The last year changed many things in my life, so it will be appropriate to summarize certain intermediate results associated with the changes in Sevastopol borne of the Crimean spring. I decided not to group this in blocks, so I simply write what came to my mind during the attempts to recall what has changed over a year.

1. Crimea stopped being a part of Ukraine and became a part of Russia. I wished for this event for many years, so here my dream simply came true. Those people whose dreams come true must understand very well how this feels like.

2. Ukrainian flags and Ukrainian insignia disappeared from the city. Only very rarely one can meet Ukrainian text or old advertisement banners in Ukrainian. The city speaks Russian and after the cancellation of the obligatory use of Ukrainian, which they previously tried to implant by force, the Ukrainian language simply disappeared because it wasn't needed, even though there is no special ban on the use of Ukrainian - if one wants, one can put banners in Ukrainian, the law permits it. If one wants to speak Ukrainian, one is free to do so. All of these rights are present, but nobody uses them because there is no need to do so.

3. One may now go to a movie theater without fearing the obligatory translation of the movies to Ukrainian in a city where 99% speak Russian. For several years I didn't go watch movies for the language reasons; in the last year I was there more often than in the previous 5 years.

Adult interrogation methods do not belong in the classroom, so why are school administrators throughout the United States being trained to use them on their students in order to extract confessions?

John E. Reid & Associates is the largest interrogation trainer in the world and teaches such methods to hundreds of school administrators each year . Last month, members of the Illinois Principals Association, for instance, could register for a "professional development" event on "Investigative Interviewing and Active Persuasion". The School Administrators Association of New York State recently offered a workshop for administrators on this same topic, titled "Are you Sure They Are Telling the Truth"?

These administrators are learning the " Reid Technique ", which relies on "maximization" and "minimization" tactics in order to induce suspects to confess. Minimization focuses on reducing a suspect's feelings of guilt, while maximization is designed to heighten suspect anxiety using confrontation. Both techniques are legal and both are incredibly coercive.

While he was upset with both Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday night,Daily Show host Jon Stewart was especially angry at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for the delay in an anti-sex trafficking bill that had bipartisan support.

As the New York Times reported, the bill would create a fund for sex trafficking victims, but also includes a provision banning the money from being used to pay for abortions.

Stewart knocked Republicans for sneaking the abortion ban into the measure after both parties supported it in committee votes, and argued that McConnell was making a "disingenuous point" when he accused Democrats of delaying the bill for the sake of "left-wing special interest groups."

"The only reason the language is in there is because you're bowing down to right-wing special interests," Stewart raged, climbing over his desk.

But while the GOP had engaged in some "f*ckery," Stewart said, Democrats were "dumbasses" for failing to read the revised version of the bill, which Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said "you could blame it on staff."

"How about I blame not reading the bill on you?" Stewart responded. "The guy in charge of Senate Democrats, whose last name is literally 'Reid.' How did you not read this bill?"

A University of Michigan fraternity has been permanently disbanded after reportedly causing an estimated $430,000 in damages to a ski resort during a party weekend.

The Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity and Sigma Delta Tau sorority organized a 48-hour weekend party at Treetops Resort that, according to the Bloomfield Hills Patch, resulted in smashed ceiling tiles, broken doors and exit signs. Various media reports also claim that the students "urinated on everything in sight, including the carpet."

"If you just look at our out-of-pocket expenses - things we've paid to contractors, third parties - it's around $230,000," resort general manager Barry Owens told the Detroit Free Press.

"It doesn't take into consideration management time or damage to the resort's reputation," he added. "Our accountants and attorneys are saying that this could be up to an additional $200,000. We're now talking a total of $430,000." Owens also claims that he has never seen damage to this extent in all of his 30 years working in resort management.

Leland Manders, national executive director of Sigma Alpha Mu, released a statement announcing that the chapter will be closed:

"It is regrettable that these vandals, as well as the officers of the chapter, decided that avoiding personal accountability and/or university sanctions took priority over the welfare of the entire chapter; their lack of cooperation led to the university's withdrawal of recognition of the entire chapter for a four-year period," Manders wrote. "Sigma Alpha Mu worked in cooperation with university officials and regretfully agreed with their request to close the chapter.

"When the incident first occurred, the fraternity's board took immediate and decisive action by suspending the chapter from all activities until a full investigation could be conducted," Manders wrote. "As a result of that process, a membership review was conducted and most of the senior members of the chapter refused to participate."

Manders also went on to add that some members of the society may receive individual disciplinary action from authorities as a result of the vandalism. No charges have been filed just yet, but authorities and Michigan State Police are still investigating the situation.

An Il-76 cargo aircraft of the Russian Emergencies Ministry has delivered humanitarian aid to Syria, the ministry's press service said on Thursday.

"The Il-76 carrying 20.5 tons of humanitarian cargo has landed at the airport of Latakia," the press service added.

