Clashes between opposing activists turned into mass murder. The perpetrators have never been punished.

Eight years ago this Monday, something significant happened in Odessa, a historically important city in the southwest of Ukraine. Although the West didn't see it as such, for Russia and the newly formed Donbass republics, what transpired there became a symbolic episode.

Provincial revolution

From late 2013 into early 2014, a conflict between the government of President Viktor Yanukovich and the pro-Western opposition was unfolding in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The series of events that would ensue were dubbed the 'Euromaidan'. Meanwhile, Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea, was of course affected by these events too, albeit to a lesser extent.

Occasional clashes with police and scuffles between supporters of Euromaidan and those aligned with the government, which became known as the 'Anti-Maidan' movement, were nothing compared to the bloodshed in Kiev, where people were being killed.

Many Ukrainians didn't welcome the Euromaidan, and they had their reasons. Lots of Odessa residents had strong ties with Russia, and still do. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, a large number of ethnic Russians were living in Odessa and many had relatives in the old country. The city was built during the reign of Catherine the Great and has always been seen as an integral part of Russia's history.

Thus, the aggressive nationalism of Euromaidan was largely unpopular there and plenty of locals were frightened by what seemed to be a passion for forming militant units. Euromaidan and Anti-Maidan in Odessa began to form parallel paramilitary organizations. Armed with a primitive array of sticks, biker helmets, and homemade weapons, these groups trained for street fighting. At first, nobody sought a fight to the death - the radicals hadn't yet gained the leading role in either movement.

Russia is causing disruption to satellite navigation systems affecting thousands of civilian flights, experts say.

The Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean - the regions where Russia's military has been most active - have seen an increase in disruption to the Global Positioning System (GPS).


This has left aircraft unable to receive GPS signals.

In March, a RAF plane carrying Defence Secretary Grant Shapps had its GPS signal jammed while flying close to Russian territory.

Over 1,200 students at universities across the US have been arrested to date as police moved to violently disperse campus protests calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The past week and a half has seen students put on probation, suspended, and in rare cases even expelled from some of America's most prestigious educational institutions.

Iran's Shiraz University is offering scholarships for American and European students facing expulsion for taking part in the wave of anti-war and pro-Palestine protests rocking Western universities.

"Students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide similar conditions]," Shiraz University head Mohammad Moazzeni said at a gathering of university students and professors.

Expressing solidarity with students over the bravery they have displayed, Moazzeni blasted Western countries' police forces' harsh treatment of the protesters, saying it exposes the true nature of Western civilization.

"They exert a lot of violence in order to contain this raging movement and have even threatened to expel the students from universities and hinder their employment in the future, and such autocratic methods show the decline of global arrogance," Moazzeni said, using the term Iranian officials and military commanders often use to refer to the US and Israel.

A Louisiana Supreme Court ruling will allow residents to secede from Baton Rouge and create a new town called St. George.

The state Supreme Court reversed a lower court's decision and ruled 4-3 to allow the incorporation of St. George, which will form in southeast Baton Rouge.

Attorney Andrew Murrell, one of the leaders of the St. George movement, issued a statement following the Louisiana Supreme Court's decision.

"This is the culmination of citizens exercising their constitutional rights. We voted and we won," Murrell said.

Pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai allegedly tried to trigger mainland China's political and economic collapse, a court in Hong Kong has heard.

Mr Lai, a 76-year-old UK citizen and founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, is facing the prospect of life in prison if found guilty of sedition and collusion charges brought against him under the draconian national security law. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Chan Tsz-wah, a paralegal turned prosecution witness, claimed Mr Lai shared an anti-China strategy with him, which would have paved the path for an American-style democracy.

On Day 63 of the trial, Mr Chan told the handpicked judges of West Kowloon Court:

"Jimmy Lai said, 'according to historical experience, China's implosion would happen very soon because the government mobilised several resources to monitor citizens'."

