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A 76-year-old woman is suing a catering company for $30,000 after she ate a lasagna spiked with cannabis at a wedding in February, leaving her with 'severe, permanent injuries' - leading police to arrest both the bride and the caterer. Virginia Taylor-Svoboda attended the wedding of a relative before which the bride, Danya Svoboda, 42, allegedly schemed with Joycelyn Bryant, 31, of Joycelyn's Southern Kitchen, to serve bread, pasta and desserts laced with marijuana to nearly 70 unknowing guests. They started feeling sick soon after eating the variety of foods prepared by Bryant and at least eight people were taken...

Perhaps the only thing that outrages Russian defenders of Stalin more than the obvious parallels between his regime and Hitler’s is any reference to the alliance the two dictators formed in 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, one that opened the way to war in Europe and lasted until Hitler turned on his former ally in June 1941. But now there may be something even more offensive to such defenders of Stalin and his system: the discovery of documents which confirm that the NKVD cooperated closely with the Gestapo well before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed and that may have paved...

One policeman has been killed and about 100 more injured outside Ukraine's parliament, after MPs gave initial backing to reforms for more autonomy in the rebel-held east, officials say. National guardsmen were pelted with fire crackers and petrol bombs and an explosion was heard in the crowd. MPs had just voted in a rowdy session to approve more powers in areas of Donetsk and Luhansk under control of pro-Russian rebels. (Snip) A missile was hurled from the crowd of demonstrators, many of whom were carrying banners supporting ultra-nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party. A loud explosion rang out and an AFP reporter...

In an interview with Bloomberg News [URL at link], Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland had meetings with the Ukrainian neofascist group Right Sector in Washington DC. The Right Sector has been involved in numerous killings including the burning of pro-Russian supporters in Odessa. ... Whether Nuland met with Artyomenko or any other representative of the Right Sector to help with fundraising and support is unknown. What is known is that the US is supporting the gang in Kiev's "interim government" which includes Svoboda an openly neofascist party...

That might very well be the best position to take: Don't support Putin, but realize that Obama has the fecal touch on foreign policy issues. Libya (Benghazi). Syria (he thought about arming Syrian "rebels"). Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood came to power and before that the WH said they were "largely secular"). Ergo - no interventionism of any kind in Ukraine, be it NGO's, mercs, etc. Don't support the Commies in Ukraine, but don't support Right Sector, or Svoboda, either. Angela Merkel and Hollande have both said that unlawful acts were carried out against those who were burned up in Odessa,...

Click to watch video of the Ukrainian parlimentary mayhem. The fellow in the ponytail is famous from a previous o Svoboda video showing 3 of their mps beating up a journalist.

In the absence of effective military forces or law enforcement, Ukrainians are taking the defense of the nation in their own hands through loosely organized militias. One of them popped up in a YouTube video on May 2. Although the group was unidentified, the clip was posted by a pro-Ukrainian group of former military and law enforcement officers, calling themselves the Donbass Volunteer Battalion. The video shows men armed with Kalashnikov rifles and clad in black ninja outfits dismantling a Kremlin-backed roadblock near Krasnoarmiysk in western Donetsk Oblast. The national warriors also claim that 15 pro-Russian rebels were handed over...

Israeli rabbi Michael Finkel says the Jewish community is on high alert because of the influence of the neo-Nazi's within Kiev's temporary government. "This is Right Sector. This is the peole who are marching in Nazi uniforms with SF on their arms and on their military uniforms," Finkel says. According to the rabbi, it is possible that Ukraine could turn into a country similar to Lebanon. "In Lebanon, there's an official government and there is Hezbollah, which is a terrrorist organization linked to the government. They're members of the parliament, and there's a Hezbollah militia over thre, a separate army,...

At least 38 anti-government activists died in fire at Odessa’s Trade Unions House after suffocating with smoke or jumping out of windows of the burning building, Ukrainian Interior Ministry reported. The building was set ablaze by the pro-Kiev radicals. [WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT INSIDE] Some 50 people, including 10 police officers, were also injured in the incident, the official statement said. It was not immediately clear whether those injured in Friday street clashes in Odessa were included in those numbers. According to the ministry, the Friday standoff on Odessa included “anti-Maidan” activists on one side and “football fans” from Odessa and...

At least 38 people have been killed in a fire in an official building amid clashes in Odessa, in south west Ukraine, local police say. ...

