Sony decided to release "The Interview" online Wednesday following its initial decision to pull the movie after threats from a hacker group.

You can also watch the movie in about 300 US theaters starting Christmas Day.

The hacker group, Guardians of Peace (GOP), was backed by North Korea, the FBI said on Friday. The movie depicts the assassination of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

So, what's all the fuss about? I rented "The Interview" on Google Play and watched the whole thing. Here's my quick take:

First of all, the movie is terrible. I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, but for a guy as funny as Seth Rogen, it's pretty bad. Lots of fart jokes and gratuitous swearing. You shouldn't feel some sort of nationalistic obligation to watch "The Interview." It's that bad.

But it's also easy to see why GOP and North Korea went to war against this movie. It paints Kim Jong Un as a childish playboy. He listens to Katy Perry. He dances with strippers. He's obsessed with margaritas and American culture.

He poops in his pants. 

There are also a bunch of American celebrity cameos, which comes off as a tacit endorsement of the film's message by some of the most famous people in the US. Brian Williams. Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Eminem. Rob Lowe. Bill Maher. And more.

Here's a breakdown of what I saw watching the movie. There are obviously a few spoilers, but I mostly stuck to the plot points that likely angered the GOP and North Korea.

We start with this modified Columbia Pictures logo. It gives the sense of an old propaganda film.

More propaganda-type stuff in the opening credits.

The first scene is this little girl in North Korea singing about how the country wants the US to explode in a ball of fiery hell.

NBC News Anchor Brian Williams has a cameo, with a report that North Korea built a new missile that can reach the US.

But while the rest of the world is freaking out, James Franco's character is interviewing Eminem about the lyrics in his latest song. This is mostly just exposition though.

Franco and Seth Rogen's characters are celebrating their 1,000th episode. The show mostly covers celebrity gossip though. Still, it's clear the two want to be hard-hitting journalists.

At the party, Rogen meets an old friend, a producer for 60 Minutes. The friend makes fun of Rogen for running a celebrity gossip show and not a serious news show.

There are a lot of cameos in this movie. Here's Rob Lowe.

Plot twist! A news report comes out that Kim Jong Un is a big fan of Franco's character's gossip show. Rogen and Franco see this as a chance to finally land a serious interview.

Rogen tries to call Kim Jong Un's office for an interview. Eventually they call back. But Rogen is drunk in a cab and does a really bad, offensive Asian accent.

Rogen goes to a secret location in China to meet with Kim Jong Un's representatives to set up the interview.

He finally meets them on a mountain in China. They set up the conditions for the interview.

Another cameo: Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Before the guys go to North Korea, this CIA agent shows up and asks them to assassinate Kim Jong Un.

The guys agree, and the CIA tells them that the assassination can't be tied to the US.

Things finally get interesting when they make it to North Korea. For example, Franco's characters asks if it's true everyone in the country is starving. Their chaperone drives them by a grocery store and a kid with a lollipop to prove them wrong.

There are a lot of silly hijinks and butt jokes after the guys get to North Korea. Almost an hour into the movie, we finally see Kim Jong Un. He comes off as a silly fanboy who has a crush on Franco's character. It's almost like watching a cartoon.

The two of them sit in a tank and listen to Katy Perry. Kim Jong Un acts like a teenage girl.

Then they hang out with a bunch of strippers.

But their friendship is short. Franco learns Kim Jong Un is a bad guy. And the grocery store he saw earlier was fake.

Finally, Franco interviews Kim Jong Un. Franco has a change of heart halfway through the interview and asks Un tough questions like why he can't feed his people and why he puts them in concentration camps. Un's people freak out and start attacking Rogen's character. There's a lot of over-the-top violence. The interview continues, but ends with Kim pooping in his pants.

A long action scene follows the interview. It ends with Kim Jong Un getting blown up in a helicopter. It's pretty graphic. Oh, and Katy Perry's "Firework" is playing as Kim dies.

SEE ALSO: How to watch "The Interview" online

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Attempts to block extremist material online will always fail despite a British counter-terrorism unit taking down more than 100 web pages a day, a think tank has warned.

The terrorist material reappears on the Internet as quickly as it is banished and the policy risks driving fanatics on to the “dark web” where they are even harder to track, according to the Quilliam Foundation.

It warned that censorship and filtering tactics are ineffective and that openly challenging the material is likely to have a greater impact.

The report said despite concerns over fanatics radicalising themselves online, most vulnerable people are still targeted offline first and the Internet is only a “secondary socialiser”.

Greater efforts are needed to combat radicalisation in schools, universities and prisons, it concluded.

Figures show the Government’s Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit has removed 65,000 items rom the Internet that "encouraged or glorified acts of terrorism", including 46,000 since December last year.

Some 70 per cent of that content related to Isil, Syria and Iraq.

Separate figures suggest terrorists involved in at least seven of the ten major plots foiled in the UK since 2010 had access to Inspire – the banned online terror magazine published by al-Qaeda.

But the Quilliam report, which examined the effectiveness of the Government’s counter-radicalisation Prevent programme, found efforts to tackle online fanatics are unlikely to succeed.

“Negative measures, including Government-backed censorship and filtering initiatives, are ineffective in tackling online extremism, tackling the symptoms rather than the causes of radicalisation,” it said.

“Motivated extremists and terrorist affiliates can evade such measures easily through the dark net and virtual private networks.

“Blocked materials consistently reappear online and there is no effective way for ISPs (Internet service providers) or social media companies to filter extremist content.”

It comes amid a growing row over the responsibilities of Internet companies to help curb extremism online and those who exploit their platforms to radicalise and spread hatred.

In November, Robert Hannigan, the new director of GCHQ, warned that some Internet services had become "the command and control networks of choice" for terrorists and criminals but that the companies were "in denial".

Later that month, Facebook came under attack after a report in to the murder of soldier Lee Rigby by Islamist fanatics.

It emerged the company failed to pass on information that could have prevented the murder after one of the killers, Michael Adebowale, used the social networking site to express his "intent to murder a soldier in the most graphic and emotive manner" five months before the 2013 Woolwich attack.

The report found that Facebook had not been aware of that specific exchange.

However, Parliament's intelligence and security committee discovered that Facebook had previously shut down Adebowale's accounts on the site because he had discussed terrorism, but failed to relay concerns to the security services.

But the report concluded: “Counterspeech and positive measures are critical in challenging the sources of extremism and terrorism-related material online.”

It added: “Expanding negative measures to include unwanted extremist content that does not breach defined legal terms would push users that feel targeted into the dark web where monitoring Is no longer possible.

