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More than half of Americans approve of a former intelligence contractor’s decision to leak classified details of sprawling government surveillance programs, according to the results of a new TIME poll. Fifty-four percent of respondents said the leaker, Edward Snowden, 29, did a “good thing” in releasing information about the government programs, which collect phone, email, and Internet search records in an effort, officials say, to prevent terrorist attacks. Just 30 percent disagreed. But an almost identical number of Americans —  53 percent —  still said he should be prosecuted for the leak, compared to 28% who said he should not. Americans aged 18 to 34 break from older generations in showing far more support for Snowden’s actions. Just 41 percent of that cohort say he should face charges, while 43 percent say he should not. Just 19 percent of that age group say the leak was a “bad thing.”

Overall, Americans are sharply divided over the government’s use of surveillance programs to prevent terrorist attacks, according to the results of the poll. Forty-eight percent of Americans approve of the surveillance programs, while 44 percent disapprove, a statistical tie given the poll’s four-point margin of error.

A majority of the poll’s respondents say that the surveillance programs have helped protect national security, with 63 percent saying they’ve had “some” or a “great deal” of impact in protecting the country. Just 31 percent says they’ve done “not much” or “nothing at all.” A narrow plurality of those polled, 48 percent to 43 percent, believe that the federal government is striking the right balance between protecting Americans’ privacy and protecting their physical well-being or that the government should be doing more to prevent terrorism.

Eighteen months ago, TAC publisher Ron Unz discovered an astonishing account of the role the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, had played in suppressing information about what happened to American soldiers missing in action in Vietnam. Below, we present in full Sydney Schanberg’s explosive story. * * * John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain’s military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them. The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

While the major news media focused on Donald Trump’s agnostic response about whether he would respect the results of the Nov. 8 election, Hillary Clinton slipped in a little-noticed but important revision to her call for a “no-fly zone” in Syria, suggesting that it would be negotiated with Russia and Syria. “This would not be done just on the first day,” Clinton replied to a question about the military cost and human toll that imposing a no-fly zone would require. “This would take a lot of negotiation. And it would also take making it clear to the Russians and the Syrians that our purpose here was to provide safe zones on the ground.”

Before Wednesday night, Clinton had left the impression that the U.S. military would unilaterally impose a “no-fly zone” on Syria, a military action that not only would violate international law but would require a major commitment of U.S. forces to destroy Syrian air defenses and to shoot down planes from the Syrian and possibly the Russian air forces. President Obama and the U.S. military high command have resisted pressure to implement Clinton’s suggestion because of the potential for killing large numbers of civilians and dragging the United States into a wider war, potentially a clash with nuclear-armed Russia. Debate moderator Chris Wallace noted, “General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says you impose a no-fly zone, chances are you’re going to get into a war – his words — with Syria and Russia. So the question I have is, if you impose a no-fly zone — first of all, how do you respond to their concerns? Secondly, if you impose a no-fly zone and a Russian plane violates that, does President Clinton shoot that plane down?” Breaking from her usual belligerent tone, Clinton repackaged her idea as something quite different, a diplomatic initiative to persuade the Syrian and Russian governments that they should allow the creation of a “safe zone” so Syrians fleeing the fighting could have a place to live inside Syria.

Clinton said: “We’ve had millions of people leave Syria and those millions of people inside Syria who have been dislocated. So I think we could strike a deal and make it very clear to the Russians and the Syrians that this was something that we believe was in the best interests of the people on the ground in Syria, it would help us with our fight against ISIS.” Whether the Syrian leadership and the Russian government would accept such a plan is doubtful, since it would amount to inviting the U.S. or NATO military to establish a beachhead inside Syria from which rebels, terrorists and other insurgents could operate beyond the reach of military retaliation.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday threatened to destroy Syrian air defense systems after they fired ground-to-air missiles at Israeli warplanes carrying out strikes. “The next time the Syrians use their air defense systems against our planes we will destroy them without the slightest hesitation,” Lieberman said on Israeli public radio.

