once mattered for reasons peculiar to their time and place. But it's not enough for national Democrats to permit movement conservatism to rot on the vine. They have to replace it with a credible and productive alternative.

Perhaps more important, they have to replace the old meaning of freedom with a new one.

With the worst outbreak of measles in the past 15 years, a disease once thought to have been eradicated by vaccines, it's hard to imagine a better time to claim a meaning. Freedom is good governance.

John Stoehr is the managing editor of The Washington Spectator. Follow him on Twitter: @johnastoehr.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams apologized Wednesday night for falsely claiming to have been on an Army helicopter that was shot down during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Williams, who has been recounting the story for several years and repeated it on Friday night's broadcast, admitted that he misspoke, though not intentionally so. "I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago," Williams stated. "I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire; I was instead in a following aircraft. We all landed after the ground fire incident and spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert."

The false claim was a "bungled attempt" to thank a veteran, Williams added.

The faulty story came undone when a crew member questioned Williams's narrative in an NBC Nightly NewsFacebook comment, writing, "Sorry dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft." Williams apologized several days later in his own lengthy Facebook comment:

"You are absolutely right and I was wrong," Williams wrote. "I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp."

Here's the clip from Wednesday night:

Venezuela’s faltering economy is so out of control that a pack of 36 condoms now costs close to the monthly minimum wage, and even then they’re difficult to find.

Bloomberg News first reported Wednesday on the “latest indignity” faced by Venezuelans, who are grappling with inflation of more than 60 percent and a shortage of goods, exacerbated by falling oil prices that have sharply reduced the country’s oil export earnings.

Long lines for everyday products like sugar and deodorant are already a reality for the country’s residents. But the scarcity and sky-high price of condoms is particularly concerning in a country with high teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in Latin America, and where abortion is illegal, including in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

Based on pricing estimates on MercadoLibre, an auction website Venezuelans use to acquire scarce goods, a box of 36 Trojan condoms now costs 4,760 bolivars, or $755, close to the minimum monthly wage, according to Bloomberg, and more than the asking price for Clinique cosmetics and Bath and Body Works toiletries. Many pharmacies stopped stocking condoms and some other contraceptives in December.

Around 95 percent of the Venezuela’s foreign-currency earnings are from crude oil. As the price of oil has dropped, so has the amount Venezuela earns from oil exports --  by 60 percent in the past seven months. This has caused a shortage of dollars among importers and has made acquiring goods even more difficult. There’s now a strong chance the country will default within the year, according to Bloomberg News.

With contraceptives hard to find, more women will be put in danger by attempting to get an abortion in unsafe clinics, according to the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

"Without condoms we can't do anything," Jhonatan Rodriguez, general director of nonprofit health group StopVIH, told Bloomberg News. "This shortage threatens all the prevention programs we have been working on across the country."

Boxes of condoms are available on the black market for $25 each, slightly more than the average U.S. price of $23 for a box, but only for those with access to U.S. dollars, which is a sliver of the population, Bloomberg reports.

Earlier this week, Jorge Giordani, the former finance planner for late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela’s socialist economy had become the  “laughing stock” of Latin America.

President Nicolas Maduro, has insisted that the country’s inflation problem and soaring consumer prices are part of an “economic war” waged against the country by its enemies.

Maduro told supporters Wednesday that he would like to improve relations with the U.S., according to the BBC. The two countries have had an uneasy relationship for years. In December, the U.S. imposed sanctions on some Venezuelan officials for allegedly suppressing anti-government protests in 2014.

Arab publication An-Nahar reported Jordanian King Abdullah ibn al-Hussein will lead airstrikes against ISIS, but a Jordanian government spokesman later denied the king would be personally involved.

After video emerged of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh being burned to death by members of ISIS, the nation promised swift and harsh action against the terrorist group. One official said the response from Jordan would be “earthshaking.”

The king told al-Kasasbeh’s father, Safi, that he would be “following up personally on Muath’s case.” Abdullah has received pilot training, so the report that he would be involved in airstrikes was not entirely unbelievable. Even so, his government quickly backtracked. Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani told An-Nahar that the king would not fly a plane in the airstrikes. It remains unclear if the king will participate in another way in the operation.

Even if the king is not personally involved in the airstrikes, he clearly is extremely angry and planning to avenge the pilot’s death. In a closed-door meeting, Abdullah reportedly said the Jordanian military would fight ISIS until they were “out of fuel or bullets” and referenced Clint Eastwood’s speech about retribution in the movie Unforgiven.

Updated | Two people were killed in a shooting at the University of South Carolina on Thursday afternoon. Thom Berry, assistant chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, said the shooting, which took place around 1 p.m. on the campus in Columbia, was a murder-suicide and a "very isolated situation." The deceased were not identified, and few additional details are known at this point.

