Society's ChildS

Nuke

Fascists from the Right Sector attempt to enter Europe's largest nuclear power plant in S.E. Ukraine

Ukraineโ€™s largest nuclear power plant
© wikipedia commonsBiggest nuclear power station in Europe; about 50 km from Zaporozhye / Ukraine. Photo from the "Nikopol" bank of the river Dnjepr
Ukrainian police stopped a group of armed men from entering Europe's largest nuclear power plant, located in southeastern Ukraine. In video footage allegedly showing the attempted break-in, the men say they are members of the Right Sector group.

The gunmen were stopped Thursday at the entrance of the city of Energodar, near Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, the facility's press service said in a Friday statement on its website.

The power plant's authorities said the incident did not affect the station's operations. However, security at the plant and throughout Energodar has been heightened.

Several cars full of men who introduced themselves as members of the notorious neo-Nazi group Right Sector were stopped at a checkpoint near Energodar, Ukraine's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. The men were wearing masks, had guns, and said that they were headed to "protect the nuclear power plant and the city from possible seizures," according to the paper.

"We moved out to protect the city, but we were stopped and circled by police," a Right Sector member told RBK Ukraine.

Local police said they confiscated the men's weapons and launched a criminal investigation.

Footage posted on Svoboda TV's YouTube account on Thursday - allegedly shot during the attempted break-in - shows a group of masked men preparing to enter Energodar.

Comment: The EU should think twice about supporting headless fascists in Ukraine, whose mindless actions are an endangerment to not only democracy, but also to the human species.


Quenelle

East Ukraine's Kharkov region to hold independence referendum - according to peoples movement "Southeast"

Kharkov rallies
© ITAR-TASS/ Sergei Kozlov Kharkov rallies for referendum
East Ukraine's Kharkov region will hold a regional independence referendum following south-eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, member of the coordinating council of movement "Southeast" Yuri Apukhtin said at a rally near the monument to Soviet leader Lenin on the Square of Freedom in this Ukrainian city on Sunday.

"Kharkov region will hold a referendum on independence following Donetsk and Lugansk. Our task is not to participate in Ukrainian presidential elections in any case. We should meet on this square on May 25. We do not recognise these elections," he stated.

Meanwhile, Apukhtin criticised the second all-Ukraine national unity roundtable meeting in the city of Kharkov on Saturday. In his words, he refused to participate in this meeting, though he was invited to attend it.

Representatives from movements "Southeast", "Borba" (Struggle) and the Ukrainian Communist Party are participating in the rally on the Square of Freedom. Many demonstrators came with Russian national flags.

Life Preserver

No popular support! Anger rising in Ukrainian army over Kiev policies

Ukrainian soldier
© REUTERS/Marko Djurica
There have been signs of brewing anger in the Ukrainian Armed Forces as many servicemen are increasingly displeased with Kiev's policies.

On Saturday, a group of self-defense fighters held talks with servicemen deployed at an airfield near Kramatorsk.

"They say they don't want war, they don't want to shoot or kill anyone. Many come from our region. But they refuse to surrender - they have orders to obey," a spokesman for the self-defense forces told reporters.

Discontent among the servicemen has been fueled by worsening food supplies, the spokesman said.

Also stationed at the airport are about 70 representatives of some unknown organizations, probably Right Sector radicals.

"They wear black uniforms without any insignia and don't communicate with the military," the spokesman said.

USA

Kentucky sues feds over right to grow hemp

Hemp
© Reuters / Baz RatnerHemp, the non-psychoactive variant of marijuana
Attorneys for the state of Kentucky are in federal court Friday afternoon attempting to have the United States government release hemp seeds imported from abroad that were intended to be used in pilot growing projects.

It became lawful to use industrial hemp in Kentucky starting in 2013, and a farm bill signed by US President Barack Obama earlier this year paved the way for states to grow the crop for research. The US Drug Enforcement Agency nevertheless seized around 250 pounds of hemp seeds shipped from Italy to the University of Kentucky earlier this month, prompting state officials to turn around and sue that agency and others.

Comment: Hemp is a huge potential source of new income for farmers in the US. It can be used to make rope, clothing, and a host of other useful products. With the US economy in shambles, it's a wonder why any government agency would interfere with discovering new sources of income.


Attention

Turkish police fire water, gas at protesters in mining disaster town

Turkish riot police use tear gas against protesters in Ankara on May 14, 2014.
© AFP Photo / Adem Altan Turkish riot police use tear gas against protesters in Ankara on May 14, 2014.

Police have fired water cannons and used tear gas to disperse several thousand demonstrators in the Turkish town of Soma, which became the scene of the country's worst mining disaster earlier this week.