The federal government’s battered policy against what it considers to be “indecent” programming on television has weathered two showdowns in the Supreme Court in the past three years.  But, on Thursday, the Court impliedly posed a question: whether that Federal Communications Commission policy — if left as is — would survive a third such encounter.  The signals were not promising for the FCC. The new ruling in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, et al. (10-1293), of course, did not strike down the policy.  It nullified specific orders by the FCC enforcing its policy, and avoided the First Amendment issue altogether.  FCC thus does retain the option of going right ahead to regulate broadcasts of single uses of four-letter words and momentary glimpses of provocative nudity, as if nothing had changed.   It also has the option of reconsidering, but anything new it writes will again be tested constitutionally, so either way, there will be a third round.

Washington, DC, January 23, 2014 – Forty-six years ago today - well before Edward Snowden was born - the National Security Agency suffered what may still rank as the most significant compromise ever of its code secrets when the American spy ship USS Pueblo was captured by communist forces off the coast of North Korea on January 23, 1968. The U.S. Navy signals intelligence ship was on a mission to intercept radio and electronic transmissions, and apparently sailing in international waters, when North Korean naval units opened fire, then boarded the vessel and took its crew hostage for almost a year, sparking a major international crisis. Beyond the dramatic political ramifications of the seizure and hostage-taking for the Lyndon Johnson administration and U.S. world standing, the incident resulted in the capture of a dozen top secret encryption devices, maintenance manuals, and other code materials. Because it involved actual encryption equipment rather than just papers and briefing materials, the Pueblo affair may have produced a much greater loss than the recent disclosures of former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden.

Recently declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive describe tense U.S. internal reactions to the Pueblo seizure, and include previously withheld high-level political and military deliberations over how to respond to the episode in an atmosphere fraught with the dangers of a superpower conflict. Military contingency plans, which President Lyndon Johnson eventually rejected, included a naval blockade, major air strikes and even use of nuclear weapons against North Korea.

The Pentagon and the defense industry came out of the $1 trillion omnibus spending bill as a big winner, experts and lawmakers said Tuesday, a day after the bill was released. “The big winner is the Defense Department. They should be breaking out champagne in the Pentagon,” said Gordon Adams, a defense budget expert and former Clinton official.The omnibus spending bill provides about $497 billion for the Defense Department in 2014 — about the same as in 2013. But the Pentagon also received $85.2 billion in overseas contingency operations (OCO) for the war in Afghanistan, roughly $5 billion more than it requested for 2014.Before last month’s budget deal that relieved $22.4 billion in sequestration cuts, the 2014 defense budget would have been around $475 billion. The OCO funding, which Adams said is the “cherry on top of the dessert,” can be used to pay for operations and maintenance in the base budget and help restore military readiness lost in previous years. Fiscal watchdog and anti-war groups criticized the $5 billion increase from the Pentagon's request in OCO funding as a “slush fund to pad the department’s budget and avoid spending reductions,” especially with the winding down of the Afghan War. 

The defense industry was also a winner in the omnibus spending bill, Adams said. All major weapons systems procurement requests were fully-funded, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system in history. Also fully funded were the Army’s M1 Abrams tank program, and the Navy’s shipbuilding plans for eight new ships. Israel is also a winner in the omnibus spending bill, with money fully provided for the Arrow, David’s Sling, and the Iron Dome rocket defense systems. 

While lawmakers touted the completed spending bill as a win for nearly everyone, there were a few losers. One of the most notable losers included the Pentagon’s research and development projects, which received $7 billion less than last year.In addition, the defense space program and the procurement for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye program were delayed. Also, funds for the Afghan National Security Forces is about half as much as the White House requested, Adams said.

A bipartisan team of California state senators introduced legislation Monday that would prohibit the state and its localities from providing "material support" to the National Security Agency. If the bill becomes law, it would deny NSA facilities access to water and electricity from public utilities, impose sanctions on companies trying to fill the resulting void and outlaw NSA research partnerships with state universities. Companies with state contracts also would be banned from working with the NSA.