At 1:28 p.m., the school sent an alert to students stating, "Shooting at New School of Public Health. Remain indoors. Obey officials." At 2:18 p.m., the school told students via text message that there was "no longer an existing threat on campus."

Shortly after the first message, students on campus told Newsweek, they were moved from the sidewalks and instructed to go to safe school buildings. The campus was placed on lockdown, and some students were kept in classrooms at the request of the university's police department. Grace Kerley, a student who was in the library during the incident, said the library allowed students to evacuate shortly after the all-clear was given. 

"It's creepy," a USC student told Newsweek. "I always walk and park near the School of Public Health to go to my classes."

The Columbia Police Department is investigating the shooting, as is the university's police force. Although the campus is no longer under threat, the school has asked students to avoid the area. The School of Public Health remains closed, as do streets throughout campus. 

Norway, the richest country in Europe, has proposed a new law which would outlaw begging in the country and make it a crime to give money to those who are on the streets, supposedly in a bid to reduce the number of organised Roma crime groups in the country.

The Conservative-Progress Party coalition government have previously passed legislation that allowed individual municipalities to choose to ban begging but this newly proposed law would be imposed nationwide. The justice minister Vidar Brein-Karlsenhas said that the laws are focused on ‘organised begging’, rather than on individual beggars. “We need to give the police the legal authority to crack down on people who arrange for beggars to get here, often in large groups.” However, if the law is passed then vulnerable people, who are dependent on the money they make from begging will also lose out by default.

Elisabeth Braw, Newsweek’s Europe correspondent explains that for many Norwegians the issue of begging and an increased presence of Roma in the country’s cities are connected. “Roma, who used to be very rare in Scandinavian cities but can now often be seen begging, are seen as a problem to be addressed through legislation. In Scandinavian countries there are very few beggars, so the law seems mostly to be addressing Roma begging,” she continues.

The numbers of ethnic Roma migrants in Norway has increased tenfold since 2008, drawn to the wealthy country whose economy stayed relatively stable during the economic crisis. Although the country is well known for the universal nature of its welfare provision, migrants are excluded from the system if they don’t work and many Roma come into the country on tourist visas which are only valid for three months.

In 2009 Dag Terje Andersen, the minister of labour and social inclusion for the Norwegian Labour Party who were in power at the time, published a report titled: Action Plan for Improvement of the Living Conditions of Roma in Oslo. In the document he emphasised that, because Norway had signed the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities 10 years before, the Norwegian authorities were responsible for ensuring Roma were integrated into society and given equal opportunities.  

However, despite Andersen’s appeal Roma have faced growing intolerance in the last few years, exacerbated by the change of government two years ago - in 2013 Norway's Conservative party formed a coalition with the anti-immigration Progress party. The Progress party leader Siv Jensen had previously pressed for all Romani people to be sent out of Norway altogether, telling a public broadcaster: "Enough is enough. Arrange a bus, send them out.” In 2013 Roma people demonstrated in Oslo after the city council banned sleeping outdoors.

Anders Nyland, the editor-in-chief of Bergensavisen the largest city tabloid in Norway explained that Norway actually did have a vagrancy act banning begging until 2006 when it was repealed because it was no longer necessary: “That old act was concerning the traditional beggar, and there weren’t really any around then. We have the world’s best social system so the vagrancy act wasn’t needed.”

Nyland’s believes that the new law may be unfair, but is still important: “If you totally abolish begging than that of course will have an impact on the actual poor, the actual drug addicts, the actual alcoholics. But we have a new king of beggar now that aren’t really poor. And if they are, then why don’t they get into our social welfare system?”

“It’s not an anti-immigration policy. It’s to do with security and preventing organised crime,” he says. 

NATO has ranked Russia as its greatest threat, according to defence experts, as the alliance announced its plans to staff six new European bases in what its secretary general Jens Stoltenberg is calling “the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War”.

The plan will see NATO’s rapid reaction units grow to 30,000 soldiers from 13,000, and six stations will be set up in the alliance’s easternmost member states - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, all of whom either border Russia or share the Black Sea with annexed Crimea.

According to general Charles Wald, former-deputy commander of U.S. European Command, the move marks the “continuum of a wake-up call that is the threat of Russia in Ukraine”.

“It is a much bigger deal than it appears on paper,” Wald says. “The question for Europe is: is Putin creeping further and further west? Is this a precursor to Russia moving into Moldova? Nagorno Karabakh has been bubbling up and the Georgia issue is still unresolved.”

“NATO has essentially set these bases in its frontline states,” Wald says, referring to the countries’ proximity to Russian territory.

“What they will do is they will have the infrastructure to guide NATO’s forces to where they will have to go, supply them with equipment, intelligence apparatus and whatever they will need for supply chains, in the case of an attack on NATO territory.”

According to Ward, Poland and the Baltic states are the NATO member states “most nervous” of potential pro-Russian violence breaking out on their territories, as it has in Ukraine. The rapid response strategy is intended to prevent a spillover of pro-Russian violence into NATO and possibly deter violence from spreading in Ukraine.

