Annual inflation in Ukraine hit its highest level in more than a decade in April as a dramatic increase in energy rates drove up consumer prices, the government said Wednesday.

Consumer prices were up 60.9% higher in April from the year before, Ukraine's state statistics agency wrote on its website. There was 14% inflation in the first four months of 2015 alone.

The dramatic increase was largely due to a rise in energy prices: according to the agency, the cost of natural gas rose by more than five times in April, more than doubling total utility costs for households. Food prices increased by 4.4%, slowing from 15.6% in March.

Kiev prosecutors have reported the arrest of 19-year-old Aidar Battalion volunteer Vita Zaverukha, who is suspected of serving as an accomplice in the killing of two Ukrainian police officers and the injury of three more following a botched gas station robbery in Kiev which occurred on May 4, Ukrainian media have reported.

"As part of the investigation of criminal proceedings over an attack on a gas station and the killings of law enforcement officers on the night of May 4 in Kiev, another suspect has been arrested: a 19-year-old resident of Vinnitsa," a statement on the website of the Kiev prosecutor's office reads.

The statement added that Zaverukha has been detained under the criminal code article for an "attempt on the life of an officer of the law."

I wonder if it's time for a new song.....

It's unlikely that police officers would turn on each other during a trial, due to the loyalty that typically runs through departments, David A. Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and an expert on racial profiling, told The New York Times.

Jurors are often "inclined to give [police officers] the benefit of the doubt," according to The Times, because behavior "such as beating or even shooting another person" is assumed to be part of a cop's job.

"It's always difficult to get a guilty verdict against a police officer except in the worst and strongest cases," Harris told The Times. "A police officer comes into a courtroom not just presumed to be innocent, but presumed to be the good guy."

That's been true for a long time, but as the number of people who have this sort of experience mount....

In a tiny corner of Eastern Europe, a fledgling Republic struggling with the day-to-day hurdles of warfare and shaky ceasefires, has succeeded in doing what has long been overdue in the most powerful nation on the face of the earth - it has nationalized its out-of-control banks and put them to use for the good of the people.

While the DPR was not faced with a privatized central bank such as the United States and other nations due to the fact that DPR is a breakaway bloc and a new nation separated from the Kiev central bank, it was nonetheless host to a number of larger banking institutions that not only parasitized the people of DPR and Ukraine but also did nothing to improve the infrastructure of these areas or the living standards of the people there.

Emerging out of the stage of mere bands of militias and governing committees, the Donetsk People's Republic is now in the process of putting together a formal government. Its plans to nationalize banks that have parasitized Ukraine for years have no doubt drawn the ire of not only the oligarchs that own those banks but the Anglo-American banking cartel that essentially owns the United States and NATO countries and who are bent on world hegemony and submission to their will.

An oil train derailed and caught fire early Wednesday in a rural area of central North Dakota, prompting the evacuation of a nearby town where about three dozen people live.

No injuries were reported in the accident, which happened near Heimdal, about 115 miles northeast of Bismarck. The residents who left were staying with family and friends, Wells County Emergency Manager Tammy Roehrich said.

Ten tanker cars on the BNSF Railway train caught fire, creating thick black smoke, state Emergency Services spokeswoman Cecily Fong said.

"The engine and cars that aren't burning have been decoupled and moved to safety," she said.

Firefighters from four area communities responded to the fire, Fong said. Regional Hazmat units from Grand Forks and Devil's Lake are also on scene, CBS affiliate KXMB reports.

The Federal Railroad Administration sent a 10-person team to investigate the derailment.

It was unclear how many cars were part of the train or how many derailed. There was no immediate word on the cause of the wreck or on the source of the oil the train was carrying. A spokeswoman for BNSF did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

An accident Tuesday took two lives on an oil platform in the Campeche Sound in the Gulf of Mexico, the second time in five weeks that Mexico's offshore oil industry has been rocked by a lethal accident.

The state oil giant, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said emergency boats evacuated 101 workers from the Troll Solution rig after "a failure of one of its legs" caused a partial collapse.

By midafternoon, photos posted to Twitter showed the rig listing heavily, partially underwater and leaving an oil slick. Pemex said it was not in danger of sinking. The magnitude of the oil leak was not clear.

Pemex did not give nationalities for the two fatalities but said both were employees of the rig's owner, Typhoon Offshore, a subsidiary of Mexico's Grupo Salinas, a conglomerate with interests in banking, retail, media and telecommunications. The subsidiary owns only the single rig, built in 2010 in China.

In its own statement, Typhoon said 10 employees had been treated for injuries.