“This increases security risks if counter-terrorism and counter-extremism practitioners are impeded from monitoring and surveillance.”

Jonathan Russell, political liaison officer for Quilliam, said: “Recognising that censorship alone is ineffective and counterproductive in efforts to counter online extremism, the government should consider building an online dimension into Prevent.

“This would enable positive counterspeech to come from civil society to challenge the ideologies and narratives that underpin extremism of all kinds".

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Saudi Arabia may not be aiming at the US in its hands-off policy toward falling oil prices. 

At a panel discussion Wednesday hosted by the Overseas Press Club and Control Risks (the latter a global risk consultancy), the speakers seemed skeptical of the idea that Saudi Arabia was refusing to prop up oil prices because it wanted to force American producers out of the market. (US shale basins are among the most expensive sources of oil to tap.)

There may be better political reasons for this move, with a reduction in American shale supply on the market just being the icing on the cake. 

The more obvious losers in the current oil climate are Iran and Russia — the former of course being Saudi Arabia's archrival in the region, and the latter being no great friend of the Saudis' either.

The pinch to shale may just be "a wonderful byproduct to screwing the Iranians and the Russians," said Michael Moran, Control Risk's managing director for global risk analysis. Further, he said, doing nothing has actually been a really smart move by the Saudis. With every move further down in price, the actions of the Saudis become more closely watched, reinforcing the country's position as the world's oil superpower. 

While this hurts the Iranians and the Russians, neither is likely to be crippled by it, budget-wise (Venezuela is a different story). Michael Levi, the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that many of the countries who rely on substantially higher oil prices to balance their budgets nevertheless have huge reserves that will help them weather low prices for quite a while (Iran). Those countries that don't have huge reserves, he says, generally have floating currencies. As we've seen in the past few days, Russia now has a currency crisis, not a budget crisis.

As for the impact of low prices on US shale, Levi says, even if the market figures out a breakeven price for American producers (which is hard, because it varies from well to well), that's going to change in two years and even more in five years, as the technology continues to develop.

All of the above said, Levi cautions against thinking of Saudi Arabia as some sort of mastermind of the global energy story. It's unclear how many steps ahead the Saudis actually are. 

"Don't overestimate the strategy of OPEC," he says.

NOW WATCH: This Animated Map Shows How European Languages Evolved

SEE ALSO: Here's How Global Growth And Inflation Are Affected By Big Swings In Oil

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Christmas is one of the most celebrated holidays on earth. But that doesn't mean that conflicts simply freeze every December 25th. 

Here's a look at some of the major military events that have fallen on Christmas, a date with a surprisingly rich history.

1776 — George Washington Crosses The Delaware River

Important events in both of America's most formative wars — the Revolutionary War and the Civil War — took place on Christmas.

Washington led his troops across a 300-yard stretch of the Delaware River in the dead of night between December 25 and 26, 1776. The surprise move would put Washington's men a 19-mile march away from a garrison of Hessians (German mercenaries hired by the British to help them in their effort to retain a hold on the rebelling colonies) that the Continental Army took completely by surprise.

The Hessians' quick surrender at the Battle of Trenton would be the first of two rebel victories in New Jersey (the other being the Battle of Princeton a week later) as the Continental Army regained control of the colony. This effectively reversed the British drive that had pushed the rebels across New Jersey in the previous months. The daring crossing of the Delaware ended up being one of the turning points of the war.

1868 — US President Andrew Johnson pardons former Confederate soldiers

Nearly a century later, on Christmas Day of 1868, US president Andrew Johnson extended a full pardon and amnesty"to all and to every person who, directly or indirectly, participated in the late insurrection or rebellion".

The internecine war had ended more than three years earlier, taking more American lives than any other conflict in history. But Union general Ulysses S. Grant's scorched earth tactics late in the war left much of the south in ruins, and the country emerged from the war in a state of deep division.

Johnson had been a Tennessee congressman, senator, and governor before joining Lincoln's presidential ticket.  He was tipped in part to attract southern votes. Yet at war's end he seemed bent on imposing harsh conditions on the defeated half of the country.

The day after being sworn in as the nation's president, he asserted that "treason must be made infamous, and traitors must be impoverished."

But according to the History Department at North Carolina State University, Attorney General James Speed tempered Johnson's punitive intentions: "Mercy must be largely extended. Some of the great leaders and offenders only must be made to feel the extreme rigor of the law," Speed advised.

Southerners enjoyed only conditional and limited pardoning (depending on their station during the war) — at least until this blanket amnesty on "the 25th day of December, A. D. 1868."

1914 — German, British, and French soldiers make temporary peace to celebrate Christmas together

On Christmas Day in 1914, the first Christmas of World War I, soldiers left their trenches to observe the holiday in peace.

In the midst of war, soldiers laid down their arms to sing Christmas carols, play soccer, and barter with the cigarettes and sweets they'd received in care packages from the nations they served.

In some places, the truce was limited to an occasion for each side to bury their dead strewn in no man's land, the stretch of earth between opposing trenches that too often served as a killing field. In others, the skirmishing continued.

But some made the Christmas Truce of 1914 what it was: An odd yet heartening case study in how people react to the pressures of war.

1941 — Japan seizes control of Hong Kong at the expense of the United Kingdom.

Japan's aggression during World War II began well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1931, Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria, a vast coastal region in northeast China. In 1937, it made advances on the rest of the country as well.

But it wasn't until 1941 that Tokyo confronted the West with its imperial ambitions.

And though American involvement started with the Pearl Harbor attack, the surprise assault was immediately followed by Japan's invasion of Hong Kong, a British holding, in late 1941.

Hundreds died in the eighteen-day battle for Hong Kong, and more were wounded or incarcerated in POW camps. Some would never return.

Japan announced the surrender of the colony by radio broadcast on Christmas Day, 1941.

1941 — Admiral Émile Muselier captures Saint Pierre and Miquelon, an archipelago near Canada, for the Free French Forces

The North American continent does not feature as a hot spot in the events of World War II.

But soon after France's fall to the Nazis, the colonial governor of a few small islands off the coast of Newfoundland started working with the resistance.

Writing back to the Vichy government — the Nazi's puppet regime in France — Baron Gilbert de Bournat wrote of "British pressure to rally to the British or de Gaullist causes."

That pressure would have found sympathizers on the islands. Its population was originally mobilized, in 1939, to help defend France's mainland, and some ship-owners docked there refused to return to Vichy France.

On Christmas Eve, 1941, a small task force under Admiral Émile Muselier stormed the island under the cover of night. They met no resistance and the island's administrative centers were taken within an hour, eliminating what otherwise could have served as a Nazi outpost deep among Allied nations while giving the Free French cause legitimacy.

