When the men in black uniforms cocked their guns and pointed them at us, I realised that it was a bad idea to make a cold call on Ukrainian paramilitary forces at their secret hideout in the woods.

"How did you find us? Are you Russian spies?" yelled one, his face twisted with tension as he waved his 9mm-calibre pistol at my stomach.

Our terrifying encounter came after a drive down a meandering dirt road deep into a forest near the port city of Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The men's improvised headquarters lies on a small island surrounded by a pond. It is a hunting lodge that belongs to a local oligarch sympathetic to their cause.

This is the Azov battalion - known as the "Men in Black" - a secretive special unit of 70 volunteers, one of a number of paramilitary groups set up by the Ukrainian interior ministry as part of increasingly desperate attempts by the government in Kiev to fight the Russian-backed armed rebellion in the east of the country.

The paramilitaries' activities risk fuelling an escalation in tit-for-tat violence that has claimed nearly 100 lives in just under a month, propelling Ukraine towards civil war ahead of two crucial votes that could determine its fate.

Today separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk are holding a contested referendum on leaving Ukraine; on May 25 the country is to choose a new president.

Venezuela "does not recognize and will not recognize as legal a government that emerged as a result of a state coup," the Bolivarian Republic's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

"In view of a regrettable development of events in Ukraine, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela confirms that it rejects violent processes that, with the support of the United States and NATO, led to the overthrow of the government, jeopardizing the peace and unity of the Ukrainian people as well as the stability of the entire Eurasian region," the statement says.

"Until free elections are held in Ukraine and broad dialogue starts, Venezuela will keep warning the world's nations of the danger of foreign interference, speaking for the creation of a multipolar world that guarantees the peace and sovereignty of all peoples," it says.

Ukraine is in turmoil after a coup occurred in the country in February following months of anti-government protests dubbed "Euromaidan", which often turned violent. New people were propelled to power amid riots as President Viktor Yanukovich had to leave Ukraine citing security concerns. The new authorities set early presidential elections for May 25.

A new report shows that an Israeli spy hid 16 years ago in an air duct in the hotel room of the vice president of the United States at the time but US officials quickly hushed up the incident after they learned about it.

Newsweek magazine, which published a scathing article about Israel's espionage activities in the US earlier this week, broke the story in an exclusive report on Thursday. Citing a senior former US intelligence operative, the magazine said the spying incident "crossed the line" of acceptable behavior between the two spying allies.

According to the report, Vice President Al Gore's security detail had secured his "room in advance and they all left except for one agent, who decided to take a long, slow time on the pot."

"So the room was all quiet, he was just meditating on his toes, and he hears a noise in the vent. And he sees the vent clips being moved from the inside. And then he sees a guy starting to exit the vent into the room," Newsweek quoted the former US operative as saying.

Algeria has rejected a US demand to establish a military base in the North African country, a report says.

Local sources in Algeria say the United States demanded the military base as part of its plan to mount aerial surveillance in the Africa continent.

The US military established its Africa Command in 2008, but so far the command has not found any African state willing to host its headquarters.

In a move observers see as the US reaction to the Algiers decision, US Ambassador to Algeria Henny Ensher said Washington would not sell combat drones to the country, despite earlier agreements.

Ensher said the use of drones in Algeria requires various arrangements including an air system and further coordination between different security services.

In January 2013, the United States sent a drone aircraft for surveillance over the Algerian gas plant, where Algerian forces launched an operation to free several American hostages taken by militants. During the raid, only two of the American captives were freed, according to Reuters.

Last week the IRS decided to award Bradley Birkenfeld his $104 million dollar share for helping bust UBS bank. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and his staff were instrumental. Senator Grassley vowed to delay pending Department of Treasury nominations if the IRS Whistleblower Program, he wrote the legislation in 2006, continued to be mismanaged.

This powerful voice from Iowa has been a beacon in the storm during an Obama Administration that has targeted whistleblowers and prevented accountability as never before. The Pentagon is also under Senator Grassley's fire for failing to examine 1,700 of the 5,200 reports of employees doing child porn. The Pentagon claimed it "wasn't a priority." Senator Grassley and his staff have made it one. The closed investigation into wide-spread use of child porn at the Pentagon is now re-opened.

There is a national crisis of federal employees engaged in the child porn industry and a related epidemic at the state level. I've documented two states,Vermont and Maine, that appear to be running state protected child trafficking rings with evidence of cops, judges, lawyers, clergy and government employees covering for each other. This kind of racketeering creates powerful, and extremely profitable, pedophile rings.

Money drives the crime. It is estimated that a criminal willing to molest a child in front of a live webcam can earn $1,000 a night. In Kittery Maine, at the "Danish Health Club," one bust yielded $6.1 million in "door fees" over a five year period with "prostitutes" earning $12 million. Pimps' earnings were not reported. The "door man" was a retired police officer whose wife worked in back. This bust happened because of one hard-working IRS agent, Rod Giguere.