Mr Chan, the fifth prosecution accomplice witness to testify against Mr Lai, continued his testimony on Friday amid fears of coercion.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Monday his state will not abide by the Biden administration's sweeping new changes to Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at government-funded schools.

In a letter to President Biden, Abbott railed against the revised rules — which provide new protections for transgender students — saying they're "illegal" and the result of a "ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX," which Abbott said "exceeds your authority as President."

"You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they are girls and to accept every student's self-declared gender identity," Abbott wrote in his letter, arguing that step exceeds Biden's authority.

A growing number of Republican-led states have pledged to reject the Title IX rules finalized this month by the Education Department.

You too can help reform the world

We must stop with our busy schedules and think things through for a while. Our choices as consumers have a profound effect on how the economy works. You keep buying a product, then the company selling it grows stronger. Lower your demand for it and the producer has to adapt accordingly or go out of business.

You as an individual control a fraction of the total power consumers can wield. So if you alone change your ways, nothing noticeable will happen. But if you can coordinate your efforts with your local community or people online, things will start moving.

This is another way of thinking about the re-institution of society. Not everything needs to be done by politicians at the national or supranational level. We too can enact reform in a bottom-up, gradual, sustained and more resilient way.

China is buying up gold at record rates in a move experts claim could mean it is preparing to safeguard its economy against Western sanctions ahead of a possible invasion of Taiwan.


The Central Bank launched its gold-buying spree in October 2022, accumulating hundreds of tonnes of the precious metal in the past 18 months.

A World Gold Council report said China now holds a stunning 2,262 tonnes of gold worth roughly $170.4 billion (£135 billion) - and Beijing in the meantime has offloaded more than $400 billion worth of US Treasury bonds since 2021.

The interview with Tucker Carlson in Russian has been translated hastily and not quite correctly. On the whole, everything can be understood. But there are a few nuances. I am talking to an American and addressing the American public as a priority. Judging by the thousands of comments, they understood me perfectly well.

So here it is: in the political language of the modern States there are common terms — for example, woke, wokeism — that we do not use. It is a call to all liberals to immediately write denunciations of those who differ from the LGBT (banned in Russia) agenda, or from critical racial theory (the same needs clarification, but that is for another time), who question internationalism and globalism, who question the need to protect illegal and any migration. Then there is the vilification of all patriots and conservatives (present and historical) by accusing them of "fascism." Apparently wokeism is now being actively mastered by the younger generation of the CRPF, but they are not the ones I am addressing.

The logic is as follows: woke left-liberal identifies a victim (conservative), writes a series of denunciations, makes a video on YouTube, Instagram (banned in Russia), gathers a flash mob, etc., and then canceling comes into play — inspections at the place of work, biased interviews reminiscent of interrogations, commissioned articles, and then dismissal, ostracism, search pessimization in social networks, financial checks, ban on loans, account disconnection — in extreme cases, murder (of the figurehead himself or a relative). A complete cycle of left-liberal terror. With a historical figure, the same thing is done to his legacy — books (paintings, movies) are censored or banned, his place in the query hierarchy drops dramatically in search engines, a defamation section appears on Wikipedia that cannot be removed. This process can affect Dante, Dostoevsky, Rowling, and even Scripture if it is found not politically correct enough.

Therefore, when I say "woke" I am immediately understood by everyone in the USA. But in our country, we would have to publish a whole article with explanations and examples, after which many of our domestic leftists and left-liberals would be ashamed (if they have a conscience, and this still needs to be proven).

The two largest banks in the US are declaring a loss on $4.5 billion in debts that customers are unable to pay.

JPMorgan Chase says its net charge-offs, which are debts that the bank does not expect to receive, hit $2 billion in the first quarter of this year, reports Reuters.

That's nearly twice the amount of unrecoverable debt compared to the same quarter last year.

Meanwhile, Bank of America reported $1.5 billion in net charge-offs, a surge from $807 million a year prior.

BofA says those losses stem mainly from credit card debt that will likely never be paid.