“It is a little different with Ukraine because they are not part of NATO, but they are part of Europe and they are under attack,” Ward explains.

“The Ukrainians are never going to beat the Russians but they can at least fight them off their territory. Our belief is that we need to help the Ukrainians make it a bad trade off for Russia to continue expanding west,” Wald adds.

Yesterday NATO members Poland and Lithuania also agreed to form a joint military battalion with Ukraine, in a bid to further strengthen the military partnership between the West and Kiev.

According to Michael Clarke director general of the Royal United Services Institute which studies global defence and security, the move symbolises the return of Russia as NATO’s biggest security threat.

“The spearhead force is all part of NATO’s infrastructure plan,” Clarke says. “We are not adding any new units or putting any new spending into this, but rather we are reallocating existing units to be ready in eastern Europe from other parts of the world such as Belize,”

“They are there as skeleton staff at this point, but the point is that if they were activated it would enable reinforcements to arrive and act much more quickly as part of the NATO reinforcement plan,” Clarke says.

“NATO ranks Russia as its highest threat,” Clarke adds, but explains that for obvious reasons the governments of some NATO members are more immediately concerned by Russia’s actions than others.

“At this point in time the strategy is to show that NATO is a collective alliance, which shares risks, but if anything kicks off the facilities will be more than capable of dealing with the threat,” adding that Poland and the Baltic countries are among those most worried about a Russian advance.

“It is in the UK’s interest to reinvigorate NATO. Russia is a more fundamental danger, as opposed the Middle East.”

“If you press UK policy makers they will also probably admit that Russia poses the most serious security threat globally, but because it is below the level of open conflict in Ukraine, they are more reluctant to say that,” Clarke says.

According to Clarke’s colleague at RUSI, former Royal Navy officer Michael Codner, security has taken a back seat to the UK government’s agenda as the upcoming election has brought other issues such as the economy, healthcare and the threat of homegrown terrorism.

“It should be a top level issue, but it has been swept under the rug” Codner says.

Charles Wald echoes Clarke and Codner’s words but believes that the UK’s influence in NATO operations is crucial.

“Poland and the Baltic states are the most nervous about Russia, but the UK is the major player in Europe if anything goes down in NATO,” he says.

“They are being cautious with involvement, because they have their own economic issues but with regard to the moral initiative to act, if the US does something the UK will be right behind it.”

The announcement of the new spearhead force has not been received warmly by Russia, with Alexander Lukashevich a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defence holding a special press briefing where he warned NATO’s latest move would “inform Russia's subsequent military planning”.

“This plan is in and of itself very disturbing, because it is about raising NATO capabilities on our borders.”

“The so called plan to reinforce the eastern flank of NATO is nothing other than an increase in the battle readiness of the alliance,” Lukashevich added.

In a speech today Jens Stoltenberg played down speculation NATO’s eastern reinforcement signified concern that Russia will mount a western advance, but highlighted the move did come as a result of the “sharply escalated’ violence in eastern Ukraine, caused by “Russian-backed separatists”.

The leaders of Germany and France announced a new peace plan for Ukraine on Thursday, flying to Kiev with a new proposal they would then take on to Moscow.

The importance of reaching a deal was demonstrated by a dramatic collapse in Ukraine's hryvnia currency, which lost nearly a third of its value after the central bank halted daily auctions at which it sold hard currency to banks.

Nearly bankrupt Kiev is trying to negotiate a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, but many analysts think securing loans is impossible as long as no ceasefire is in place in the war zone in the east.

The coordinated trip by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande comes as rebels advanced on a railway hub held by Ukrainian troops after launching an offensive that scuppered a five-month-old ceasefire.

With Washington talking of arming Ukraine for the first time, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also visited Kiev on Thursday. He had no plans to go to Moscow and was not involved in the Franco-German initiative, although he supported it.

Moscow said it hope talks with Merkel and Hollande would be "constructive". A Ukrainian presidential aide awaited them with "restrained optimism".

The Franco-German plan looks like an eleventh-hour bid by Europe's core powers to halt the escalation of the conflict ahead of diplomatic deadlines likely to make east-west confrontation even worse.

German and French officials gave few details in public of the substance of their new proposals for fear of damaging the delicate diplomacy involved. Kiev and its Western allies want all forces to return to lines agreed in a September truce. The rebels, who have advanced since then, want to keep their gains.

Peace talks collapsed on Saturday in Belarus. EU leaders are expected to consider new sanctions against Moscow next week, and Germany hosts world leaders at a conference over the weekend at which Ukraine will head the agenda.

"Together with Angela Merkel we have decided to take a new initiative," Hollande told a news conference. "We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict which will be based on Ukraine's territorial integrity."

He and Merkel would meet President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev on Thursday and Russia's Vladimir Putin in Moscow the next day.