"By five minutes past midnight on December 25 the story of the invasion was telegraphed to Canadian and American newspapers,"according to Douglas Anglin's "Free French Invasion: The St. Pierre and Miquelon Affaire of 1941".

SEE ALSO: US troops have been at war on Christmas since the nation's founding

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On Christmas Day in 1914, German, British, and French soldiers left their trenches along the western front of World War I to observe the holiday in peace.

In the midst of war, soldiers laid down their arms to sing Christmas carols, play soccer, and barter with the cigarettes and sweets they'd received in care packages from the nations they served.

The event would later be treated in numerous films, documentaries, and books — although often with rose-colored glasses.

British Army Captain Edward Hulse captured some of the now-famous halt in hostilities — which he called "the most extraordinary Christmas in the trenches you could possibly imagine"— in letters to his mother.

At 8:30 that morning, four unarmed German soldiers left their trenches to approach their British enemies, only to be intercepted by a few suspicious British soldiers. One of the Germans "started off by saying that he thought it only right to come over and wish us a happy Christmas, and trusted us implicitly to keep the truce," Hulse wrote.

The soldiers make small talk — "their spokesman" had left a girlfriend and a three-horsepower motorbike in England — but their interactions still fell within the context of the ongoing war. "[The Germans] praised our aeroplanes up to the skies," Hulse wrote, "and said that they hated them and could not get away from them."

The motion for peace came on German initiative. On Christmas Eve, decorated trees began to pop up from their trenches, followed by signs reading "You No Fight, We No Fight."

To various degrees across the front, German and British troops put down their weapons and fraternized. In some places, the truce was just an opportunity for each side to bury the dead strewn in no man's land, the stretch of earth between opposing trenches. In other places along the front, the fighting continued.

Overall, the truce was a heartening case study in the nature of human beings and their capacity to wage war on one another.

"By midday," the narrator of a BBC documentary on the event explains, "nearly half the British frontline army is involved in the truce," though how widespread the suspension of the war really was on December 25, 1914 remains in dispute.

Historians explain that the Truce came during a period in the fighting when a "‘live and let live’ attitude developed in certain areas of the trench system," the BBC reports.

"So much interchange had occurred across the line by early December" that a general "issued a directive unequivocally forbidding fraternization,"writes Stanley Weintraub in Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.

The general's concern was that bonding "discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys the offensive spirit in all ranks ... Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and the exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited."

It went on nonetheless, as the Truce itself shows. This might have been because of existing rifts between the rank and file and their leadership. Indeed, the Truce was a push by lowly privates, many of them shipped to the frontline against their will and fighting the war out of resignation rather than nationalistic fervor.

"Many on both sides focused more on trying to stay warm and dry, securing food, and avoiding death than pursuing the aims of their generals," according to The Encyclopedia of World War I's entry on the Christmas Truce.

The "dangers" of peace may not have been purely imagined for the political and military leadership that believed in the necessity of fighting the Great War. As Weintraub writes, past truces in military history did not have the same scale, duration, or "potential to become more than a temporary respite," as that of the Great War's first Christmas. It was "seemingly impossible to have happened without consequences for the outcome of the war."

But that wasn't to be. World War I would only end in 1918, leaving 16 million dead across Europe and the Middle East. Mustard gas and the machine gun would become the hallmarks of a protracted war so brutal that many expected it to be history's last major conflict, a cataclysm that would make war appear too mutually destructive to merit a place in the modern world.

Even the history of the Christmas Truce itself shows that this was a vain hope. A weak attempt at repeating the truce was made in 1915, but a tradition would not take hold due to "the high numbers of dead and hardened attitudes on both sides but also because of actions of senior commanders."

In December 1915, the British command even ordered artillery fire to mark every daylight hour, "and threats to court martial fraternizers and shoot deserters [had] put the final block on any contact," according to the BBC's documentary.

But 100 years later, the Christmas Truce remains a bright spot in an otherwise bleak conflict that ushered in many aspects of modern war.

SEE ALSO: The myths of the 1914 Christmas Truce

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As a steady flow of information about the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures has been revealed, we have watched with shock and increasing concern as American lives and our values have been threatened by a narcissistic dictator. As the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, we don’t agree on every issue—but we are in complete agreement that our national response to this chilling threat must be clear and unequivocal, so that we continue to zealously protect our freedoms and principles, most notably the freedom of speech.
 
The F.B.I. has confirmed our suspicions that a group known as “The Guardians of Peace”—a front group for the North Korean government and its dictator, Kim Jong Un—hacked into Sony’s internal emails, released a trove of embarrassing and salacious communications, and divulged sensitive information about Sony employees because the North Korean government did not approve of its movie, The Interview.  On December 16, the hackers escalated their cyber-war by threatening physical harm to those who intended to see the movie itself, which led to Sony initially canceling the release of the movie.  However, Sony has now decided to release it to a limited number of theaters. 
 
This is not the first time terrorist groups and foreign governments have used intimidation to attempt to destroy our freedoms and way of life. On the eve of World War II, the German government issued various threats to prevent Charlie Chaplin from directing and producing The Great Dictator, a thinly veiled satire of the antics and excesses of Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini.  Paramount Pictures ultimately released the movie to great popular and critical acclaim, both in the U.S. and abroad.
 
The 9/11 attacks were aimed at New York and Washington because the terrorists wanted to shut down our nation’s centers of finance and government. However, Americans stood unified and sent a clear and resolute signal that we would not be intimidated.  Our nation’s airports quickly reopened, as did Wall Street and the Pentagon, and Congress continued to represent the will of the American people without pause.

The cyber-attacks and terror threats associated with The Interview represent the latest twist on earlier efforts at intimidation - the combination of the threat of physical violence with the use of the modern tools of cyber warfare and social media. A tyrant who severely oppresses his own people has used technology to both infiltrate a company and threaten physical harm to Americans who choose to watch a film that doesn’t meet his approval.  Whether or not we like the plot, production, or tone of a creative product, each and every one of us has a stake in ensuring that our freedom of speech is not abridged by either our own government or by a foreign government.

The United States must stand firm against this type of aggressive attack on our freedom of speech. Otherwise these actions will have a chilling effect on the availability of information and creative works in the future and will embolden North Korea and other copycats to act again. We must not allow terrorists and foreign governments to dictate what Americans can or cannot say, watch, produce, or distribute.