The bill's intent is largely symbolic. Universities might be affected, but the NSA does not currently operate a large data facility in the state. A similar bill was introduced in Arizona by state Sen. Kelli Ward, a Republican, in December. Ward described her bill as a preventive strike and a way "to back our neighbors [in Utah] up." The OffNow coalition of advocacy groups is urging Utah lawmakers to pass their own version of the legislation to override the city of Bluffdale's water contract with the NSA's $1.5 billion Utah Data Center. No legislator has publicly announced they will sponsor the bill.

The Arizona and California bills are based on model legislation drafted by the Tenth Amendment Center, which organized the OffNow coalition with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

After such a 1984-esque send-up, it doesn’t even really matter what else Obama had to say in his speech about NSA reforms and the like. Rest assured, it was largely a pack of lies. Mind you, Obama said it eloquently enough and interspersed it with all the appropriately glib patriotic remarks about individual freedom and the need to defend the Constitution and securing the life of our nation while preserving our liberties. After all, Obama has proven to be very good at saying one thing and doing another, whether it’s insisting that “you can keep your health care plan,” that he’ll close Guantanamo, or that his administration’s controversial drone strikes only target terrorists and not civilians. When it comes to the NSA, Obama has been lying to the American people for quite some time now. There was the time he claimed the secret FISA court is “transparent.” Then he insisted that “we don’t have a domestic spying program.” And then, to top it all off, he actually insisted there was no evidence the NSA was “actually abusing” its power. As David Sirota writes for Salon: “it has now become almost silly to insinuate or assume that the president hasn’t also been lying. Why? Because if that’s true — if indeed he hasn’t been deliberately lying — then it means he has been dangerously, irresponsibly and negligently ignorant of not only the government he runs, but also of the news breaking around him.”

So in terms of Obama’s latest speech on the NSA, if you read between the lines—or just ignore the president’s words and pay attention to his actions—it’s clear that nothing is going to change. The NSA will continue to abuse its power by spying on Americans’ phone calls and emails. They will continue to collect metadata on our various communications and activities. And they will continue to carry out their surveillance in secret, with no attempts at transparency or accountability. The NSA will do so, no matter what Obama claims to the contrary, because this black ops-funded agency whose very existence is abhorrent to the Constitution has become a power unto itself. They no longer work for us or for the president, for that matter. He works for them. Remember, Obama is the chief executive of a super secretive surveillance state whose overarching purpose is to remain in power by any means available. As such, he and his surveillance state cohorts have far more in common with King George and the British government of his day than with the American colonists who worked hard to foment a rebellion and overthrow a despotic regime.

Indeed, Obama and his speechwriters would do well to brush up on their history. In doing so, they will find that the Sons of Liberty, the “small, secret surveillance committee” they conveniently liken to the NSA, was in fact an underground, revolutionary movement that fought the established government of its day, whose members were considered agitators, traitors and terrorists not unlike Edward Snowden.

Today, TomDispatch regular Mattea Kramer provides a third potential reason in her striking explanation of just how the Pentagon has been managing to avoid serious sequestration cuts.  It turns out that billions of dollars in extra funding are being salted away in a supplementary war-fighting budget that Congress grants the U.S. military, which is subject to neither cuts nor caps.  But here’s a potential problem: that budget relies on the existence of an Afghan War.  What if, after 2014, there isn’t even a residual American component to that war?  Not that the Pentagon wouldn't try to keep "war budget" funding alive, but it's clearly a harder, more embarrassing task without a war to fund. That's just one of the questions that emerges from Kramer’s clear-eyed look at what -- once you’ve read her piece -- can only be considered the Pentagon’s sequestration con game.  It’s a shocking tale largely because, while the budget figures are clear enough, you can’t read about them anywhere except here at TomDispatch. 

JPMorgan Chase and federal authorities are nearing settlements over the bank's ties to Bernard L. Madoff, striking tentative deals that would involve roughly $2 billion in penalties and a rare criminal action. The government will use a sizable portion of the money to compensate Mr. Madoff's victims. The settlements, which are coming together on the anniversary of Mr. Madoff's arrest at his Manhattan penthouse five years ago on Wednesday, would fault the bank for turning a blind eye to his huge Ponzi scheme, according to people briefed on the case who were not authorized to speak publicly.