"For several days Angela Merkel and I have worked on a text ... a text that can be acceptable to all," Hollande said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier played down the prospect of a breakthrough: "I don't want to talk about the chances (of success). At this stage there is hope, rather than chances."

NATO says Russia has sent weapons, funds and troops to assist the rebel advance, negating a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine where war has already killed more than 5,000.

Moscow denies involvement in fighting for territory the Kremlin now calls "New Russia".

Speaking after meeting Poroshenko in Kiev, Kerry said Washington supported diplomacy, but would "not close our eyes" to Russian tanks and troops crossing the border.

"We are not seeking a confrontation with Russia. No-one is," Kerry said. "We are very hopeful that Russia will take advantage of our broad-based, uniform acceptance of the notion that there is a diplomatic solution staring everybody in the face. That is what we want.”

In Washington, President Barack Obama's nominee for defense secretary gave the clearest signal yet that the United States could arm Ukraine. Ashton Carter told his Senate confirmation hearing he would "very much incline" toward supplying some arms.

Moscow said it would consider any U.S. arms sent to Kiev to be a security threat.

"RESISTING THE AGGRESSOR"

Ukraine's Poroshenko told a German newspaper it was time for NATO to send "modern weapons for protection and for resisting the aggressor."

The rebels have been concentrating on Debaltseve, a rail hub where a government garrison has held out despite being nearly encircled.

On Wednesday, the rebels appeared to have captured Vuhlehirsk, a nearby small town where government troops had also been holding out. The army said it was still contesting the town, but Reuters journalists saw no sign of areas under army control. Four dead Ukrainian soldiers lay in a garden.

"Someone should come to remove these corpses, it is inhumane to leave them here to rot," said Sergey Kopun, 50, a metal worker, emerging from a cellar where he had been sheltering with his wife and quadriplegic mother from days of fighting.

In Kiev, the military said on Thursday five soldiers had been killed and 29 wounded in the past 24 hours. Troops had fended off two attempts to storm Debaltseve.

War and corruption have nearly bankrupted Ukraine, and Western sanctions and falling oil prices have also hurt Russia, with the rouble and the hryvnia now two of the world's fastest-crumbling currencies.

But Ukraine is by far the poorer of the two, and the collapse in the hryvnia was stunning. The central bank auctions scrapped on Thursday had enabled banks to set a value for the hryvnia, and without them traders had trouble finding a floor. A dramatic hike in the main interest rate to 19.5 percent from 14 percent did nothing to stop the plunge.

As the silly season of Election 2016 starts cranking up, nothing is sillier and more pathetic than the quadrennial dance of Republicans with manifestly unqualified candidates vying for the party's presidential nomination.

In the past, folks such as Herman Cain, whose résumé boasts management stints at two of the rottenest fast-food chains in world history, and Alan Keyes, a junior varsity ambassador to the very United Nations that conservative Republicans love to hate, have soaked up the spotlight in ways that boggle the mind.

Does anyone else remember the brief 2004 boomlet around Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose year in office as California's governor hadn't yet revealed what an awful, awful leader he was? At the time, his only qualification for president was threatening to shove Arianna Huffington's head in a toilet, and yet some Republicans floated the idea of changing the Constitution to let the Austrian Oak occupy the White House.

Sarah Palin, who quit being a governor after about two-and-a-half years, is "done," according to hard-core conservatives. The word-salad speech she gave at the recent "Iowa Freedom Summit" turned off the last Mama Grizzlyites. But there's still Donald Trump (who spoke at the Iowa event and is a fixture on Fox News) and Ben Carson in the mix. As I wrote in The Daily Beast:

While the GOP struggles to crack double digits in terms of votes from African Americans, the party’s overwhelmingly white members seem to have an unending appetite for high-profile, successful black men whose very presence on a debate stage softens charges of hostility and indifference to issues about race. This helps explain why The Weekly Standard is officially “Taking Ben Carson Seriously,” as Fred Barnes’s recent cover story puts it.

Even as sycophantic and try-hard a journalist as Fred Barnes admits that Carson has absolutely zero qualifications for and no shot at becoming the Republican nominee. At best, the retired brain surgeon might make a possible surgeon general. (Of course, a Republican administration truly devoted to shrinking the size, scope and spending of government would eliminate such a useless position.)

But Barnes is game to make the case for Carson, employing what George W. Bush once famously chided as the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Carson, after all, “has substantial name identification,” Barnes avers. “He can raise money. His poverty-to-prominence story is compelling. He has a grassroots following. He is fluent on national issues.”

And, perhaps most important, notes Barnes, Ricky Skaggs thinks highly of Carson: "You ask him a question and he knows how to answer." Finally, a candidate who knows how to answer.