Ultimately, this and other cyber-attacks point to the need for a robust national security apparatus, including strong cybersecurity, to protect Americans not just from bodily harm, but from threats aimed at restricting our freedoms.  Congress and the Administration should work to ensure that we have in place the appropriate sanctions against North Korea and that we are using all available tools to combat attacks like this. The more we can do to detect and intercept threats from our enemies, the more we will be able to protect our cherished liberties.

The threat to Americans who wish to see this film is not the last time that thugs and tyrants will seek to challenge our character and our creativity.  But we are united in our resolve to defend our freedoms against all threats, foreign and domestic.  In the past, we have stood together—ignoring the petty and partisan differences that too often divide us.  Again, we must stand together to send the strong message that the United States will never yield to those wishing to silence our freedoms.
 
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) is the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a new military doctrine, the Kremlin said in a statement on Friday.

The new military doctrine says the main external risks for the country are the expansion of NATO's military capabilities and detribalization in several regions, RIA news agency reported.

The doctrine also says the main internal risks are activities to destabilize situation in the country and the activities of terrorists, it added.

The U.S. is also mentioned as a major foreign threat in the document, according to Russia Today.

The doctrine maintains its stance on nuclear weapons, stating that Russia would use the weapons to protect itself from a military attack.

(Reporting by Polina Devitt; Editing by Alexander Winning)

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Beirut experienced a renaissance of sorts in the mid-20th century.

Following World War II, the Lebanese capital became a tourist destination and financial capital, nicknamed "the Paris of the Middle East" thanks to its French influences and vibrant cultural and intellectual life.

That changed when civil war broke out in 1975, ravaging the city. Beirut has been rebuilt in the decades since (despite occasional violence), and is one again becoming a popular place for travelers.

Charles W. Cushman, an avid traveler and amateur photographer, visited Beirut in its heyday in 1965 and captured some stunning photos of everyday life in the city. These photos are being shared with permission from the Indiana University Archives.

In the 1960s, Beirut was a popular tourist destination and cosmopolitan city.

Cushman snapped this photo of the Mediterranean from the top of the Excelsior Hotel.

The trendy Excelsior was a popular escape. Check out that pool.

The Gaza Strip faces an uncertain future four months after the conclusion of a war in which 2200 people were killed there.

The Strip remains deeply isolated, while the Islamist terrorist group Hamas's continued control over the territory has dissuaded donors from aiding in the area's post-conflict reconstruction. Last week, two rockets were fired at Israel from the Strip; the Israelis responded by destroying a Hamas training camp. But today, material for the construction of a Coca Cola plant was allowed to enter the territory, signaling that economic opportunities might slowly rebound as wartime tensions recede.

Business Insider visited the coastal Strip in November. While it's hard to view anything there outside the context of the region's ceaseless and often violent state of flux, Gaza offers signs of both a rich history and its own, resilient version of normal life.

The Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt after the 1948 Middle East War, until Israel seized the territory during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel unilaterally pulled all of its soldiers and civilian settlers from the Strip in 2005.

Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. It's a US-listed and Iranian-supported terrorist group whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, so the takeover soon triggered a policy of Israeli and Egyptian border, maritime, and airspace restrictions that continues until now. Despite these hurdles, Hamas has built up enough of a weapons and cash stockpile to launch thousands of rocket attacks on Israel and fight three wars with their powerful neighbor — most recently this past summer.

Gaza City sits along an idyllic stretch of Mediterranean coast. Despite the violence of that had gripped the area just a few months ago, a tense calm prevails through much of the Strip. This was the calming view of the Gaza City port from my room at the Roots Hotel.

Syria has been at war for nearly four years. The most recognizable images of the country today depict bombed-out buildings, piles of rubble, and displaced citizens.

A collection of images taken fifty years earlier by Charles W. Cushman, an avid traveler and amateur photographer, are a stark contrast.

Though Syria saw a number of coups d'etat in the 1960s and in the decades before and after, Cushman's photos of downtown Damascus in 1965 paint a more mundane picture, showing families gathering, men riding donkeys, and shoppers in bustling bazaars.

These photos are being shared with permission from the Indiana University Archives.

Two years before Cushman visited Damascus, Syria's government was overthrown in a coup d'etat.

The military then overthrew the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in 1966, the year after Cushman's visit.

But these photos show a more mundane side of the country, giving a rare glimpse into everyday life in the capital.

A Syrian boy managed to escape from the Islamic State by volunteering to be a suicide bomber and then surrendering to Iraqi security forces, the New York Times reported Friday.

Usaid Barho, who is from Manbij, near Aleppo, had once dreamed of being a doctor but was soon "seduced" by the caliphate. He joined because he "believed in Isam,"he says, but now admits he was brainwashed. 

“They planted the idea in me that Shiites are infidels, and we had to kill them,” Usaid told the New York Times. They also warned Usaid that if he did not fight, his mother would be raped. 

He ran away from home to join an ISIS training camp, one of the many the group has established throughout Iraq and Syria to indoctrinate children whose loyalty they see as invaluable.

The militants recruit between 200 and 300 children every month, either kidnapping them or buying them from their parents, the International Business Times reported last month. Between March 2011 and April 2014, at least 8,803 children are reported to have been killed, more than a quarter of whom were under 10 years old, according to United Nations report.  

The jihadists-in-training are called the "cubs of the Islamic State," according to the Times, and are trained to use AK-47's, behead victims, and storm buildings.

An activist group in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, has documented these training camps in photos and videos.

At his camp, Usaid says he was taught to use a machine gun and was forced to watch execution videos. He claims he saw fighters smoking and having sex with other men behind tents. “I noticed things I saw that were different from Islam," he told the New York Times. 

Soon, Usaid was given two options: fight, or become a suicide bomber. Usaid chose the latter, as he had become disillusioned with the group and figured it would give him the freedom he needed to defect. 

ISIS then instructed him to bomb a Shiite mosque in the neighborhood of Bayaa, Iraq. Instead, he walked upto the guards standing outside and said, "I have a suicide vest, but I don’t want to blow myself up." His vest was promptly cut off of him by an Iraqi officer, and he was arrested. 

Usaid is currently being held at a secret Iraqi intelligence facility where he is being interrogated. Whether or not he is charged as a terrorist remains to be seen, but his interrogator told the New York Times that he would ultimately take Usaid's side because, in the end, the boy's decision not to bomb the mosque "saved lives." 

Read the full New York Times story here >

SEE ALSO: See The Child Soldiers Of ISIS

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In a fiery statement on Saturday, North Korea compared President Barack Obama to a "monkey" and accused the United States of being responsible for Internet outages it experienced in recent days. 

"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," a spokesman for North Korea's National Defense Commission said in the statement, according to Agence France-Presse.