A settlement with federal prosecutors in Manhattan, the people said, would include a so-called deferred-prosecution agreement and more than $1 billion in penalties to resolve the criminal case. The rest of the fines would be imposed by Washington regulators investigating broader gaps in the bank's money-laundering safeguards. The agreement to deferred prosecution would also list the bank's criminal violations in a court filing but stop short of an indictment as long as JPMorgan pays the penalties and acknowledges the facts of the government's case. In the negotiations, the prosecutors discussed the idea of extracting a guilty plea from JPMorgan, the people said, but ultimately chose the steep fine and deferred-prosecution agreement, which could come by the end of the year.

The government has been reluctant to bring criminal charges against large corporations, fearing that such an action could imperil a company and throw innocent employees out of work. Those fears trace to the indictment of Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, which went out of businesses after its 2002 conviction, taking 28,000 jobs with it. Ever since, prosecutors have increasingly relied on deferred-prosecution agreements, which rebuke companies without threatening their health. Although a Wall Street bank has never faced a deferred-prosecution agreement, according to a University of Virginia Law School database, Wachovia and the banking arm of American Express have entered into such deals. The agreements, however, have fueled concern that some banks, having grown so large and interconnected, are too big to indict.

(UPI) --U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has deployed an additional warship to the Persian Gulf in response to the lightning offensive launched by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq.The USS Mesa Verde, an amphibious transport dock ship, joins USS George H.W. Bush, USS Philippine Sea, USS Truxtun, USS Arleigh Burke and USS Okane in the Persian Gulf.Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby announced Mesa Verde's repositioning on Monday."Its presence in the Gulf adds to that of other U.S. naval ships already there -- including the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush -- and provides the commander in chief additional options to protect American citizens and interests in Iraq, should he choose to use them."The USS Mesa Verde is "capable of conducting a variety of quick-reaction and crisis response operations," Kirby noted. The amphibious transport dock ship is transporting an unspecified number of MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Thursday he is stepping down from the post he has held for nearly six years—making him one of the longest-serving attorneys general in American history. Holder was the first African-American to hold the position and will surely be remembered as a trailblazer for civil rights.

But there is one area where Holder falls woefully short: prosecution of Wall Street firms and executives. He came into office just months after widespread fraud and malfeasance in the financial sector brought the American economy to its knees, and yet no executive has faced criminal prosecution. Beyond the crash, Holder established a disturbing pattern of allowing large financial institutions escape culpability. “His record is really badly blemished by his nearly overwhelming failure to hold corporate criminals accountable,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Five years later, we can say he did almost nothing to hold the perpetrators of the crisis accountable.”

Advocates for financial accountability often point to the Savings and Loan crisis as a counter-example: despite much smaller-scale fraud, 1,000 bankers were convicted in federal prosecutions and many went to prison. Holder has tried to explain his lack of prosecutions relating to the 2008 collapse by claiming the cases were too hard to prove—but many experts disagree. The Sarbanes Oxley Act, for example, would provide a straightforward template: it makes it a crime for executives to sign inaccurate financial statements, and there is ample evidence that Wall Street CEOs were aware of the toxicity of the sub-prime mortgages sold by their firms.

#15 – Dissecting the Fake Intercept Disseminated by SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5E8kDo2n6g Note: Half of the Post Translated; The Remaining Half is Speculative Complete Original of the Post (in Russian) Can Be Found at Eugene-DF LiveJournal In the disseminated intercept, the place from which the missile was allegedly launched is clearly indicated: the checkpoint at the settlement of Chernukhino. Pay close attention at the Alleged Map of the MH17 Catastrophe.