An estimated $1.4 billion has been collected by the IRS's Whistleblower program since 2006; $464 million collected in 2010 but only $48 million in 2011. Half of all global child porn is produced in America. Ten new images of children are posted daily. Estimates of the global profits from child porn range from $3-20 billion. Imagine what the IRS Whistleblower program could collect if they focused on child trafficking as Agent Rod Giguere did in Maine.

A former Illinois lawmaker who abruptly resigned last month was charged Monday with possession of child pornography.

Keith Farnham, an Elgin Democrat, had previously co-sponsored two bills that toughened penalties for child pornography.

Investigators said the 66-year-old Farhnam used his personal and state-owned computers to trade hundreds of sexually explicit images and videos and engage in online chats bragging about sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl.

Federal authorities said Farnham had one on his state-owned computer that depicted a 6-month-old girl in a sexual situation and another that depicted a girl no older than 7 years old.

Prosecutors said they linked a Yahoo email account used by the former lawmaker to an online forum where he traded the pornographic material and discussed his sexual preferences.

The West continues to ignore the fact that Ukrainian army is fighting, side by side with neo-Nazis against their own people, Russian Foreign Ministry Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday. Lavrov said that EU and US officials refuse to comment the fact that the Ukrainian army has received the order to fight against own people side by side with the neo-Nazis.

"In the midst of February Maidan confrontations in Kiev, Nato Defense Ministers and Secretary General stated the inadmissibility of intervention of the armed forces of Ukraine in the political process, and insisted on the neutrality of the army," Lavrov said.

Lavrov said that Brussels and Washington continue to confirm the legitimacy of the so-called 'anti-terrorist operation' led by Kiev's authorities explaining that the state has the monopoly on the use of armed forces. Russian Foreign Minister said that the events that have occurred in Odessa question the tolerability of neo-Nazis' glorification.

"All the members of the Council of Europe must firmly stop the ultra-nationalists activities, and those who indulge the ideology and the practice of fascism cannot be justified, even if they were politicians enjoying the protection of the enlightened western democracies," Lavrov said.

Russia does not promote regime change and color revolutions in other countries, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. "We don't do regime change, we don't do color revolutions, let alone brown-hued ones like those in Ukraine," he told a press conference after a session of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers. At the same time, Russia is not walking away from contacts with the current Kiev authorities, Lavrov said. "We are not walking away from contacts with our Ukrainian counterparts, and one result of such contacts was the Geneva Statement of April 17," the minister said.

Although all efforts have been made by the violently-installed regime in Kiev and its sponsors in the United States and Europe to, by turns or simultaneously, ignore, downplay, obfuscate and distort the horrific events in Odessa, Ukraine on Friday, May 2, what is indisputably evident is that an estimated 46 people were killed and 200 forced to seek medical treatment after assaults by pro-government forces culminated in the burning of a trade union office building.

A French novelist wrote in the 1800s of a curious trait of the human psyche that a person will perpetrate the perfect crime, then give himself away by bragging it about it to the first stranger he meets in a bar. Such indeed is the dynamic that seems to account for videos appearing on YouTube almost immediately after the carnage in Odessa demonstrating beyond a scintilla of doubt that young thugs, many with military camouflage outfits and plastic and metal military helmets, were preparing firebombs and, in one clear instance, firing a handgun in the direction of the besieged occupants of the trade union headquarters, who had fled a tent camp they had inhabited outside for shelter after the extremist goons arrived.

One cell phone video shows what appear to be members of the police force walking by and observing several young men getting Molotov cocktails ready and, far from intervening, appearing to nod their approbation. After the assailants hurled several of the handmade bombs into the building, shouts of exultation and triumph are heard, increasing in intensity as the fires caused by the bombs spread through the several-story complex.

The Federal Aviation Administration, already facing criticism from private drone operators, has launched an investigation into drone use in the aftermath of the devastating tornadoes that swept across the southeastern United States.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Tuesday that the FAA has initiated a probe into the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to gather aerial footage of the terrible scene in Arkansas, where at least 14 people died over the past few days due to the tornados. One of the worst hit areas was Mayflower, Arkansas, located just 40 minutes away from the state capital of Little Rock, where over a dozen people died.

Storm chaser and videographer Brian Eminger sought to help the public understand just how bad the disaster was by sending a drone equipped with a video camera over Mayflower just moments after the storms had passed.

US Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that handles foreign aid, says he will not approve funding for the military in Egypt, where 683 Muslim Brotherhood members were summarily sentenced to death on Monday.

The statement made by the longest-serving US senator is another complication in Washington's relationship with Cairo. Since the ouster last year of democratically-elected President Mohammed Morsi by the Egyptian military and allies, the Obama administration has walked a fine line between touting the democratic process while still ultimately maintaining strong allegiances with Egypt, a main ally in the region.

Last week, the Pentagon said it would send 10 Apache attack helicopters and $650 million to Egypt's military regime, which has brutally suppressed dissent among Islamist supporters of Morsi and other groups. The Apaches do not need congressional approval, aides on Capitol Hill said, according to Reuters.