Russian state television has provoked a storm of criticism after it aired an uncorroborated report claiming that the Ukrainian army publicly nailed a three-year-old boy to a board in a former rebel stronghold.

Ukraine accused Russia of ratcheting up its propaganda war by airing an interview in which a woman gave graphic details of the alleged incident in the Ukrainian flashpoint city of Slavyansk, which neither AFP nor other media have been able to confirm.


Channel One television at the weekend broadcast footage of a woman who said she recently saw Ukrainian soldiers round up people in central Slavyansk, which the army took over this month after three months of clashes with separatists, and nail an insurgent's child to a notice board.

A spokeswoman for Ukraine's interior ministry, Natalya Stativko, on Monday slammed the report as "following in the footsteps of Goebbels," Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda.

Saturday brought a turning point to Operation Strong Cliff.^* Everybody was expecting one, the start of an IDF ground operation in Gaza Strip. Instead, at 4:30PM, July 12, 2014, Hamas made history. After almost a week of brutal bombings of Gaza, it pulled out its best missiles and hit Nahariya, a Jewish town on the border with Lebanon.

Hamas Shocks Israel

The list of "Red Color" sirens heard on July 12, 2014, 4:30PM starts with Nahariya, 170km north of Gaza. "Tzeva Adom" (Red Color) is the IDF code for approaching missiles. One missile fell on an open space in the town, setting a distance record for Hamas. It fire capabilities cover the entire Coastal Plain.

There were at least two other massive launching events at 3PM and 4PM. The launching included medium and large range rockets and short-range mortars.

Ashkelon, near Gaza, was hit seven times during the day. In one of the sites hit, a fire started.

In 2012, during Operation Pillar of Cloud, I used official IDF data and calculated a success rate of 25% of the antimissiles used. This was in contradiction to the 75% claimed by Hebrew media. In the linked articles I described the statistical manipulations used by the IDF.

More careful than then, the IDF is now reporting the success rate on a daily base. It is below 25%.

Day...............Launchings...Intercepts...Success Rate
Monday.........63...................11................17%
Tuesday........157.................29................18%
Wednesday...130.................24................18%
Thursday.......197.................44................22%
Friday............137.................27................20%
Saturday........124................10..................8%

A point to keep in mind is that the price of the launched rockets starts at $100 for cheap Kassam missiles. Every antimissile launching costs over $50,000.

In the following night, four soldiers from Shayetet 13, the IDF Naval Commando, were hurt while unsuccessfully trying to invade a Hamas launching base. They were taken to the hospital in Ashkelon, the most hit town on Saturday. On the Jewish Shabbat, Hamas launched its best rockets and shocked Israel.

The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) officials announced that residents of some Donetsk districts are suburban areas are being evacuated in an orderly manner due to constant artillery strikes carried out by Ukrainian troops, reports Interfax.

"We evacuated around 500 people just yesterday in the evening from the private household districts, which were subject to artillery fire, so on average we evacuate regularly seven to eight buses from the city districts and suburbs," DPR First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Purgin told reporters.

"The evacuation is being held in an orderly fashion and information of large-scale evacuations of the entire Donetsk population does not exist," he stressed.

According to Purgin's statement, Ukrainian military continually shells Donetsk suburbs and its outskirts. As a result of gunfire last night about 15 people were killed, the militia reported.

The militia fighters said that over the past day they have "destroyed about 100 personnel of the Ukrainian armed forces, five tanks, two infantry combat vehicles"

People's militia fighters in the southeast of Ukraine have armed themselves with tanks, warplanes, multiple rocket launcher systems and artillery. According to the self-defense forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, the armaments have been taken in combat with the Ukrainian security forces. People's militia fighters previously said that they managed to start an exhibition sample of a WW2 tank that was removed from a military memorial pedestal.

15 people have been killed and over 160 injured as several subway cars derailed on the Moscow Metro on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya dark blue Metro line on Tuesday morning.


"According to the latest data, 15 people are dead {new data indicates that there are more than 20 people dead}. Three bodies have been retrieved," Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov told journalists. He added 12 bodies remain stuck in the damaged train.

Media reports have emerged of 16 people being dead. Those have not yet been officially confirmed.

The driver of the derailed train, who was earlier reported dead, is actually alive and being treated in hospital, Moscow authorities say, according to RIA Novosti.

The accident happened during the morning rush hour when the train was packed with passengers.