And, so, we have the background. Let’s see how the picture unfolds: The launch is alleged to have been made from Chernukhino. The maximum distance of the launch is 16 kilometres. The aircraft fell between Snezhnoye and Torez. That’s 37 kilometres, which is 20 kilometres more than the maximum possible point at which the plain could have been hit. You know, even a plane with turned-off engines can’t glide like that. But the trouble is that the aircraft was not whole. According to the pattern of the spread of fuselage fragments and bodies, the plane was ruptured practically with the first shot. Here it must be mentioned that the high-explosive/fragmentation warhead of the rocket has a mass of approximately 50 kilograms (by the way, Ukrainians have an outdated modification, which is only 40 kilograms).

Overall, that’s not too little; however, it must be understood that it detonates not when it sticks into an airplane, but when it is still at a certain, and fairly significant distance. Moreover, the main strike factor is not the blast wave, but far more significantly – the stream of fragments. These fragments are previously prepared rods (and in the earlier versions – little cubes, if I recall correctly). And yes, for a jet fighter, that, in itself, is more than sufficient. However, here we are dealing with a huge airliner. Yes, one rocket will rip the casing, cause depressurization, and will kill a lot of passengers. But it will not break up the airliner into pieces. Given certain conditions, the pilots may even be able to land it. And, in fact, there have been precedents (to be provided in future posts). For example – the very same An-28, which is alleged to have been the first victim of a BUK system; even though it was done for, but the crew was able to successfully catapult out. Which, in some way, symbolizes. An An-28, by the way, is far smaller than a Boeing.

SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: Great to be here.

RADDATZ: Given what’s happening in Syria, is there any world in which the president would be comfortable with Assad maintaining power? POWER: Well, the challenge with Assad, in addition to the fact that he gasses his own people and uses barrel bombs and you know, that we haven’t seen a dictator like him in a very long time – put that all to one side. The other challenge is he hasn’t been at all effective fighting ISIL. In fact, the presence of Assad has attracted foreign terrorist fighters. We are targeting them. We are having good success, again, particularly in the northern part of the country actually blunting ISIL’s progress and rolling them back. RADDATZ: Well, let’s talk about the U.S. effectiveness. One of the key parts of our strategy has been training moderate Syrian rebels. You heard General Austen just say there have only been four or five fighters who are still in the fight. And Central Command admitted Friday that U.S.-backed rebels turned over weapons and trucks to the al-Nusra front and the al Qaeda affiliated group. Not only did we not know about it for a week, they denied this happened. So what does this say about our vetting of those rebels? POWER: Well, first of all, let me say that as President Obama, I think, has said really from the very first time the issue of training and equipment came up that this would be very complex. And indeed as you know, he really grappled with this back in 2012 when the issue was first brought to him. We decided to go forward for a very simple reason, which is that when ISIL is cleared from a town – let’s say a town in the northern part of Syria – it’s extremely important that the town be held and that ISIL not reoccupy it as soon as the air strike or something ceases. And so you really need to have ground forces. We’ve worked extremely effectively with Kurdish forces in the northern part of the country, and Syrian Arab forces are going to need to be a part of the solution because they’re...

RADDATZ: But it doesn’t seem to be working so far. We understand the reasons for doing it... POWER: Totally fair. Totally fair. It’s obviously even more complex, I think, that we would have envisioned. But I think we can’t lose sight of the fact that this has to be a critical part of our strategy. DoD is looking now at adjustments that will need to be made to the program, clearly. And I think it’s very important as we vet and seek to, of course, strengthen our vetting procedures in order to avoid scenarios like the one that you’ve described. By the same token, this is a risk management exercise. We also have to grapple with the fact that if we weren’t investing in Syrian-Arab forces and in moderate Syrian opposition forces, we’d be in a world where again, ISIL would be able to have a protracted presence without being displaced over time. So we need to invest in this, we need to get the vetting right, and I think DoD has in mind some improvements that will enhance our process.

President Barack Obama bragged to his aides that he's 'really good at killing people,' according to explosive claims in a new book about the 2012 presidential campaign.The revelation comes at a time when Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, has faced increasing criticism for his use of drones to target insurgents and terrorist suspects, particularly in Pakistan and Yemen.  The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that Obama has authorized 326 drone strikes. Since 2004, CIA unmanned aerial vehicles have killed 2,500 to 3,600 people - including up to 950 civilians.