The statement was published by North Korea's official news agency, KCNA. 

North Korea's main internet sites experienced intermittent disruptions early in the week. US tech companies said the outages could have been caused by a number of factors including technological glitches or hacking. The outages came amid tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over the cyberattack on the movie studio Sony Pictures.

In the statement, the NDC spokesman criticized the internet outages as a "laughable" and cowardly attack.

"The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting the Internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," the North's National Defense Commission said in a statement.

North Korea's internet experience problems last weekend and a complete outage of nearly nine hours before links were largely restored on Tuesday. Only a small number of people in North Korea have internet access including government officials and the country's elite. 

US officials have said Washington was not involved in the outages.

According to AFP, North Korea warned the US could face "deadly" retaliation.

"If the US persists in American-style arrogant, high-handed and gangster-like arbitrary practices despite (North Korea's) repeated warnings, the US should bear in mind that its failed political affairs will face inescapable deadly blows," the statement said.

The NDC spokesman also reiterated North Korea's repeated denials of American claims it was behind  the hack on Sony Pictures. They accused the US of blaming Pyongyang "without clear evidence" and demanded Washington present the proof behind its accusations.

"Obama had better thrust himself to cleaning up all the evil doings that the U.S. has committed out of its hostile policy against (North Korea) if he seeks peace on U.S. soil. Then all will be well," the statement said.

The Sony hackers, who identified themselves as the "Guardians of Peace" released statements objecting to the portrayal of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the Sony movie "The Interview." In addition to lampooning kimg Jong Un, the comedy includes a graphic depiction of him being assassinated. 

Following the cyberattack, which included violent threats and the release of internal emails and leaked versions of unreleased films, the studio canceled the "The Interview's" planned Dec. 25 release. 

After criticism from President Barack Obama that it was caving into pressure from North Korea, Sony reversed its decision and decided on a limited release.

The movie took in more than $1 million in a Christmas Day release in 331 mostly independent theaters after large movie theater chains refused to screen the comedy following threats of violence from hackers.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Anton Tumanov gave up his life for his country - but his country won’t say where, and it won’t say how.

His mother knows. She knows that Mr Tumanov, a 20 year-old junior sergeant in the Russian army, was killed in eastern Ukraine, torn apart in a rocket attack on August 13.

Yelena Tumanova, 41, learned these bare facts about her son’s death from one of his comrades, who saw him get hit and scooped up his body.

“What I don’t understand is what he died for,” she says. “Why couldn’t we let people in Ukraine sort things out for themselves? And seeing as our powers sent Anton there, why can’t they admit it and tell us exactly what happened to him.”

As the year draws to a close, the Kremlin continues to insist that not a single Russian soldier has entered Ukraine to join pro-Moscow separatist militia who have been fighting government forces there since April. During his annual press conference earlier this month, Vladimir Putin, the president, said that all Russian combatants in Ukraine’s Donbas region were volunteers answering “a call of the heart”.

The story of Mr Tumanov and the shadowy deaths of scores of other Russian servicemen since this summer belie that claim.

Rights activists have recorded cases of at least 40 serving soldiers suspected of dying in the conflict – many believe the figure is in the hundreds - but prosecutors refuse to open criminal investigations into their deaths, a requirement by law.

Denied of status by the lies and obfuscation that muffle their stories, these men and their families are casualties of an undeclared war.

Cause of injuries “not established”

Officially, Mr Tumanov died while “carrying out responsibilities of military service” at “a point of temporary deployment of military unit 27777” – part of the army’s 18th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, whose permanent base is in Kalinovskaya, Chechnya.

His death certificate, signed at a defence ministry forensic-medicine centre in Rostov-on-Don in southwest Russia on August 18, records that he died from an “explosion injury”, receiving “multiple shrapnel wounds to the lower limbs” that resulted in “acute, massive blood loss”. The certificate leaves unticked a box saying the cause of his injuries was “military hostilities”, preferring instead “origin not established”.

Mrs Tumanova, 41, waited five days for her son’s body to be brought home after she received notice of his death. “Five agonising days,” she says.

A sanitary inspector, she lives with her husband and Mr Tumanov’s two younger brothers on the second floor of a wooden house in Kozmodemyansk, a small, crumpled town by a bend in the Volga, 400 miles east of Moscow.

The sealed zinc coffin containing her son arrived on a Wednesday.

“There was a little window in the top so you could look at his face,” she recalls. ‘I didn’t know then what his injuries were but something in my soul told me he'd lost his legs.”

The funeral went ahead the same day. An army band and a few officials from the local military commissariat attended. No one came from Mr Tumanov’s unit. His mother spoke to a major in Chechnya by telephone who confirmed the young man had perished in Ukraine, but refused to give any details. The order to go there, “came from above in verbal form only”, said the major.

A search for work leads to war

Mr Tumanov’s biography is not unusual for a provincial lad from a modest family. He was called up to the army as a conscript after school and served eight months in South Ossetia, the pro-Russian breakaway republic in Georgia. When he came home to Kozmodemyansk in spring last year he struggled to find a job. After short stints as a barman and on a building site in Moscow, he decided to return to the forces as a career soldier. In June he was dispatched to Chechnya.

“I tried to persuade him not go to because of what was happening in Ukraine,” says Mrs Tumanova. “But our president said that none of our soldiers would be sent there, it’s just Ukrainians fighting each other, and I believed that. So in the end I didn’t argue.”

Mr Tumanov was put on a three month probation but he hadn’t been in Chechnya ten days before he and other soldiers at the base were approached and asked if they would go to Donbas to fight as volunteers.

He and his friends refused, he told his mother by telephone. “Who wants to die?” she says. “That was their thinking. Nobody was attacking Russia; if they had been Anton would have been first in the queue.”

By the middle of July, things had changed. Now 27777, his regular army unit, was dispatched to a temporary camp in Rostov region, near the border with Ukraine, officially “for exercises”.

Soon he was telling Nastya Chernova, his fiancée back in Kozmodemyansk, that he was going on short trips into Ukraine to accompany deliveries of arms and military vehicles to the rebels.

This was the moment when pro-Moscow militia in eastern Ukraine were on the brink of caving in to government forces, who had almost surrounded the separatist capital, Donetsk. Over the next month, Russia would stage a major intervention – sending tanks and troops across the border to help push back Ukrainian forces and reclaim rebel territory.

On August 10 Mr Tumanov called his mother and said: “Tomorrow they are sending us to Donetsk” - the rebel capital. “We’re going to help the militia.”

