In early 2014 more than 83 percent of the qualified voters of Crimea, on their own volition, participated in a referendum to rejoin Russia. And of that number, nearly 97 percent voted to separate themselves from Ukraine and once again become a part of Russia, in what was a massively one-sided victory. Returning to Russia meant better wages and better pensions, and somewhat better living conditions. The eagerness to reconnect was not anchored totally in ethnic emotionality; Crimean voters also hoped for a better standard of living.

It should be remembered that Crimea would never have pursued such an action, and Russia would never had been receptive to such a course, were it not that Ukraine was in the grip of disruptive forces that were driving toward regime change.

Regime change is a form of action designed to make it impossible for the existing government to govern. We have seen this well-orchestrated chaos and endless disruption in various countries. Militantly organized groups are financed and equipped by outside western interests. NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) surface in substantial numbers and produce rebellious publications and events designed to unsettle the besieged government — in Ukraine's case, a government that was democratically elected not long before. The NGOs handle billions of dollars worth of supplies used to mobilize and sustain the protests. Even though they are supposed to be independent ("nongovernmental") some NGOs get all their funds from the U.S. government. An Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, proudly exclaimed that the United States had poured some $5 billion into the struggle for regime change.

Ultra-nationalists and mercenaries soon took hold of the protesting crowds and set the direction and pace of action, secure in the knowledge that they had the powerful reach of the western nations at their backs. This included NATO's military might and the western (corporate and public) mainstream media with a global reach that pretty much shut out any contrary viewpoint. The most retrogressive elements among these operatives in Kiev launched slanderous attacks against Jews, Blacks, Chinese, Muscovites, and — of course — Communists.

In Ukraine, crypto-fascist groups like Svoboda, the Right Sector, and others secured ample funds to keep thousands of people fed and comfortable enough on the streets of Kiev for weeks at a time, complete with well-made marching flags, symbols, and signs in various languages (including English). Svoboda henchmen were being financed by someone. They wore insignia that bore a striking resemblance to the swastika. Svoboda's top leaders openly denounced "Russian scum," and "Muscovite Jewish mafia." Disguised men in unmarked combat fatigues attacked unarmed police and security guards. They moved among the gathered crowd and at times, according to independent sources, delivered sniper shots into the crowd — which could then be readily blamed on the nearly asphyxiated government. Meanwhile the western media reported everything the way the White House wanted, for instance, unfailingly referring to the perpetrators as "protestors."

What happens after death? Here's a look at sometimes unusual rituals of diverse cultures marking the passing of someone.

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt were embalmed, as were several other rulers in later centuries. This includes France's Louis XIV, also known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, and the communist leader Lenin, whose preserved body has been on public display since shortly after his death in 1924. Even today, there are still cultures that embalm their dead, while others bury, burn or dismember the corpse as illustrated in some burial ceremonies below.

Sky burial in Tibet
In the middle of the Tibetan highlands, vultures flock hungrily around a dismembered corpse. The "Ragyapas" — the Buddhist morticians — have left the body for them to eat. They follow the ancient tradition of a sky burial — when a person dies, they are symbolically fed for a few days while a monk reads to them from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is the holy man's way of persuading the soul to leave the body.

On the day of the funeral, the Lama — a title for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism — invokes the deceased one last time before the body is taken to the burial site before sunset. The Ragyapas dismember the body and split the head so that the soul can escape. It is then the task of the vultures to carry the deceased into the "bardo," the intermediate realm between death and rebirth.

The face of an ancient Egyptian mummy with an abnormally large brain has been revealed for the first time in 2,300 years.

The mummy was an ancient Egyptian elite, and was just 14 years old when he sadly died.

Minirdis was the scion of a holy family and, before his death, was set to inherit the job of his father, Inaros - a priest of the Egyptian fertility god, Min.

But he died around age 14 and his mummified remains were interred in Akhmim cemetery, Upper Egypt, where they were found in 1925.

The history of relations between Paris and its former colonies on the continent explains the recent spate of anti-French coups...

As the whole world has turned its attention to the conflict between Israel and Palestine and the events in Ukraine have faded into the background, nearly everyone has forgotten about another region that is permanently unstable and immersed in conflicts and crises - Africa.

Over the past several years, there have been a series of coups in Africa - precisely, eight coups in three years. The last one occurred in Gabon. At the time, the media discussed Africa's anger at colonialist France and the pro-French governments that toppled like dominoes. For Paris, that was a real disaster, since African countries had only formally escaped from under its 'wing' and were still subordinated to France politically and economically. Moreover, Africa is rich in minerals, oil, gas, gold, and other resources. For example, Niger supplies about 15% of France's uranium needs.

We will find out why Africans have such a hostile attitude towards France and how this confrontation may end.

The peaceful succession of presidents is sacrosanct in American democracy and marks the United States as an "exceptional nation" which does not experience the same kind of palace intrigues and coups as other nations.

Conventional wisdom holds that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald, a deranged lone assassin and communist — as the officially sanctioned Warren Commission concluded.

