The people's mayor of Slavyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, claims that Ukraine's security forces suffered heavy losses during clashes with militiamen outside of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday evening.

"Eleven people were killed and 24 were injured on the adversary's side. One person was killed on our side. The adversary keeps firing on Slavyansk and Kramatorsk all the time. They are not storming [the cities], but are trying to trigger panic among the population," he said.

Both the militia and the civilian population of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk are "furious" with the Ukrainian Armed Forces for their constant attacks and provocations, Ponomaryov said.

"Our people are angry. They are prepared to resist the adversary using everything at hand. The adversary has driven the people to despair, and an ever-growing number of civilians are enrolling in the militia," Ponomaryov said.

The Ukrainian security forces continue to strike against the outskirts of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk at the moment, he said.

"They are firing at the outskirts. They are using mortars, among other weapons. We have no other choice but to respond. Gunfire is underway in Slavyansk now, but it has already stopped in Kramatorsk," he said.

Eleven years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, not a single high-level official has been held accountable for the numerous war crimes perpetrated throughout the war. Yet, a Tuesday announcement that the International Criminal Court is re-opening a "preliminary" investigation into charges that British troops systemically perpetrated atrocities in Iraq raised the faint possibility that this could change.

"It is good news is that the ICC is finally going to look at the extraordinary and serious war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Iraq War and the lead-up to it," said Phyllis Bennis, senior fellow at Institute for Policy Studies, in an interview with Common Dreams. "The bad news is that this is very late and the U.S. is not in the docket."

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda came to the decision after being presented with new evidence alleging the "responsibility of officials of the United Kingdom for war crimes involving systematic detainee abuse in Iraq from 2003 until 2008," according to an ICC statement.

Have you ever given food to a homeless person? Well, if you do it again in the future it might be a criminal act depending on where you live. Right now, there are dozens of major U.S. cities that have already passed laws against feeding the homeless.

As you will read about below, in some areas of the country you can actually be fined hundreds of dollars for just trying to give food to a hungry person.

I know that sounds absolutely insane, but this is what America is turning into.

Communities all over the country are attempting to "clean up the streets" by making it virtually illegal to either be homeless or to help those that are homeless.

Instead of spending more money on programs to assist the homeless, local governments are bulldozing tent cities and giving homeless people one way bus tickets out of town.

We are treating some of the most vulnerable members of our society like human garbage, and it is a national disgrace. What does it say about our country when we can't even give a warm sandwich to a desperately hungry person that is sleeping on the streets?

A retired couple down in Florida named Debbie and Chico Jimenez wanted to do something positive for their community during their retirement years, so they started feeding the homeless in Daytona Beach.

A 17-year-old Richmond girl says she was kicked out of her prom because the father chaperones at the event said her dress was "too provocative," and that she was creating "impure thoughts" among the dads.

In the blog post on HannahEttinger.com, the young woman identified as Clare writes of her experiences at the Richmond Homeschool Prom that she attempted to attend with her boyfriend.

Almost immediately upon entering the event, she was told by one of the women organizing the event, identified as Mrs. D, that her "dress is too short," and "too provocative."

According to the author of the blog post, "F*** The Patriarchy," the only guideline for the prom was that dresses were "fingertip length," which was made problematic by the 17-year-old's 5-foot-9-inch height and long legs. After recognizing that the dress was the appropriate "fingertip length," Mrs. D just told her to be "careful" and to "make sure it stays pulled down."

As she is allowed to enter the event ballroom, the writer notes that she was "a little grossed out by all the dads on the balcony above the dance floor, ogling and talking amongst themselves."

Residents of three villages in northern Nigeria have repelled an attack by suspected Boko Haram Islamist fighters, an eyewitness has told the BBC.

About 200 of the militants were killed during the fighting in the Kala-Balge district of Borno state, he said.

The witness said the residents had formed a vigilante group.

Meanwhile, disgruntled soldiers opened fire on the convoy of a top military commander in Maiduguri, the main city in Borno, witnesses said.

No-one was injured when angry soldiers opened fire as the convoy was entering the Maimalari barracks to protest against poor pay and a lack of equipment to tackle Boko Haram, the sources said.

Maj-Gen Chris Olukolade confirmed an incident had taken place in Maiduguri, but said it was an internal matter and there was no reason for public concern.

A lot of people - innocent people - and their pets have wound up dead during no knock raids in recent years in this country.

A no knock raid is when officers can serve a warrant on a house without notifying the residents first. At all. Period. Without ringing the doorbell, calling first, a knock, nothing. Police typically do it in the middle of the night or in the wee hours of the morning, too, when people are more likely to be asleep. The majority of these raids aren't even for violent crimes or imminent threats to life and limb, but drug crimes.

So a lot of people tend to die. It's a pretty stupid way to enforce laws.

We live in a country where the citizenry are armed. If it's the middle of the night and you hear someone busting through your front door, and if you exercise your 2nd Amendment rights by owning a firearm, your first reaction is going to be to draw that firearm to protect yourself and your family.

A faded American pride.

Here is my sense; like all empires before it this American one reached its apex after WWII. It's on a downward trajectory and will eventually fall or be overtaken.

And I believe most Americans will be taken by surprise as in "How could this happen"?