As it happens, the GOP has a deep field of candidates who are serious and plausible, if not preferable. I don't agree fully with any of them (though Rand Paul is by far the most libertarian politician currently serving in the Senate), but the longer Republicans and conservatives jerk around with candidates who are slightly less funny jokes than Pat Paulsen ever was, the more likely they will lose in 2016.

If history is any guide, Republicans will prevaricate as long as possible and make goo-goo eyes at candidates who have no meaningful experience and no real shot at winning the presidency. That’s their right. It’s a free country after all.

But the longer they wait to get serious about vetting their party’s candidates for president, the more they will lose support among the independent voters who will decide the 2016 election. And if they lose them, they will have only themselves to blame, regardless of whom the Democrats put up to run.

Nick Gillespie is editor-in-chief of Reason.com. This article first appeared on the Reason.com website.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has sent search and rescue assets to northern Iraq in recent days, bolstering its ability to recover coalition personnel in the U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The deployments follow a decision by the United Arab Emirates to suspend its participation in coalition air strikes in December over pilot safety concerns after a Jordanian pilot was captured by the group in Syria. He was later executed.

The United Arab Emirates had called on the United States to establish better search-and-rescue capability.

A source familiar with the views of governments in the region said the Emirates were keen on re-engaging in combat operations against Islamic State and likely to resume flights once an enhanced rescue capability is operational.

The source added that other members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, including Australia and Saudi Arabia, have continued to fly combat missions from al Dhafra, a large air base near the city of Abu Dhabi where U.S. forces are also based. The source, and U.S. officials, said that despite their suspension of combat flights, the Emirates remain deeply engaged in supporting the coalition.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. personnel and aircraft were moved to the area around the northern Iraqi city of Arbil to bolster combat search and rescue capabilities. One official said helicopters were sent.

A second official said the search and rescue assets had been moved from Kuwait and would soon become operational.

Jordanian fighter jets pounded Islamic State hideouts in Syria on Thursday, in a show of force two days after the Islamic State released a video showing captured 26-year-old Jordanian pilotMouath al-Kasaesbeh being burned alive in a cage.

Whether or not you’re keen on green, our nation is undeniably in the throes of a marijuana revolution. Cultural attitudes and policy have shifted significantly in the past few years; just yesterday, the U.S. surgeon general recognized marijuana as helpful for certain medical conditions, and 23 states have legalized it for medicinal purposes thus far.

For decades, fascination with the cannabis subculture has sparked all sorts of pop culture creations, and the trend has only grown in recent years. But you can toss most of those out with the bong water. Save one: the Web series High Maintenance.

The zeitgeisty show is hinged on a simple, brilliant concept: how New York City’s widespread weed-delivery culture forces people to step momentarily into strangers’ living spaces and—by association—their lives. An unnamed pot-delivery dealer, known only as “the Guy,” must pass through the doorway and into his customers’ apartments, which range from the cramped to cavernous, to conduct what on the surface should be just a simple business transaction.

Appropriately, the interactions this fellow has with his people are weirder, and far more human, than what a grocery delivery person would encounter. And because regulars frequently order ganja from the bearded bike messenger, he becomes a constant in their lives, the way an employer or physician might. He seamlessly shifts from being a friendly pot-delivery guy to the voice of reason during a stranger’s life crisis (or weed freak-out), a shoulder to cry on or a sort of therapist when people reveal their secrets and woes to him.

The online-only series kicked off several years ago when husband-wife duo Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, themselves cannabis enthusiasts, began “beating around ideas” for a creative project after they married in 2010. Sinclair, who plays “the Guy” on High Maintenance, comes from an acting background and Blichfeld from a casting background, which earned her an Emmy for her work on 30 Rock. When we meet over halloumi salads and falafel at the East Village’s cozy Café Orlin, Blichfeld tells me they were both “too nervous to take on directorial titles at first,” and had the help of filmmaker friends for the first couple of episodes. Additionally, they were torn about whether the show had enough weight to become their primary focus instead of a passion project.

Then came the fourth episode “Heidi,” a poignant tale about falling for the wrong person, which surprised them and finally made them “get excited on-set,” according to Blichfeld. They realized that while each episode could be a self-contained entity, it could have what Sinclair calls the “unnetted cycles between these people.” This means that seemingly unrelated characters flit in and out of episodes, with the focus shifting each time on how people live and how they choose to contemplate, debate and self-medicate with pot. As the episodes went on, it became clear that these strangers were interlaced in the concrete jungle, by the personal referral system that connects future clients to “the Guy" and his services.

The anthology model wasn’t intentional, though—at least not at first. At the beginning, the couple operated with a tiny budget, and it was just easier to ask for a day of people’s time instead of, say, several weeks. “It was based out of necessity, that model. And we just wrote to what was available to us, performers and locations,” says Blichfeld. “That’s why those first episodes are all just in one space, usually with one other actor.”

Now the pair produce, write, direct and edit every episode, in addition to starring in them. (While Sinclair appears in every episode, Blichfeld makes an appearance in the episode “Rachel,” which grapples with gendered roles in marriage.)