Israeli organization Physicians for Human Rights posted a chilling status on their Facebook page Sunday relaying a Gazan teenager's last status on Facebook before being killed in an Israeli airstrike:

"Have pity, God. I haven't slept since yesterday. Just finish it off already and bomb the house. I'm tired." These were the last words that Anas Kandil, 17, wrote on his Facebook page Sunday, just one hour before his house was bombed by Israeli airstrike in the Jabaliyya Refugee Camp, northern Gaza Strip. He, his father and three neighbors were killed.

According to the latest reports from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 70% of the fatalities thus far (89) are civilians of which 30% (27) are children. As of Monday morning, at least 172 Palestinians have been killed, and zero Israelis.

A Chicago company is under fire from a local union after employees complained they are being monitored and disciplined for using the bathroom more than just a few minutes a day.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Teamsters Local 743 union has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board regarding the situation, claiming that workers are being penalized if their time in the bathroom exceeds 30 minutes a week, or six minutes a day.

The company under the microscope is Chicago-based WaterSaver Faucet Co. and its sister company Guardian Equipment Inc., both of which have placed limits on employees looking to relieve themselves at work. In fact, Teamsters agent Nick Kreitman said the businesses have even "offered $1 per day for anyone who doesn't go to the bathroom at all."

Today a shameful culture of sexual violence permeates across thousands of America's college campuses. This dark cloud hanging over campuses has never adequately been dealt with by US institutions of higher education and, because of that fact, American women attending college in 2014 must live in growing daily fear of being sexually violated by their fellow male students at a never before seen rate.

One in five women report being a victim of sexual assault while studying at America's colleges and universities today. Another study determined that one in four college women have survived rape or attempted rape since age 14. A current trend estimates that one in three women will be sexually assaulted during her life. Take into account that the vast majority of victims choose not to report sex crimes to the authorities at all, a range anywhere from 60% up to 97% of sexually assaulted women will forego the stress of reporting sex crimes. When those kind of numbers are added to the overall equation, perhaps upwards of nearly half of all females attending college in America today are astoundingly being sexually violated, harassed and/or stalked on a regular basis. Though there are some who challenge these alarming numbers, keeping young women in pursuit of higher education in America safe from predatory male counterparts has never been a high priority until reaching its present crisis stage.

What is even more repugnant and telling is the men committing rape continue getting away with it with odds overwhelmingly on their side, giving them an emboldened advantage and sense of impunity that only motivates and reinforces them to brazenly rape again and again. Statistics show that sexual perpetrators will not stop at committing rape just once. Even if they get caught and receive treatment, recidivism rates for rapists are extremely high. They are far more apt to be serial rapists raping different women on average of six times before they are ultimately exposed and apprehended. Yet for many decades US colleges and universities have been quietly sweeping this mounting epidemic under the rug, concealing the truth from both the public and female students alike because the school's reputation and image are far more important than the safety and well being of their college coeds. Campus sexual assault is yet another sad and tragic crisis currently exploding amongst America's "best and brightest" enrolled at the nation's best ivory tower institutions today. Sexual assault becomes the latest US scandal brewing alongside the over trillion dollars in loan debt accumulating to pay for the ever-mounting costs of a college education.

Would you like to have a picture of a 3D demon exploding out of your chest? Would you like to make it look like an exquisite piece of art was carved out of your right leg? Would you like to see the shock on people's faces when they think that a real scorpion is sitting on your shoulder or a real snake is crawling down your back?

In recent years, more Americans have been getting tattoos than ever before, but now a new body art trend is spreading across America like wildfire. 3D tattoos can be far more realistic than conventional tattoos, and many are choosing them for their pure shock value. But how will all of these young people feel about their weird tattoos a decade or two from now?

And what does all of this bizarre body art say about our society? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Below are photos of 3D tattoos that I found on Facebook and Pinterest. At first glance, it is hard to believe that some of these are actually tattoos...

North Augusta - A mother has been arrested and thrown in jail on charges of child neglect because her 9-year-old daughter was found playing at a park by herself.

It might sound like a reasonable, normal place for an American kid to spend a summer day. That is, until busybody neighbors and overzealous government agents arbitrarily decided that it is abusive.

Debra Lynn Harrell, 46, was arrested by the North Augusta "Department of Public Safety" - charged with unlawful neglect toward a child, according to WFXG, when someone reported that the girl had been hanging out there playing by herself for a few hours.

Ms. Harrell later confessed that she does give her daughter the freedom to play at the neighborhood park while she works at a McDonald's restaurant to support her family. For her efforts, Ms. Harrell was locked in a cage and her daughter was taken into the custody of the Department of Social Services.