28 paintings and 6 icons were reported missing from the recreational center 'Bear oak grove' after Right Sector members left its premises, said Ukraine's Interior Ministry adding that the damage is estimated at about US$ 1 million.

The head and owner of the recreational center 'Bear oak grove' (Medveja dubrova) in Transcarpathian region has filed a complaint with the police about the missing works of art, said the ministry.

"After the Right Sector guarded the recreational center Medveja dubrova the police are looking for 28 unique painting and six icons" said the Interior Ministry in a statement on Sunday adding that a criminal investigation has been launched.

The Right sector guarded the center from 23 to 26 March, said the head of Medveja dubrova. He added that the works of art were discovered missing after an inventory of the property and they are of high historic and artistic value.

The Right Sector movement first emerged at the end of November 2013 supporting the Euromaidan protests in Kiev and headed by Dmitry Yarosh. In March the ultra-nationalist movement decided to become a political party, nominating Yarosh for president.

Russia put Yarosh on an international wanted list and charged him with inciting terrorism after he urged Chechen terrorist leader Doku Umarov to launch attacks on Russia over the Ukrainian conflict. The far-right leader has also threatened to destroy Russian pipelines on Ukrainian territory

• Bare-Faced Messiah was first published in 1986 but the Church of Scientology has successfully kept it off the shelves for 27-years
• Written by British journalist Russell Miller about Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
• Alleges that Hubbard lied about his education and childhood in official Scientology biographies
• Claims to refute Hubbard's assertion that he was one of the nation's first nuclear physicists and a doctor
• During his research Miller found unpalatable opinions on Chinese people written by the teenage Hubbard
• Alleges that Hubbard would observe and documents bizarre sex rituals with a prominent Caltech rocket scientist
• Outlines how Hubbard realized branding Scientology as a religion would be better for business concerns

A book Scientologists have kept off the shelves of American book stores for 27-years that alleges church founder L. Ron Hubbard was a fantasist with a predilection for bizarre sexual rituals is finally to be published.

Written by British journalist Russell Miller in 1986, "Bare-Faced Messiah" cuts a swath through the many myths the Scientologist chief built up around himself and exposes him as a charismatic charmer, who targeted celebrity devotees.

Miller alleges that Hubbard lied about his service in World War II and that instead of the millions of members the church claims to have - in fact only counts around 25,000 people as followers.

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has given a green light to sell the country's newest S-400 air defense guided missile system to China, which Russian media claim will give Beijing an edge in the airspace of the Taiwan Strait and over islands in the East China Sea at the center of a dispute with Japan, reports the military news website of Huanqiu.com, the Chinese-language website of China's Global Times.

Beijing has been interested in acquiring the guided missile system since 2011. Two years ago, Russia talked with several countries interested in buying the system but was forced to suspend negotiations in order to ensure its supply to the Russian military, the general manager of a Russian national defense export company told Russian newspaper Kommersant in January this year. Export sales of the system may not begin until 2016.

Talk of a potential deal with China drew concerns from Russian security officials who worried that it may not only affect the supply of the system to Russia's own military but also that China could back-engineer the technology to produce its own systems. The system's manufacturer Almaz-Antei has eased the former concerns by delivering the first batch of the system. Moscow also announced a plan in January to build three new plants for the contractor in order to build more air defense and anti-guided missile systems. An intellectual property rights agreement that China and Russia signed with regard to the arms trade has also come into effect.

Though in what volume China wishes to acquire the S-400 system is unclear, Kommersant's source said China wants enough systems to equip two to four battalions. The People's Liberation Army has already obtained an air defense guided missile system and another command system from Russian and deployed them in the defense of Beijing and Shanghai, according to the paper, which estimated that the country would be able to control the airspace over Taiwan and the disputed Diaoyutai islands (Diaoyu to China, Senkaku to Japan).

As my plane left Dubai for Kiev, I began browsing through an endless pile of newspapers and magazines: from the New York Times to the Economist, from the Times to several Gulf-based and Turkish periodicals, as well as Spanish and German ones.

The consensus on Putin being a villain was absolute. There were no dissident voices, but also, not surprisingly, no Russian intellectual voices. There were absolutely no editorials written by Russians attacking the Western destabilization of Ukraine and the destruction of its democratically elected government.

It was also shocking how the Arabic and Turkish press was translating and reprinting all that appeared in the West.

There were no clear, simple and logical explanations of what actually happened in Ukraine recently.

That is, that the West, particularly the greedy and desperate EU, wanted to get its hands on the tremendous natural resources of the Ukraine, on its heavy industry and cheap but highly-educated work force. They offered a deal. A very bad deal, under which, European companies would be allowed to plunder the country, but Ukrainian people would not be even allowed to enter the EU, let alone seek employment there.

Are Western diplomats and media outlets being serious when they accuse the Russian government of launching a new Cold War? Do they really believe their own rhetoric when they say Putin has expansionary ambitions and wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire? Did Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, mean it when she said Russia's actions in Crimea are similar to 'what Hitler did back in the 1930s'? Other anti-Russian observers have also claimed that Russia's incorporation of Crimea is analogous to the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Do all these people sincerely believe this interpretation of current geopolitical events?