People scattered into side streets as the police were dispatched onto one of Soma's main commercial thoroughfares, where the offices of the local government and labor union are situated, an eyewitness told Reuters.

Bad Guys

Murdering the Opposition: UN Ukraine report shows double standards in attempt to whitewash Kiev's actions

Training in hand combat among opposition fighters
© RIA Novosti / Andrey SteninTraining in hand combat among opposition fighters from the nationalist organization "Right sector" in a camp on Independence Square in Kiev.

Moscow has accused a UN report on violence in Ukraine's Odessa of being purposefully blind to hard facts and simply "carrying out a political order to whitewash" the actions of the coup-appointed government in Kiev.

The Russian foreign ministry believes that the report presented by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is marked by a systematic and routine ignorance of any Kiev involvement in sparking the Odessa carnage, while placing all the blame unequivocally with the pro-Russian self-defense forces. The ministry statement remarks that not a single word was said about neo-Nazi elements who engaged in setting buildings on fire with people inside, shooting dead anyone who opposed them and finishing off the wounded in plain sight.

Family

Thousands of Ukrainian refugees and forced migrants entering Slovakia

customs post slovakia
© Reuters / Petr JosekPeople wait at a customs post at the renovated pedestrian crossing between Slovakia and Ukraine at the east Slovakian village of Velke Slemence.
Amid Ukraine's looming political crisis, thousands of illegal immigrants from the country may soon flood its neighboring country - Slovakia, a tendency which raises concern, says the Slovakian prime minister.

"We can speak of thousands of illegal migrants from Ukraine who are motivated to cross the Schengen borders in our or other zones," said Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico at the GLOBSEC annual conference in the country's capital, Bratislava, reported Itar-Tass.

Meanwhile, organized criminal groups have recently been stepping up illegal transportation of migrants across the Slovak-Ukrainian border, according to Mr Fico.

Slovakia borders Ukraine's Transcarpathia region in the West. This is Ukraine's shortest border - only 98 km long.

In February, Jozef Danko, spokeman for the Slovakian village of Vysne Nemecke on the border with Ukraine, told Voice of Russia radio that the inflow of vehicles from Ukraine has recently increased, not only from the nearest cities which border Vysne Nemecke but also from other parts of Ukraine.

"If earlier there were many cars from Uzhhorod [Ukrainian city] and Transcarpathia [region], now there are more cars from Kiev," he added.

Bulb

Crimea's biggest banks switch to Russian Sberbank payment system amid card payment crisis

russian national commercial bank
© RIA Novosti / Mihail MokrushinA woman enters the Russian National Commercial Bank building in Sevastopol.
Russia's National Commercial Bank, Crimea's biggest lender, has begun issuing cards on the basis of the PRO 100 payment system, developed by Russia's biggest financial institution, Sberbank.

The other two biggest banks of the peninsula - Morskoy Bank and the Black Sea Bank of Reconstruction and Development - also plan to join in the near future.

The Crimean banks chose the PRO100 payment system amid the urgent situation with card payments on the peninsula and the need to take quick action, Kommersant says. Russia's National Commercial Bank isn't a member of international payment systems like Visa and MasterCard, while the other two can neither service their existing cards nor issue new ones.

Smoking

100,000 sign petition against smoking ban in Russia

Smoking
© RIA Novosti/Alexandr KryazhevCould cigarettes contain the latest clue to an anti-ageing drug?
100,000 signatures have been collected for the petition calling Russian lawmakers to backpedal on the smoking ban. Also, restaurants and bars have found a way to partially avoid the ban that's due to come into effect on June 1.

The Association of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of Russia that unites over 3,000 food and beverage establishments is also demanding to postpone or cancel the ban on smoking in restaurants, cafes and bars.

The organization, along with the all-Russia movement "For the rights of smokers," has drafted a list of amendments to the legislation and launched a petition, which collected 100,000 signatures in favor of the changes.

Dollar

Millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on Obamacare websites that still don't work

obamacare cartoon
© Joe Heller
Obamacare was officially launched nearly seven months ago, and there are still four states that still have broken exchanges.

Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and Nevada have spent $474 federal tax dollars on their websites so far, and will likely spend far more repairing them, or on moving them to the federal exchange.

The Fiscal Times reported the numbers, and they are shocking:
Maryland will spend an additional $40 million to save its website, which has already cost $90 million. Nevada has spent $50 million to date and will decide in the coming weeks how much more it will spend on repair efforts. Massachusetts will pour an additional $121 million into fixing its severely troubled state portal, while also using the federal portal as a back up plan.

Meanwhile, Oregon's website, which already cost $259 million, is so troubled that the state has opted to scrap the site entirely and spend an extra $5 million to use Healthcare.gov instead. CoverOregon executives said repairing their website would cost an additional $75 million.