The return flight from Latakia will take to Moscow some 50 Russian and CIS nationals who decided to leave the conflict zone.

The humanitarian operation will help ease tensions among Syria's population and refugees, the press service added.

Russia has delivered some 530 tons of humanitarian cargo to conflict-hit Syria over the past years.

More than 1,100 nationals of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other CIS and European countries were evacuated by the Emergencies Ministry from the conflict zone.

A 34-year-old woman was arrested Wednesday after Longmont Police say she attacked a woman who was seven-months pregnant and cut the victim's unborn baby from her womb. The baby died, but the victim is expected to survive.

Longmont Police Commander Jeff Satur said the suspect - later identified as Dynel Catrece Lane - showed up at an area hospital with the deceased baby, claiming she had a miscarriage. Satur said Lane's husband drove her to the emergency room, thinking the child was alive. He said the husband is not considered a suspect.

The ambush happened around 2 p.m. Wednesday at Lane's home in the 1600 block of Green Place in Longmont. Satur said Lane and the 26-year-old victim did not know each other prior to this incident. The victim was responding to a Craigslist ad for baby clothes and came alone to the home.

"We've made some requests of Craigslist to try to freeze that account," Satur said. "At this point, we don't want to give away too much, because we don't want it removed."

Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that security staff at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook account to monitor local Black Lives Matter organizers, befriend them, and obtain their personal information and photographs without their knowledge.

Evidence of the fake Facebook account was found in a cache of files provided by the Mall of America to Bloomington officials after a large Black Lives Matter event at the mall on December 20 protesting police brutality. The files included briefs on individual organizers, with screenshots that suggest that much of the information was captured using a Facebook account for a person named "Nikki Larson."

Metadata from some of the documents lists the software that created them as belonging to "Sam Root" at the "Mall of America." A Facebook account for a Sam Root lists his profession as "Intelligence Analyst at Mall of America."

The fake Larson account featured a profile photo that a Google reverse image search shows is identical to a photo associated with a woman who is Facebook friends with Root. The account, previously found at this url, was deleted soon after The Intercept contacted the Mall of America for this story.

On December 11, as news of the planned Black Lives Matter protest began to spread, the "Nikki Larson" account was updated with a banner image of an (apocryphal) Martin Luther King Jr. quote: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." At some point, the Larson account "liked" the Black Lives Matter Minneapolis Facebook group.

There are many television shows like "Doomsday Preppers" and "Doomsday Castle" that tend to display examples of people preparing for extreme scenarios. Scenarios that are often so extreme that even most preppers think they are extreme. The typical response to these scenarios by the average person is that preppers are crazy and that there is no practical application for preparedness. I can tell you this is not the case, but I guess the news would be boring if the stories of preparedness were logical and reinforced the need to be prepared. Regardless of how you feel, there are many signs that indicate the practicality of being prepared for a variety of scenarios from natural disaster to job loss to government collapse. Some of these signs we are seeing today. It is almost as if the writing on the wall is telling us that we are in store for some tough times.


Last year, there was great controversy around the shooting of a black teen by a white police officer that led to rioting and protests that lasted for weeks. Then, after a few months of hearing almost nothing, two police officers were shot amid a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, last week while another racially charged situation developed as the result of another police shooting in Wisconsin. Who knows if things will get better or worse, but I am almost willing to guarantee that there were many residents who wish they had been better prepared to deal with the dangers of such protests and the inherent risk of leaving home in the middle of this. I can't tell you if these events led anyone to stock up on food and water, but there was a great increase in the purchase of firearms.

Amid a crackdown on hate speech and "condoning terrorism" online, a French court has handed out a two-month suspended prison sentence to prominent comedian and political activist Dieudonne over a Facebook post in the wake of Charle Hebdo attack.

The 49-year-old Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, or simply Dieudonne has been convicted for being "an apologist for terrorism" over a Facebook post he made following attacks in France that killed 17 people.

"I feel like Charlie Coulibaly," he wrote in a coined phrase on Facebook on January 11, four days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, allegedly making a mockery of the slogan "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) a global rallying cry against extremism. The second part of the phrase mimicked the name of Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four people at a Paris kosher supermarket.

KCBS has learned that Saint Mary's Cathedral, the principal church of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, has installed a watering system to keep the homeless from sleeping in the cathedral's doorways.

The cathedral, at Geary and Gough, is the home church of the Archbishop. There are four tall side doors, with sheltered alcoves, that attract homeless people at night.

"They actually have signs in there that say, 'No Trespassing,'" said a homeless man named Robert.

But there are no signs warning the homeless about what happens in these doorways, at various times, all through the night. Water pours from a hole in the ceiling, about 30 feet above, drenching the alcove and anyone in it.

The shower ran for about 75 seconds, every 30 to 60 minutes while we were there, starting before sunset, simultaneously in all four doorways. KCBS witnessed it soak homeless people, and their belongings.