That's because most Americans are in the words of Paul Craig Roberts "insouciant", without a care, too passively indifferent, too besotted with technological gadgetry, have feelings of entitlement and believe in American exceptionalism to bother to notice their government has become sinister-which most others in the world recognize, but their governments too intimidated or blackmailed into following us or they will be demonized. Think Iran, Iraq under Saddam-though earlier an ally in his war with Iran in the 80′s-now the newly announced new cold war with Russia and soon to be China.

A solution to the crisis in east Ukraine seemed as far away as ever on Tuesday, as six Ukrainian army servicemen were killed in an ambush by rebels and attempts to get Kiev and the armed separatists to negotiate came to nothing.

Ukraine's defence ministry released a statement saying that six of its soldiers had been killed and a further eight wounded during an ambush outside the town of Kramatorsk, in Donetsk region. The attackers used grenade launchers and automatic weapons to fire at the Ukrainian column, hitting an armoured personnel carrier.

More than 50 people have died in Donetsk region since Kiev began its "anti-terrorism operation" in the area, but Tuesday's attack represents the greatest loss of life for the Ukrainian army in a single incident.

The de facto separatist government in Donetsk repeated on Tuesday lunchtime that the Ukrainian army was now considered to be an "occupying force", and the ambush appeared to be a bloody restatement of their case.

The "Donetsk People's Republic" was proclaimed on Monday, after a hastily arranged referendum resulted in nearly 90% of votes being given in favour of its creation. Critics have pointed out that there were no observers and that most of those who remain loyal to Kiev simply stayed at home. Nevertheless, the region announced independence and immediately appealed to Russia to accept it as a new region.

Jim Feltner's days are empty. He is a poor man in the poorest county in the United States and lives off government aid.

But the Kentucky resident has nothing but scorn for the head of that government, President Barack Obama, who has made the fight against economic inequality one of his battle cries.

Feltner sits in a plastic chair outside his ramshackle mobile home, surrounded by rusty cars and car parts. He has no television.

People around here, he says, are "just surviving, barely. I know, because I'm one of them."

A victim of two heart attacks, he lives off disability checks, and $105 a month in government food stamps.

Feltner voted for a previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, but now says: "I will vote for anybody against Obama.

"I don't care who runs against him, I'll vote for him. I don't care if it's a Democrat, a Republican, an Indian, a Pakistani - even a Frenchman!"

Divided, The Perils of Our Growing Inequality, edited by David Cay Johnston (New York: The New Press, March 2014)

Truck drivers do an essential job. No society can exist without them. Truck drivers work hard; they drive long hours, they sleep in their trucks, and they hardly see their families. Why are truck drivers making only a meager living, then? Sociologist Lisa Dodson, the contributor of the last chapter in this page-turner of a book, posed this question to Joe [not his real name], a truck driver. "That money came from somewhere, didn't it?" Joe responded. "It came out of my pocket and my kids' mouths." Is inequality really the result of the rich taking money that belongs to the poor? And if so, why do the poor let them? [Full disclosure: I am one of the 46 contributors included in Divided.]

The route from pocket to pocket that Joe sees is direct. But the most popular explanation for the growing inequality in the US involves an indirect route. When managers can threaten workers that they would shift work overseas, the workers have no choice but to agree to low wages; and when they do, managers can then pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses and they can also consume huge quantities of perquisites, such as corporate jets, on the job. Thus, the falling wages workers and the rising incomes of executives in the US are both attributed to globalization.

If one looks only at the United States, this appears to be true. This review is written a day after the workers in a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted against having a union. Wages in the VW plant are low. The workers who managed to become VW employees are paid $19.50/hour, lower than most other auto workers in the US. New employees make even less. They are hired by and work for Aerotek, a staffing contractor and their wage is only $12.50/hour. Several weeks before the vote the majority of the VW employees (Aerotek employees do not get to vote) signed cards that indicated their preference for a union and it appeared that they would have a union. But then a senator claimed that if they were to vote for a union Volkswagen would shift a new factory that was intended for Chattanooga to Mexico instead.

Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at Harvard, points out, however, that globalization does not have the same effect elsewhere. Inequality was quite similar among rich countries in the 1970s, but today the degree of inequality in the US is by far the highest. In those other countries work still pays, and Jencks attributes the difference to a difference in political systems. In The US there are just two parties and the winner takes all. Workers are therefore just one faction in a party that represents a great number of interests. In Europe, because of proportional representation, there are many parties, and workers can therefore have parties that represent them exclusively. The result of this difference, according to Jencks, is that in Western European countries the law protects workers from the race-to-the-bottom that in the US is blamed on globalization.

One law that protects workers in Germany, for example, is the law that requires that half of the members of board of directors in all companies with more than 2,000 employees be workers' representatives (this is far from true equality, though, because the tie breaker is the chairman of the board, who is not a workers' representative). Several European countries also have "extension laws" that permit the government to extend the benefit of a union contract that is negotiated in some workplaces to all workplaces, regardless of whether these workplaces are themselves union shops or not. These laws assure that employers who pay union wages are not at a disadvantage. It is notable that Germany, with its strong pro-labor legislation, had a significantly lower rate of unemployment than the US throughout the sub-prime crisis, and this advantage continues today.