The next day he told her: “We’re handing in our documents and our phones. They’ve given us two grenades and 150 rounds of ammunition each.” A few hours later came his final message, via VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook: “Gave in phone. Gone to Ukraine.”

Miss Chernova, a slender 17-year old high school student, says her boyfriend went against his will. “The last time we spoke he told me he and some friends discussed running away but they were a long way from home, they didn’t have food,” she says. “It was impossible.”

Mrs Tumanova knows what happened next from one of her son’s comrades, who served in the same unit and went with him. The soldier gave her a handwritten description.

“On August 11 we were given an order to remove the identification plates from our military vehicles, change into camouflage suits and tie white rags on our arms and legs,” the soldier wrote. “At the border we received supplies of ammunition. On the 11th and 12th we crossed onto Ukrainian territory. On August 13th at lunchtime our column was hit by a rocket strike, during which Anton Tumanov died. At that moment we were in Ukraine, in Snezhnoye (a town not far from Donetsk).”

Scores, hundreds of dead

Sergei Krivenko, head of Citizen and Army, a civil group in Moscow which helps soldiers and their families protect their rights, says activists are sure of at least 40 deaths of Russian servicemen this summer and autumn but suspect the total may be in the hundreds.

A senior officer admitted at a recent meeting with Mr Krivenko and other rights activists that there had been deaths in the military but was vague about where they happened and how.

“He told us a shell flew over the border from Ukraine and hit a tank or something blew up by accident as people sat round a fire on a target range,” says Mr Krivenko, who is also a member of Mr Putin’s presidential human rights commission.

“Russia is officially not at war so there should be a criminal investigation into every death, but the authorities refuse our requests to open them,” he adds.

A handful of soldiers have described to Citizen and Army how they were sent on trips into Ukraine to deliver weapons and later had their contracts torn up when they refused to return there, or when units were downsized.

Comrades of Mr Tumanov corroborated the account given to his mother, telling Mr Krivenko that the young sergeant died when a volley of Ukrainian Grad missiles hit their ammunition trucks on the territory of a factory in Snezhnoye (known as Snizhne in Ukrainian). They estimated 120 men had died in that attack alone.

Probing the deaths can be a risky business. Lyudmila Bogatenkova, a 73-year old representative of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee in Stavropol, suddenly found herself charged with fraud after she investigated deaths in Snizhne.

The St Petersburg chapter of the same group was added to Russia’s list of Foreign Agents – a blacklist of NGOs with foreign funding – after its head publicised reports of scores of injured being brought to a hospital in the city.

A few relatvies appear to accept their loved ones’ fates. In an interview with a Moscow radio station, the father of Nikolai Kozlov, a 21-year-old paratrooper from a unit in Ulyanovsk who lost his leg, said he was proud of his son. “He gave his vow and carried out his orders,” he said. A state television report on Mr Kozlov’s progress in hospital was cut with footage of street fighting and tanks flying Ukrainian flags. The report presented him as “the man who was until recently in hell’s corner and who at last returned home to Russia”. It did not say where from.

Lev Shlosberg, a local MP in Pskov in western Russia, says there is an atmosphere of secrecy and fear around the casualties. He is campaigning to find out how twelve paratroopers based in the town met their deaths in the summer. After he first wrote about it in a blog post, unknown assailants pounced from behind as he walked near his home, knocking him down and beating him unconscious. Thugs also threatened reporters who visited graves of the paratroopers with “never being seen again” and slashed their car tires.

“A great many Russian servicemen have died in Ukraine and their families are outraged but they don’t speak out because they are afraid for their lives,” says Mr Shlosberg, who recovered after hospital treatment. He says he has spoken to relatives of the dead and to soldiers who fought in Ukraine against their will but they are desperate to remain anonymous. “People in Russia today live in terror of the authorities.”

‘Our children are nameless’

In Kozmodemyansk, Miss Chernova picks her way her way home through the snow after school. She can’t forget her boyfriend. She posts poems about Mr Tumanov on her VKontakte page and remembers the moment she woke up abruptly with a bad feeling inside on the day he died.

“Anton was not a volunteer,” she says forcefully. “He didn’t want to go to Ukraine to fight and kill people. He didn’t have that aggression inside him. He joined up to defend his country.”

At home in her living room, Yelena Tumanova is still waiting for an explanation about her son’s death. His peaked army cap lies on a folded Russian tricolor on top of the television. On the wall is a small portrait of him in uniform with a black ribbon across the corner.

Mrs Tumanova asked state prosecutors via a civil rights group to investigate her son’s last days. There has been no reply.

At the town’s military commissariat, employees told The Telegraph they had no information about Mr Tumanov. A senior official at the medical centre in Rostov where his death was recorded also refused to comment.

“For me, what’s important is that our government doesn’t hide what happened,” says Mrs Tumanova. “On television they say our (Russian) war correspondents who died in Ukraine were heroes. We know their names, they were awarded the Order of Courage. But this isn’t about medals. It’s that our children are nameless. Like homeless tramps.

“If they sent our soldiers there, let them admit it. That’s the most bitter thing for a mother like me. It’s too late to bring Anton back but this is just inhuman.”

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Vladimir Putin may be the wild card in world affairs right now, but he didn't gain that influence overnight.

The Russian President's ascension to power is filled with spies, armed conflicts, oligarchs, oil and (of course) judo.

So here's how a onetime "nobody" climbed up the ranks to become the "World's Most Powerful Person."

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is the only child of a decorated war veteran and factory worker in the slums of Leningrad. He grew up in a Soviet Union styled communal apartment with two other families — as was typical at the time.

Source: Encyclopedia, TIME

As a teen Putin worked at his school's radio station, where he reportedly played music by the Beatles and other Western rock bands.

The photographer Platon — who took Putin's infamous Time Magazine cover in 2007 — said that Paul is Putin's favorite Beatle, and "Yesterday" is his favorite song.

However, "by [Putin's] own account, his favorite songs are Soviet standards, not Western rock. He has been deeply conservative his whole life," Karen Dawisha wrote in her new book, "Putin's Kleptocracy." 

Source: Encyclopedia

Early on in life, Putin got into judo. He was his university's judo champion in 1974.

Former deputy finance minister and first deputy chairman of the Central Bank Sergey Alaksashenko believes that Putin's love of judo says something about his foreign policy.

"Unlike chess, a judo fighter should not wait for the opponent's move. His strategy is to wait until he gets a chance to execute a single quick move — and then take a step back. Successful judo fighters must anticipate their opponents' actions, make a decisive, preemptive move and try to disable them," he wrote in the Moscow Times.