It is always difficult, if not dangerous, to speculate about the thought processes that drive powerful diplomats and political leaders to say and do certain things. It is especially difficult to make sense of the dynamics that turned the crisis in Ukraine into a perilous international dispute. In a recent interview, a Russian journalist asked me why Western media outlets have become so careless about fact-checking in relation to Ukraine and Russia more broadly. I wasn't sure if I could answer the question, so I was forced to say that I would have to reflect on it further.

Israel is voicing displeasure about its citizens not being able to enter the US as freely as they would like. While the latter stands firm on Israel's failure to meet the necessary requirements, the question of Palestinian settlements also looms.

Israel is pushing for an entry into the US Visa Waiver Program - a membership enjoyed by 38 countries, many of which Israel sees as not being nearly as dedicated to a political friendship with America as it is.

The US has given a list of reasons for why this isn't happening, like Israel's treatment of Arab-American visitors at the airport - something Israel denies flat out, the AP reports.

But Israel is now also seeing a dramatic spike in visa rejections for its citizens that has taken place in the course of only one year. Its younger travelers (including many who have served in the armed forces, and wish to perform a now-traditional trip to the US after being discharged) are being turned away by the dozen, it seems. Statistically, rejection has risen from 5.4 percent to 9.7 in 2013, which is an 80 percent increase. Even though the US State Department's Jen Psaki claimed at a briefing last week that 90 percent of Israeli applicants get through - its only 80 percent for the early-twenties category, the Israeli government sees the new figures to be discriminatory and a result of a concrete agenda.

The US, meanwhile, maintains that it's still largely possible for Israelis to get the 90-day 'B' visa for business or travel purposes.

In the meantime, Israel still has among the highest-ranking visa approval ratings when visiting the US. And it's fair to say that other countries' US visa rejections have also gone up overall. And by contrast, their approval rate isn't half as good as Israel's: Belarus got almost 21 percent of rejections in 2013, while Bulgaria's was nearly 20, and Ireland's close to 17.

A New York Democrat Senator Charle Schumer is urging the State Department to "end its widespread, arbitrary practice of denying young Israelis tourist visas." Some members of Congress even sought legislation that would free Israel from adhering to any conditions whatsoever presented by the Visa Waiver Program.

Madam President, as the longest serving Independent in the history of the U.S. Congress, I wish to address an issue which I believe does not get the kind of discussion it should from either political party but certainly not from our Republican colleagues--the moral, economic, and political dimensions of the kind of income and wealth inequality which we have in our country today. In my view, this is the most important issue facing the United States because it impacts on virtually every aspect of our lives. It is an issue we must be discussing thoroughly and one in which the American people have to be engaged.

The fact is that while we often speak of the United States of America being the wealthiest Nation on the face of the Earth, that is only partially true, because within the context of total wealth is the reality that the great middle class of this country is disappearing. The reality is we have more people living in poverty today than at any time in the history of the United States of America. The fact is we have by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major industrialized nation on Earth. So if we add it all together, yes, we are the wealthiest Nation on Earth, but the reality is the people on top own a huge amount of this wealth while the middle class is shrinking and poverty is increasing.

I will speak to our colleagues and the American people about some of the realities in terms of income and wealth distribution.

North Korea's Unha-3 rocket was built with components from South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States, UN experts revealed.

In a little-publicized March 10 report, the UN Panel of Experts also discovered the rocket contained off-the-shelf parts from China and Switzerland, while Soviet-era SCUD missiles have also been stripped down for components.

The bulk of the components had not been obtained in violation of sanctions targeting the North, the UN said, adding their utilization "shows the ability of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to assemble complex systems with globally sourced components."

Many of the parts in question listed are widely available computer components. However, a US-manufactured video decoder, along with UK-made temperature and pressure sensors, were also recovered.

President Barack Obama may authorize the shipment of new air defense systems to rebel forces in Syria's ongoing civil war, a new Associated Press report states.

Citing an unnamed US official, the AP stated Obama is mulling over the idea of sending man-portable air-defense systems, also known as MANPADs, to Syrian opposition groups, a move that would mark a notable shift compared to the White House's past statements.

As RT reported last month, the Obama administration has been interested in employing new ways to put pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad and boost the opposing rebels, who have lost ground in the conflict over the last few months.

Officials then stated the US would send anti-tank rockets and humanitarian aid to the opposition, but noted MANPADs - portable missile-launchers - would not be part of the package, due to fears they could land in extremist hands and potentially be used to take down commercial airliners.

Some more thoughts on the leaked tape from a meeting in the Turkish foreign ministry which is only very selectively reported in "western" media.


A video with recorded voices and English text is available as is the seemingly complete text in two parts.

The setting of the recording is this:

The voices of the illegal recording believed to belong to Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Hakan Fidan, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu, and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Gürel. According to the information obtained from sources, the recording consists of a chat between four officials in Davutoğlu's office before the commencement of the official meeting with the participation of more civil and military bureaucrats in another room at the Foreign Ministry.

It is not clear when exactly the meeting happened. It would fit the situation late last year or early 2014.