High Maintenance kicked off with a seedling of an idea, scrapped together with the help of friends and family, and put out on the Internet with fingers crossed. After debuting online in 2013, more than a year after the first four episodes had been filmed, the show saw sky-high popularity almost overnight. Even critics fell under the show’s smoky spell and swooned: The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum wrote that the episodes felt “luxurious and twisty and humane, radiating new ideas about storytelling.”

The overwhelming praise came as a surprise to the couple, who thought High Maintenance could very well have joined “the ranks of things that just disappear into the ether,” Sinclair says.

What grounds High Maintenance is something that was initially a constraint: Due to limited resources, the series began as shorts typically ranging from five to 12 minutes, instead of a miniseries or feature-length pieces. The approach enables the creators to spin tight yarns consisting of a single moment in time, vignettes enabling the camera to linger over details—a framed picture of Helen Hunt, a cherished bottle of South African olive oil—to sketch the outline of a portrait. You, dear viewer, draw in the rest.

The episodes have gradually been stretching into longer, denser pieces that travel down more gnarled avenues. The longest episode (and the one most revelatory about its enigmatic protagonist) clocks in at a little more than 19 minutes and is making its e-debut today in the series’ new “cycle” of episodes.

Following the show’s initial development into a cult Web hit, Sinclair and Blichfeld began throwing around ideas with FX about doing a scripted pilot. But something about it didn’t feel right for both parties. They parted ways amicably, and the pair were soon approached by Vimeo, the filmmaker-driven video platform. High Maintenance became the first of Vimeo’s original “on-demand” programs, with a payment system that sees the couple raking in 90 cents out of every dollar sold of the show. That’s a rate virtually unheard-of when compared with, say, the paltry earnings that artists make working with other platforms such as Spotify. The first three pay-per-view episodes were unveiled last November.

The show has always been done at the grassroots level. The couple shot the first episode, starring their sister-in-law, in a hotel room and still rely on the contributions of friends and collaborators. Even now, with Vimeo backing, better resources and bigger stars—like Hannibal Buress and Orange Is the New Black’s Yael Stone—it remains intentionally D.I.Y. Part of the simplistic approach, Blichfeld tells me, is a nod to the Danish-bred Dogme 95 movement, a polemical 1995 cinema revolution in which filmmakers drew up a manifesto advocating a return to realistic filmmaking. Dogme 95 creators Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg were committed to using natural lighting, sound produced along with the images, strictly on-location shooting and the rejection of “superficial action.” A film central to this movement, Festen (1998), is Blicheld’s favorite of all time.

Speaking of reality: While they’re not all necessarily autobiographical, the conflicts and stories portrayed in High Maintenance are all rooted in the tales of close friends, or culled from scraps of anecdotes, perhaps overheard conversations on an overcrowded train. There’s a new one, for instance, about a couple attempting to turn their lives in a different direction after a move to Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, where Blichfeld and Sinclair live in real life.

Then there’s the harrowing tale of a paranoid couple who, one night, hear a fire alarm go off. They tear down the fire escape, only to have a downstairs neighbor yell up at them: it was just some burned food. False alarm. This happened to Sinclair and Blichfeld, too.

Before you ask: Ben Sinclair is not a dealer himself. (The couple tell me they have many friends “in the business,” though, who have no doubt helped inform their experience.) Still, that doesn’t stop people from stopping the distinctively bearded fellow on the street, whispering if they can cop a nugget. Part of the intrigue stems from the fact that we know next to nothing about “the Guy” and his life. Where does he get his supply from? What does his apartment look like? How does he kick back when he’s not wheeling and dealing? The creators decided to keep the specifics to a minimum, but in the new episodes we see more of “the Guy” than ever before, with a particular shroom-laced adventure revealing volumes about him.

There’s more on the way. During our conversation, Sinclair and Blichfeld finish each other’s sentences, excitedly commenting on the possibility of a separate miniseries, or even features, down the line. Vimeo has already ordered another “cycle” of six episodes, which the two say might focus somewhat on “that real low place you get to in the winter,” according to Sinclair. (The first six for Vimeo were all shot during the summer.) But as for right now, Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair are flying high, so to speak, on the success of their innovative show. 

Crude oil traded $2 higher before paring gains on Friday, on track for a second weekly increase, as chaos in Libya and stronger economic signals from the United States helped futures rebound from near-six-year lows.

Prices remain roughly 50 percent below their peak from the middle of last year, and no rapid recovery is expected amid rising global inventories and steady OPEC supply.

But concerns over dented output from Libya, a key Mediterranean oil producer, the anticipation of stronger U.S. jobs data and expectations of further declines in the U.S. oil-rig count later on Friday lent support to prices.

"Libya is really positive for oil prices," said Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix.

The market expects a bullish impact from a report on U.S. oil rigs that showed the largest decline in nearly 30 years last week, Jakob added. "That really triggered the rally last week."