Source: Encyclopedia

This was a tumultuous year. From revolution and war in Ukraine, Syria, and Israel to social unrest across the US and the Ebola outbreak in Africa, 2014 was anything but quiet. 

And, as the old adage goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

We compiled the most unforgettable images from the past 12 months, captured by photographers from around the world.

Beginning in November 2013, Ukrainians protested the government's decision to distance itself economically from Europe in a movement that became known as EuroMaidan. The protests exploded into violence and burning tires in January after anti-protest laws went into effect. Here, protesters took cover from water sprayed by a fire engine on Jan. 23.

The anti-protest laws banned "face concealments." Protesters, like this one, deliberately disobeyed the law by wearing gas masks.

The Tower of David in Caracas, Venezuela, is the tallest slum in the world. In February, Reuters photographer Jorge Silva went there to capture what life was actually like for those living there. Here, men rested after salvaging metal on the 30th floor.

On the day in 1974 when Soviet secret police arrested him for treason, Alexander Solzhenitsyn published an essay (via the underground samizdat press) entitled "Live Not by Lies". It ended with a commandment in capital letters: “DON'T LIE! DON'T PARTICIPATE IN LIES, DON'T SUPPORT A LIE!”

The lie, wrote the author of "The Gulag Archipelago", had become “a mode of existence” in the USSR, “incorporated into the state system as the vital link holding everything together.”

On December 19th, Alexei Navalny (pictured), a Russian anti-corruption blogger and opposition politician, recalled Mr Solzhenitsyn's commandment in the "last word" he delivered at his Moscow trial. (The video can be viewed here.)

Mr Navalny has been under house arrest since February, and faces a possible 10-year prison term. The prosecutors allege that he and his brother Oleg defrauded the French cosmetics firm Yves Rocher. (Even the company's employees say no crime took place.) Mr Navalny's real offense, it is widely understood, is to challenge the rule of Vladimir Putin and to have exposed the staggering corruption permeating the Russian state and state-owned companies.

The “last word” has become one of the most popular genres of political speech in Russia in recent years. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil oligarch, pioneered the genre at the end of his trial in 2010 with an eloquent dissection of Russia's political predicament. Jailed in 2003, Mr Khodorkovsky had become Russia's most famous political prisoner by the time he was finally released last year. Now the honour of addressing the country from the defendant's box has passed to Mr Navalny. His short speech to the court was powerful, although, as he pointed out, it was hardly the first time he has had a chance to deliver one.

How many times in his life can a person who has not done anything illegal give his last speech? In the last 18 months, this is my sixth or seventh...All of you—judges, prosecutors, plaintiffs—look down at the table when talking to me. You all say, 'But Alexey Anatolievich, but surely you understand everything.' I understand everything, but I don’t understand one thing—why are you all looking at the table?

REUTERS/Maxim ZmeyevRussian opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny (R) and his brother and co-defendant Oleg attend a court hearing in Moscow December 19, 2014.

Mr Navalny’s speech was addressed not so much to his supporters as to those in the Russian public who participate in the system's mendacity. In attacking citizens' willingness to embrace lies of convenience, thus perpetuating systematic violence, the speech recalled (consciously or not) such classic anti-totalitarian texts as Vaclav Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless". “The more a person contributes to lying, the more lying he encounters," Mr Navalny said.

Lying has become the essence of the state…Why put up with this lying? Why look at the table? Life is too short to look at tables...We can only be proud of the moments when we can honestly look each other in the eyes, when we are doing something worthy...Life has no point if you put up with lying.

We have allowed them to rob us and turn us into cattle. What have they paid us for this, what have they paid you, who are looking at the table, for this? Do you have schools? No. Do you have health care? No. Roads? No…You are being robbed every day. I can't go on tolerating this. I will go on standing as long as is necessary, here, at the cage, or inside it.

Mr Navalny closed by simply citing Mr Solzhenitsyn's title: "Even if it sounds naive and is often sneered at, 'Live not by the lie.'"

Judging by its over-reaction, the Kremlin appears to be just as worried about the impact of dissidents' screeds as it was 40 years ago, when Solzhenitsyn published his essay. The function once served by samizdat is now played by social networks, in particular Facebook, which unlike its Russian imitators is not ultimately subject to the government.REUTERS/Maxim ShemetovOpposition leader Alexei Navalny (C) attends a justice court hearing in Moscow, April 22, 2014.

A Facebook page inviting citizens to join a pro-Navalny rally on January 15th, the day his verdict is scheduled to be issued, quickly gathered more than 12,000 acceptances. Russian prosecutors and the government internet watchdog demanded Facebook take the page down, and on December 20th it complied.

“Facebook has no guts and no principles,” tweeted Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte, the Facebook imitator which is Russia’s largest social network. (Mr Durov himself was forced to sell his stake in Vkontakte in April, pushed out by figures closer to the Kremlin.) Michael McFaul, a former American ambassador to Moscow, tweeted that Facebook's move was a "mistake" and a "horrible precedent". Within hours, however, a new Facebook page advertising the rally had attracted almost double the number of acceptances.REUTERS/Tatyana MakeyevaPolice detain opposition leader Alexei Navalny outside a courthouse in Moscow February 24, 2014.

It is easy to see why the government is worried. Mr Navalny was among the leaders of the mass demonstrations that rocked Moscow in December 2011. That wave of protest was placated by the patriotic fervor whipped up by the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. But with the rouble losing almost half of its value over the past year, and the economy facing recession and inflation at the same time, that euphoria is quickly dissipating.

The Kremlin will probably respond to economic problems with a renewed crackdown on the liberal intelligentsia; prosecutors have opened an investigation into the organizers of public readings in Moscow’s parks, accusing them of using the public money to sponsor Mr Navalny. Several well-known Russian poets, including Lev Rubinshtein and Dmitry Bykov, have been called as witnesses and refused to testify. As ever in Russia, words are deeds.

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US President Barack Obama is not impressed with his Russian counterpart in the aftermath of recent events.

In a new NPR interview published Monday morning, Obama dismissed those who hailed Vladimir Putin as a crafty world player when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

"Three or four months ago, everybody in Washington was convinced that President Putin was a genius and he had outmaneuvered all of us, and he had bullied, and strategized his way into expanding Russian power," Obama said, according to NPR's transcript. "Today, I'd sense that — at least outside of Russia — maybe some people are thinking what Putin did wasn't so smart."

Earlier in the year, the Russian government forcibly annexed Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine. As a result, the US and others leveled economic sanctions against Russia. The Obama administration also accused Moscow-backed separatists, still active in other parts of Ukraine, of shooting down a Malaysian passenger jet over the summer.