The United States has decided to allow airstrikes to defend Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military from any attackers, even if the enemies hail from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials said on Sunday.The decision by President Barack Obama, which could deepen the U.S. role in Syria's conflict, aims to shield a still-fledging group of Syrian fighters armed and trained by the United States to battle Islamic State militants -- not forces loyal to Assad.But in Syria's messy civil war, Islamic State is only one of the threats to the U.S. recruits. The first batch of U.S.-trained forces deployed to northern Syria came under fire on Friday from other militants, triggering the first known U.S. airstrikes to support them.U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to confirm details of the decision, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, said the United States would provide offensive strikes to support advances against Islamic State targets. The United States would also provide defensive support to repel any attackers.

The Pentagon and the White House declined to discuss the decision on rules of engagement or confirm comments by the unnamed U.S. officials.

The U.S. military launched its program in May to train up to 5,400 fighters a year in what was seen as a test of Obama's strategy of getting local partners to combat extremists and keep U.S. troops off the front lines.The training program has been challenged from the start, with many candidates being declared ineligible and some even dropping out.

A new leaked test, which was first exposed by War is Boring, provides more evidence that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s demonstrated performance is inferior to the current fighters it is designed to replace. Specifically, the report finds that, in a series of 17 dogfights, the F-35 was consistently outmatched by an aging F-16. An F-35A test pilot with extensive dogfighting experience in F-16s and F-15s wrote the report, detailing his cockpit observations during the January 2015 maneuvering combat tests of the F-35 against a 30-year-old F-16 at Edwards Flight Test Center in California. The report, marked for official use only (FOUO), highlighted serious concerns about the plane’s performance in this key mission.

The Interfax news agency quoted a Russian Embassy official in Tehran as saying on September 9 that Iran approved all of Moscow's requests on flights delivering humanitarian aid to Syria. Separately, a Russian Embassy official in Athens told TASS that Greece granted Russia the right to use its airspace for humanitarian flights to Syria on August 31. Greece said this week that the United States had asked it to close its airspace to Russian aid flights to Syria because of concerns that Moscow might be building up military forces to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Daniel Mitov said on September 9 that Sofia could allow Syria-bound Russian planes to cross its airspace if Moscow permits it to inspect the cargo at a Bulgarian airport. Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Ministry has acknowledged that Russian military experts were present in Syria. Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on September 9 that the experts were assisting with Russian arms deliveries to Syria, which Moscow says are aimed at combating terrorism. She also said U.S. requests to Greece and Bulgaria to close their airspace for Russian flights to Syria amount to "international boorishness."

The comments come a day after Washington said it was "concerned by reports that Russia may have deployed additional military personnel and aircraft to Syria." White House spokesman Josh Earnest also warned that a Russian military buildup in Syria could lead to a "confrontation" with the U.S.-led coalition carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.

Syrian troops and allied militia backed by a fresh wave of Russian air strikes and cruise missiles fired from warships attacked rebel forces on Thursday as the government extended an offensive to recapture territory in the west of the country.The assault focused on western areas where rebel advances earlier this year had threatened the coastal region vital to President Bashar al-Assad's support base.The Russian Defence Ministry said it fired missiles from ships in the Caspian Sea for a second day and had hit weapons factories, arms dumps, command centers and training camps.

On the ground, forces loyal to the Syrian government targeted insurgents in the Ghab Plain area in the west of the country, with heavy barrages of surface-to-surface missiles as Russian warplanes bombed from above, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a rebel there.

Syria said it had set in train a major military operation to regain the upper hand on the battlefield. Its civil war began more than four years ago and has now killed 250,000 people, sent millions into exile as refugees and drawn in world and regional powers.Assad's armed forces "have launched wide-ranging attacks to deal with the terrorist groups, and to liberate the areas which had suffered from the terrorist rule and crimes", Syria's army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Ali Abdullah Ayoub, was quoted as saying by state media.