Benchmark Brent crude futures rose by $2 before trading at $58.23 per barrel, a gain of $1.66, at 0928 GMT (04:28 a.m. EST). On Thursday, Brent closed up $2.41.

U.S. crude for March delivery also traded $2 higher, but pared gains to $52.13 per barrel, up $1.65. The contract finished with a gain of $2.03 the previous day.

Fighting across Libya, where two governments and parliaments allied to rival armed groups are vying for control, fueled concerns about the country's oil exports.

U.S. nonfarm payroll data due later on Friday is expected to show firm job growth in the world's largest oil consumer in January, a positive signal for demand.

These developments helped override worries over a global glut of oil, as well as cuts to the official selling price to Asia from top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia to the lowest level in at least 12 years.

The cut highlights Middle Eastern producers' battle to gain market share in Asia, but increases to official Saudi selling prices to the United States and Europe left a mixed signal.

"The official selling price to Europe increased quite a lot," Jakob said. "They're reflecting the tighter picture in the Mediterranean."

Still, many analysts forecast price gains to be short-lived - and limited. Growing numbers of OPEC delegates say they expect no rapid recovery in oil prices.

A strike at nine U.S. refineries accounting for 10 percent of U.S. capacity also headed into a sixth day after union leaders rejected the latest contract offer from lead negotiator Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

Convoys of buses converged from two sides on the town of Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine on Friday after separatist rebels and government forces appeared to have patched together a truce to allow civilians to be evacuated.

A Reuters correspondent outside the town of Horlivka, west of Debaltseve, said around 30 empty buses were heading towards Debaltseve under an escort from monitors from the OSCE security watchdog and rebel police and military.

Another Reuters witness said a similar convoy, controlled by Ukrainian forces, was heading to Debaltseve from Artemivsk, east of the town.

Government forces have been holding on to Debaltseve, a strategic rail hub linking the two separatist-held regions of the east, for several weeks despite prolonged artillery and tank attacks by the separatists.

The temporary truce was declared as German and French leaders pressed forward with a new peace plan to end the crisis in Ukraine.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in a conflict which has caused the biggest crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.

The rebels said the truce came into force at 9 a.m. Moscow time and witnesses said there was no firing between the two sides as the convoys moved towards Debaltseve.

But the Kiev military did not confirm any formal truce agreement.

Regional police chief Vyacheslav Abroskin said on Facebook that one person had been killed in rebel artillery shelling of the town in the early morning.

Doctors and experts say another Ebola outbreak is “inevitable”, unless the international community unites around a long-term, common approach to combat the disease in the future and substantial investment is made into the health services of affected developing countries.

Although reports of new cases of Ebola have been reduced to around 100 a week in the West African countries so ravaged by the disease that it was declared a health emergency last August, medical and aid organizations are clear that the Ebola crisis isn’t over yet.

There were 9,936 reported cases of Ebola and 4,877 deaths caused by the virus in 2014 according to official figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO).

While health teams have by now managed to control and identify most cases, Dr Jimmy Whitworth, head of population health at the Wellcome Trust says that some people are still out in the community living with the virus. “It’s not over at all. It’s very dangerous to say that it’s over,” he says, speaking from Sierra Leone.

Health officials and NGOs are keen to highlight the precarious point that the fight against the disease has reached, with local health services woefully inadequate to cope if there were to be a further outbreak once the majority of international assistance has dried up.

“Ebola has paralysed the health systems,” says Sophie-Jane Madden, a spokesperson for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), one of the aid organizations that set up Ebola treatment centres across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, adding that “it only takes one case to reignite the epidemic”.

The surveillance systems in place to monitor the spread of the virus are far from watertight. Madden says that half the people that come into MSF treatment centres in Sierra Leone are not on a ‘contact list’, meaning they’re not known to medical staff to have come into contact with anyone with the disease.

In addition to this, Dr Whitworth says the occurrence of the disease somewhere in Africa again is a certainty since Ebola can be transmitted from wildlife. Bats have been named as a main carrier, likely transmitting the virus by dropping fruit that is then eaten by animals, contaminating their meat.

Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesperson for the World Health Organisation (WHO), which has already raised $1 billion to aid the affected countries, says that the organisation needs a further $1.5 billion to continue to combat the disease in the next six months.

Jasarevic says that although WHO has 700 people on the ground in three West African countries, to keep that level of operations up they need more money. “Money is not less needed,” he says, “On the contrary, we need people on the ground and we need donors to honour pledges. It’s important that people keep pledging.”

However, funds are ebbing according to Brendan Paddy from the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) in the UK, who says that the organization’s Ebola appeal has all but stopped receiving funds. The organization successfully raised £20mn for the cause in October.

“The vast bulk of income comes in the early weeks of the appeal and trail off very sharply,” he says, adding that “the volume of money coming in now is a trickle”.