Obama didn't name his critics, but many prominent Republicans lambasted the White House for being insufficiently tough in the face of Putin's aggression. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is considering a run for president in 2016, said Obama was a "kitty cat" next to the Russian bear.

"Back in Washington there's a diet that is now very, very popular," Cruz said, joking. "It's called the Obama Diet. Works very, very well. You simply let Putin eat your lunch every day."

However, in part because of a global decline in crude oil prices, Russia is now facing a financial crisis, and the ruble's value tumbled to new lows in December.

"Right now, everyone [in Moscow] is trying to buy dollars, but you can't buy them just like that — you need to pre-order them," a person who requested anonymity told Business Insider earlier in the month. "It looks like no one is trusting the banks anymore."

In his NPR interview, Obama credited US sanctions for ensuring Putin's actions would be a "strategic mistake."

"I said at the time we don't want war with Russia, but we can apply steady pressure working with our European partners, being the backbone of an international coalition to oppose Russia's violation of another country's sovereignty, and that over time, this would be a strategic mistake by Russia," he said.

Editor's note: The NPR interview transcript was edited for clarity.

NOW WATCH: 11 Mind-Blowing Facts About North Korea

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It was an unseasonably and even historically warm Christmas week for much of the US. But we're only a month into winter, and more intense weather could be just around the corner.

In extreme enough cold — like the conditions that gripped some parts of the US during last year's "polar vortex"— exposed skin can freeze in only 10 minutes. People also risk hypothermia just by going outside.

Besides desert climates, winter is the worst to endure. The US military has whole courses designed to teach its people how to survive.

Here are a few tips and some items the Marine Corps considers essential to combating the cold. They come from the Winter Survival Course Handbook, which draws reference from the UK's SAS Survival Handbook.

Here's what the Marines say to take with you if you venture deep into the cold this winter.

Key Items:

1. Water/Food: At least a few gallons of water is advisable in harsh conditions.

2. Fire-starting material: Flint, matches, or a lighter.

3. 550 Cord: This gets its name from the weight it can bear. Good for making shelters, trapping animals, and treating wounds.

4. Blankets/Poncho

5. A metal container: For boiling water. It's not safe to eat mass amounts of snow off the ground. Must be a non-petrol carrying container. Kill two birds with one stone and carry a can of beans.

6. Tape: Electrical or gorilla duct tape has near-infinite uses.

7. A knife and/or multipurpose tool: Some of these actually contain a flint.

8. First Aid kit

9. Compass

10. A mirror: For signaling. In a pinch, a makeup mirror will suffice.

11. Pocket sewing kit

These items can be packed differently for travel in a car or on foot. Obviously, one for a car can be a bit more robust.

Considering you probably won't be "caught behind enemy lines," we can dispense with the war-time survival tips and get right to more generic survival.

Essential Tips:

1. Planning: First you have to assemble your kit. If it's mobile, make sure it's kept in a water proof container or bag.

As for the first 24 hours of being lost or stuck:

2. Shelter: If you're in a car, don't leave it. If you're on foot, build a shelter, or find one: Finding shelter is the paramount consideration when stranded in extreme weather.

Hollowed-out logs can be cleaned out and enhanced. Caves work as well. Reduced living space means warmer living space. Beware of occupying animals, and consider ventilation.

Here's an example of a snow cave, dug from beneath a tree caught in a snowdrift:

3. Start a fire: And plan to maintain that fire. Dig a hole and use dry pencil-thick branches and evergreen limbs as kindling. Evergreens burn fast and hot.

Fuel should be thicker limbs that have broken off a tree — found near the ground, but not submerged in snow.

Now for the second 24 hours:

4. Find water: Nearby lakes and rivers are great but snow and ice will do. Ice is better because it has a higher water content by volume.

You can build a water generator out of three sturdy sticks, some binding, and a plastic bag, sock, or shirt:

5. Conserve food: Given that you told people where you were going, they'll be out looking for you within a day or so. Catching food in the wild is not difficult though.

550 cord (or better yet, fishing line, if any is handy) can be used for snares. Paper clips, hairpins and sewing kits all yield hasty fishing hooks.

Here's a brief how-to on building a quick snare.

And here's what to do if you aren't found after a couple of days:

6. Improve survival conditions: This doesn't just mean upgrading your shelter with new additions. It also means preparing to be seen by anyone looking for you.

Prep a platform of dry interlocking green limbs to be set ablaze at a moment's notice, and bright pieces of clothing or material could be placed in visible places.

This post is originally by Geoffrey Ingersoll.

SEE ALSO: Here's How Long You Can Stay Outside In Extreme Temperatures Before Getting Frostbite

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A massive fire is continuing to rage in Libya's largest port after a rocket fired by Islamist rebels hit an oil storage container. 

The fire, which started on December 25, spread to six separate containers over the course of last week.

The conflagration started after Islamist militias loyal to one of the two competing governments in Liby, attempted to seize control of the Es Sider Port, the largest oil port in the country. 

Libya has had two rival governments since August, when the internationally recognized Prime Minister and his parliament were forced to flee to eastern Libya after an Islamist-led uprising took control of Tripoli and the west of the country. The two rival political groups and a host of other factions have been locked in violent conflict since. 

The fires at the Es Sider Port started on Dec. 25 after an Islamist rocket attack struck an oil tank. 

The fires quickly spread to a total of six tanks, although Libyan firefighters have managed to extinguish three of the six fires. 

Libya estimates that it lost about 850,000 barrels of oil due to the fire. The country produced 580,000 barrels a day in November, according to Bloomberg. 

This was Islamist militias' second attempt to capture the port. The rebels failed to gain control of the oil port during a Dec. 13 assault. 

SEE ALSO: Here are the places ISIS may try to expand to next

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When turmoil hits the Middle East, one of the first questions everyone asks is: "How much oil is at risk?"

Before prices crashed again, oil was actually rallying for a little while on Monday. News outlets and energy pundits were quick to attribute the early upward moves to Libya, where a rocket attack caused an oil storage tank fire. Turmoil in the region could lead to a disruption in oil supply. Because Libya is known to be a big player in the oil markets, this was a decent rationale.

But how big a player is Libya really?

It's about 1% of total global oil production.

In JP Morgan Funds' monthly guide to the markets, David Kelly and his team offer this map showing what percentage of the world's liquid energy is produced by each country or flows through a waterway in the Middle East.

The countries in the Middle East are sitting on oceans of oil and gas. So, whenever there's any news about escalating tension or turmoil in the Middle East, we can't help but wonder how much energy is exposed to disruption. This map helps to answer those questions.

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