<p>The Right Sector played a leading role in January's violent anti-Yanukovych protests in Kiev.</p> <p>The Right Sector is the most radical wing of Ukraine's Maidan protest movement that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych in February.</p> <p>Activists claiming to be Right Sector members were involved in Kiev's Maidan protests [link at URL] from late November but the group did not attract much attention until violent clashes with police in central Kiev on 19 January, in which it played a leading role.</p>

A collection of photographs that Ukraine says shows the presence of Russian forces in the eastern part of the country, and which the United States cited as evidence of Russian involvement, has come under scrutiny. The photographs were submitted by Ukraine last week to the Organization for Security and Cooperation, an organization in Vienna that has been monitoring the situation in Ukraine. Some of the photographs were also provided by American officials to Secretary of State John Kerry so he could show them when he met in Geneva last Thursday with his counterparts from the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine....

In an interesting interview [link at URL] to the New York Review of Books, George Soros shared his ideas on many topics including Europe, Russia and the Ukranian crisis. He also presented his new book [link at URL] The tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival? Whether one agrees or disagrees with Soro's interpretations and arguments, it is hard to deny that the interview is extremely insightful and gives a lot of food for thought. I offer a discussion of the part of the interview devoted to Ukraine. George Soros emphasized the necessity of a large-scale technical and financial...

Obama waited too long to help the Syrian FSA against the monstrous Assad regime. When some sort of intervention was talked about: (bombing, indirect support, arms, etc) it was TOO late to help, and it would most likely have helped (either directly or indirectly) terroristic elements and possibly Al Qaeda elements which had taken the lead in Syria against Assad. NO WAY ON DOING THAT. PERIOD. And, once again, it is too late to help the Ukrainians against the thug Putin. (strike one against helping them). And as long as the Ukrainian gov't hasn't ran Svoboda and Right Sector and...

With tensions rising ever faster in eastern Ukraine, the anti-government (pro-Russia) movement in Donetsk has taken dramatic steps to bolster itself by creating a "people's army," or National Army of Donetsk. As RT reports, masked men, who are mostly civil volunteers, but also police and army defectors, say they “defend their motherland from the fascist army that’s going to kill them.” They also demand “a referendum to be independent from Kiev” and are in favor of “being with Russia.” The Ukraine forces are moving in on Donetsk...

Trouble, even when expected, can come at unexpected times. For many months, Russians have expected that authorities would begin to block Internet sites that publish opinions from opposition leaders, activists and supporters. But when a number of sites were blocked on Thursday morning, it was like a bolt out of the blue. The Federal Mass Media Inspection Service blocked access to the website of the Ekho Moskvy radio, the online publications Ej.ru, Grani.ru and Kasparov.ru, the homepage of world chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov. The legal justification was the so-called Lugovoi law, named after its author, State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi....

[Caption:] U.S. Senator John McCain, center, speaks as Democratic Senator from the state of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, second left, and Opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok [All Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" leader], stand around him during a Pro-European Union rally in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. Sen. John McCain (R. Ariz.) advocated for sending arms to Ukraine Tuesday [link at URL] on Fox News. McCain acknowledged the arms would not likely enable Ukraine to defeat the Russians in open war, but emphasized it could improve the Ukrainian military's morale and ensure that the Russians would have "a real fight...

The Russian government today claimed there are more than 100 American 'mercenaries' from a defense contracting company disguised as Ukrainian troops in the embattled former Soviet nation, a claim the American firm and top U.S. officials deny. ... The latest news relesae from Greystone, as posted on a company blog, is from September 2012, titled "New business in Russia" and simply says the company "provided executive protection services in Russia." In April 2012, the company announced it had been awarded a similar contract in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. ...

(KIEV, Ukraine) — Crowds of pro-Russian demonstrators stormed government buildings Sunday in two major cities in eastern Ukraine, where secessionist sentiment has sparked frequent protests since Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president was ousted in February. In Luhansk, 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the Russian border, hundreds of people surrounded the local headquarters of the security service and later scaled the facade to plant a Russian flag on the roof. In Donetsk, to the southwest, a large group of people surged into the provincial government building and smashed windows. A gathering of several hundred, many of them waving Russian flags, then listened...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against moving "overtly or covertly" into eastern Ukraine and said there was strong evidence that pro-Russian demonstrators in the region were being paid.