Complacency will lead to another uncontrolled outbreak, say experts, and building up poorer countries health systems is the only way to safeguard against the spread of the virus in the future.

“Ebola is an international problem. These epidemics occurred in low resourced countries, and they take quite an effort to be able to control them. These countries need to be able to identify and respond.” In order to do that, Dr Whitworth says West Africa needs a combination of “strong public health measures, group surveillance and health systems”, as well as international aid.

“We need to make sure that we’ve build stronger health systems in the places that Ebola exists. We need funding, organization, health units and hosts around the country,” Dr Whitworth says, stressing the importance of having knowledgeable people in the affected area itself who are in the position to recognize an infection and act upon it rapidly.

Mukesh Kapila, professor of global health and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester says that the solution lies in building better infrastructure rather than finding a vaccine.

“Vaccines are not the answer,” he says. “The current outbreak reflected failure in public health system. Even if an effective vaccine is found, outbreaks always happen. It is extremely important that we do not rely on vaccines as a guarantee. Vaccines are a panic reaction.”

Kapila, who travelled to Ebola treatment centres in Sierra Leone last year, highlights broader public health concerns, warning against an “Ebola-centric response” that would be insufficient to tackle any other illnesses.

“It’s not about stopping Ebola from coming back, it’s about how can we make sure that the system is reconstructed. Bad governments and bad investment and resources in these areas keep the system from operating,” he says. “The fact that Ebola found weaknesses in the health system is not surprising.”

Building a sustainable health system could take generations, according to Kapila, and short term international aid projects are not long lasting enough. “20, 30 or 40  years of ongoing work is needed,” he says.

“The international community needs to take a common approach and help the host country work out what the right policy is for that country,” Kapila says. “Or the lottery of life and death will continue”.  

U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation on Thursday to broaden sanctions against North Korea by imposing stiffer punishments on foreign companies doing business with Pyongyang, a measure that could impact mostly on Chinese firms.

"In the wake of the state-sponsored cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, the bipartisan legislation targets North Korea's access to the hard currency and other goods that help keep the regime in power," said the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Republican Representative Ed Royce.

"Additionally, it presses the Administration to use all available tools to impose sanctions against North Korea and on countries and companies that assist North Korea in bolstering its nuclear weapons program," Royce, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said in a statement.

The vast majority of North Korea's business dealings are with neighboring China, which bought 90 percent of the isolated country's exports in 2013, according to data compiled by South Korea's International Trade Association.

The bill responds to concern in Congress about last year's cyber attack on Sony Pictures, which was blamed on Pyongyang, as well as what lawmakers see as the international failure to rein in the reclusive state's nuclear weapons program.

The measure is co-sponsored by Republicans and Democrats, including the leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Royce, and Democrat Eliot Engel.

A similar bill is likely in the U.S. Senate. It is expected to enjoy strong bipartisan support in both chambers.

The bill would authorize U.S. officials to freeze assets held in the United States of those found to have direct ties to illicit North Korean activities like its nuclear program, as well as those that do business with North Korea, providing its government with hard currency.

It would also target banks that facilitate North Korean proliferation, smuggling, money laundering, and human rights abuses, and target people who helped in the cyber attacks against the United States, Royce said.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said frequent sanctions would not help resolve the North Korean issue.

Gareth Johnson, owner of China-based Young Pioneer Tours, which takes tourists into North Korea, criticized the bill.

"Whilst we personally do not hold any accounts in the U.S., this is obviously not a great move ... (This) will just create a siege mentality when those of us involved in the country are trying to open things further."

Sanctions Not So Strong - Lawyer

North Korea is already heavily sanctioned by the United States and United Nations for its arms programs and nuclear tests. President Barack Obama imposed new sanctions last year aimed at cutting the country's remaining links to the international financial system.

"Contrary to a common misconception, current U.S. sanctions against North Korea are weaker than our sanctions against Belarus and Zimbabwe," said Joshua Stanton, a Washington D.C. attorney and blogger who assisted with the drafting of the legislation.

"Other than some pin-prick, whack-a-mole sanctions against low and mid-level arms dealers and just one major North Korean bank, their strength is mostly a figment of the academic imagination."

Critics view the flow of hard currency into North Korea as potentially funding North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but it was not clear to what extent companies engaged in legal businesses would be affected by the proposed measures.

Such connections are difficult to track in China, and separating legal business from illicit can be even harder.

Bank of China, China's fourth biggest bank, said in May 2013 that it had shut the account of North Korea's main foreign exchange bank, Foreign Trade Bank, in the wake of international pressure to punish Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs.

The bill is intended to push the Obama administration, which contends the president already has sufficient authority to punish Pyongyang.

Sony said on Thursday that Amy Pascal would step down as co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment after the hackers, angry about a movie she championed mocking North Korea's leader, exposed a raft of embarrassing emails between her and other Hollywood figures.