An alternative theory advanced most popularly in Oliver Stone's 1993 blockbuster film JFK suggests that Oswald was a patsy working as part of a larger conspiracy and that secret cabals within the government associated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), military-industrial complex and Mafia orchestrated Kennedy's assassination.

Stone has faced tremendous personal backlash for his muckraking efforts, which drew on the investigations of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (1962-1972) who prosecuted Clay Shaw, a CIA agent who had been in contact with Oswald, for his supposed involvement in the conspiracy.

The roots of organized conflict in the Southern Levant go back to at least the late Stone Age, according to a recently released study by Israel Antiquities Authority researchers.

The study examined hundreds of slingshot stones found at two large prehistoric sites in Israel: Ein Zippori in the lower Galilee and Ein Esur in the northern Sharon plain. The stones date from around 7,200 years ago, during the Early Chalcolithic period (c. 5800-4500 BCE).

The researchers found that the stones were nearly identical in size, shape and composition, indicating they were mass-produced in an organized fashion, almost certainly with warfare in mind.

Britain's most decorated reporter set out to write a Famine novel to restore England's reputation but the facts confounded him. He tells how Trevelyan earned his scorn
"A million dead. A million fled." It was those few words that had such an impact on me. Think of it. Try to visualise. Try putting it into a modern context, something happening today, something you are watching on television news, an apocalyptic disaster on an unheard-of scale, something that dwarfs Hiroshima.

A million dying because a foreign blight had turned a potato crop into rotten, stinking, putrefying mush. Try to picture families of living skeletons whispering their last prayer in the shelter of a ditch as they watch others turning black with the fever that spread like a summer fire across bracken from Skibbereen to Donegal, from Wicklow to Clare. Imagine another million, still untouched by it, desperately fleeing their motherland to find safety and sanctuary anywhere and with anyone who would take them. This was Ireland in the Famine years.

As a foreign correspondent for ITN, travelling the globe for more than 30 years, I reckon I have seen more than my fair share of man's inhumanity to man. It is said that we reporters suffer from an overdose of everything, saturated as we are in the world's woes. In places like Bangladesh, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, I became used to dealing in numbers; the dead and dying in their hundreds, or in their thousands, even their tens of thousands. But a million corpses in a forgotten corner of what was then the world's greatest and wealthiest Empire is inconceivable.

Dark Rosaleen is the story of murder and betrayal, of a starving people held captive, of a failed rebellion and a love that grew out of it during those years of the Great Hunger. In 1845, when the potato crop failed yet again, the British government sent a commissioner to Ireland to oversee the distribution of food aid. In my story his spoilt, overprivileged young daughter Kate is obliged to go with him to what, in her tantrums, she calls "this hateful land of saints and savages". In her first few months, isolated in her father mansion overlooking Cork, she cares nothing for the suffering outside. Then the scale of the disaster gradually overwhelms her and her selfish arrogance turns to pity and anger. Finally, despairingly, she turns against both her father and her country. She is condemned as a traitor when she joins the rebellious Young Irelanders in their fight to end British rule.

It was the worst pandemic in human history - in the mid-fourteenth century a bubonic plague would spread throughout Asia, Europe and North Africa. One big question about the Black Death is how many people were killed?

The answer to this is both complicated and, ultimately, we don't know. People have taken guesses, but there are many problems with these estimates. For example, if people search for an answer online, they will probably turn to Wikipedia. And they get this information about the Black Death:

the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of 75-200 million people, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.

Even though both the high and low numbers given here are huge, there is quite a big difference between them. It also lacks a key piece of information - how many people were actually alive at this point in history. Therefore, how are we to know what percentage of people died during the Black Death?

Ancient Sumerians invented a "civilisation-saving" water channel 4,000 years ago, a British Museum dig has revealed.

Archaeologists working at the ruined city of Girsu in Iraq have discovered the true function of a mysterious structure created by the civilisation.

The inhabitants of the ancient city created a device known as a "flume" to propel water to distant locations where it was needed, thousands of years before this technology was thought to have been discovered.

A pot full of copper coins was discovered from a stupa (a dome-shaped building erected as a Buddhist shrine) at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Mohenjo Daro during conservation work in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Mohenjo Daro, or "Mound of the Dead" is an ancient Indus Valley Civilization city that flourished between 2600 and 1900 BCE. The ruins of the huge city of Moenjodaro - built entirely of unbaked brick lie in the Indus Valley. The site was discovered in the 1920s.

The Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro are the best preserved urban settlement in South Asia. The acropolis, set on high embankments, the ramparts, and the lower town, which is laid out according to strict rules, provide evidence of an early system of town planning.

Experts evaluated the discovery of the pot filled with copper coins as the first significant artifact discovery in 5,000-year-old city ruins after 93 years.

Director of Archaeology Mohenjodaro, Dr Syed Shakir Shah, who led the team comprising archaeological conservator Ghulam Shabir Joyo, had confirmed that the staff busy with preservation work had stumbled upon the pot of coins on Wednesday.

Shah said laborers recovered the pot of coins during excavation but buried it again. Later some of them informed the officials of the archives department who then dug them out.

The team continued the work for three hours and safely secured the coins buried in the debris along with the jar wherein they were kept.