The incident raised new questions about the safety of Mexico's offshore drilling industry at a time that Pemex is seeking international investment for the first time since the oil industry was nationalized in 1938.

What we have heard rumoured, or more than rumoured, is now pretty much official. The attitude of Georgia's Western "friends" to the country has been laid bare by the announcement that the Republic of Georgia is fast becoming the testing ground for a wide range of new vaccines and questionable treatments.

Is there something intrinsically superior about the Georgian people, their European DNA, who would provide the testers with important scientific data? Or is it more likely that no one wants to risk treating their own nationals with these experimental medicines, but no one minds murdering a few Georgians in the name of better health in the West?

Anti-vivisectionists, those against operating and experimenting on animals, will doubtless applaud this move. "Better than testing on defenseless animals", they will say. Things are only tested on animals because no one knows if they are safe for humans. Now Georgians are being treated like those animals, and their government is doing nothing about it - indeed, abusing its own people is very probably a price imposed upon the Georgian government for continuing to receive Western support.

At least 115 enlisted military personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been convicted since 2005 for committing theft, bribery, and contract rigging crimes which have totaled more than $52 million in damages.

All soldiers who have been convicted had little to no criminal histories and are currently serving sentences ranging from three months to over 17 years.

One of the massive scams that was uncovered involved soldiers selling US military fuel to citizens in Afghanistan and pocketing the money. The fuel thefts alone have totaled at least $15 million since the start of the war, the Center for Public Integrity reported.

Shock has caused to the Greek society the death of four-year Annie from Bulgaria at the hands of her father. The little girl whose disappearance had been declared on April 24 by her parents, was murdered by her 27-year old father, a national of Bulgaria, according to the Greek Police (ELAS).

A friend of the couple told the police: "The father of the 4-year old told me that when he recovered from drug use, he found his daughter dead. When he saw the lifeless body on the floor, he began slicing it into several pieces and then told me that he boiled the pieces of the child. Then, on different occasions, he threw the pieces into rubbish bins near his home. He told me that lately he used to hit the child often. He later informed his wife and they both agreed to say she disappeared".

The case was solved by the Attica Police by combining facts obtained both from the testimony of a person from the close environment of the 27-year old perpetrator and from genetic material that was found, as well as a series of other indications that leave no doubt to the competent officers for the fate of the unfortunate girl.

The case began to be investigated by the police after the disappearance statement made by the 25-year old girl's mother, also a national of Bulgaria, who initially claimed that the girl had been kidnapped by a woman she knew, but then changed her story.

The officers assigned to the case, during the preliminary investigation, had arrested the 27-year old father, who is a drug user, but he did not confessed, and due to the lack of evidence, let him go free.

Criminal networks using cover of rescue effort to target poor rural communities in country from which an estimated 15,000 girls are trafficked a year, warn NGOs

Tens of thousands of young women from regions devastated by the earthquake in Nepal are being targeted by human traffickers supplying a network of brothels across south Asia, campaigners in Kathmandu and affected areas say.

The 7.8-magnitude quake, which killed more than 7,000 people, has devastated poor rural communities, with hundreds of thousands losing their homes and possessions. Girls and young women in these communities have long been targeted by traffickers, who abduct them and force them into sex work.

The UN and local NGOs estimate 12,000 to 15,000 girls a year are trafficked from Nepal. Some are taken overseas, to South Korea and as far as South Africa. But the majority end up in Indian brothels where tens of thousands are working in appalling conditions.

"This is the time when the brokers go in the name of relief to kidnap or lure women. We are distributing assistance to make people aware that someone might come to lure them," said Sunita Danuwar, director of Shakti Samuha, an NGO in Kathmandu. "We are getting reports of [individuals] pretending to go for rescuing and looking at people."

Senior western aid officials in the Nepalese capital are also concerned. "There is nothing like an emergency when there is chaos for opportunities to ... traffic more women. There is a great chance that everything that is bad happening in Nepal could scale up," said one.

Sita, 20, told the Guardian how she had been taken from her village in Sindhupalchok, the hill area north of Kathmandu, to the Indian border town of Siliguri where she was sold to a brothel owner, repeatedly beaten, systematically raped by hundreds of men and infected with HIV. "I do not have nightmares about my time there. I have erased it from my memory," she said.

Last month's quake killed more than 3,000 people in Sindhupalchok, and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

"The earthquake will definitely increase the risk of abuse," said Rashmita Shashtra, a local healthworker. "People here are now desperate and will take any chance. There are spotters in the villages who convince family members and local brokers who do the deal. We know who they are."