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Donald Trump’s stunning election win has some Californians so upset that they want to secede from the United States. A group calling itself Yes California has organized a petition drive for a referendum in the spring 2019 election to demand a convention of states to approve “Calexit,” which would recreate the Republic of California of 1850. Louis Marinelli writes that the movement “is about California taking its place in the world, standing as an equal among nations.” Taking one’s place in the world is something Marinelli knows about, as the New York Times discovered. His place in the world isn’t...

The State Department has informed Congress that it plans to shutter its last two consulates in Russia over caps set by Moscow on the number of diplomats that are allowed in the country. In a letter to congressional leaders sent Dec. 10 and obtained by The Hill, the administration said it will permanently close its Vladivostok consulate and temporarily halt work at the consulate in Yekaterinburg. The letter confirming the closures was sent three days before news broke of a major hack of U.S. government agencies that is believed to have been conducted by an elite Russian cyber espionage unit....

Several thousand people rallied on Wednesday in Russia’s fourth-largest city as the showdown between authorities and activists protesting the plans to a build a new cathedral in a local park entered its third day. Thousands gathered in a riverside park in Yekaterinburg Wednesday evening. Some of them were on bicycles, more camped out on the grass while others were walking their dogs. As night fell, protesters turned on the light on their mobile phones and flashlights, chanting “We stand for the park!” Security measures for what has largely been a peaceful protest were heighted on the eve of the rally,...

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (WTHR) - A major selfie fail damaged valuable artwork in a Russian gallery. Russian authorities called out the group of girls who were taking the picture for "not behaving appropriately" when they knocked over a wall displaying paintings by Salvador Dali and Francisco Goya. The girls are seen on CCTV near the temporary wall at the museum in Yekaterinburg last month. As one of the girls stands in front of the wall to take a picture of it, the wall comes down. Then, as the wall hits the floor, a second girl can be seen behind it. Authorities...

Moscow, July 16, Interfax - A new comprehensive evaluation has confirmed that the remains thought to be those of Nicholas II and his family, who were shot and killed in Yekaterinburg 100 years ago, are indeed their remains, Russian Investigative Committee official Svetlana Petrenko said. "Comprehensive commission molecular and genetic tests have now confirmed that the remains belong to former Emperor Nicholas II, his family members and people close to them," Petrenko told Interfax on Monday. The molecular and genetic tests have shown that seven of the 11 found remains are remains of members of one family, mother father, four...

Russian investigative journalist Maksim Borodin of Yekaterinburg has died of injuries sustained on April 12 when he fell from the window of his fifth-floor apartment. Borodin, 32, died on April 15 in a hospital without recovering consciousness. Officially, his death was being investigated as a suicide. A Sverdlovsk Oblast police spokesman said it was "unlikely that this story is of a criminal nature."

MOSCOW — A Russian emergencies official says at least one meteorite has fallen in Chelyabinsk region.

Revealing photos of the nuclear powered submarine “Yekaterinburg” from before and during last week’s fire clearly indicate that the flames come from inside the torpedo-compartment.

Russian army is embroiled in an embarrassing scandal after 200 of its tanks were found abandoned near a forest in central Russia, unguarded and unlocked. A news website near the city of Yekaterinburg posted a video of the forgotten tanks showing passers-by clambering inside the vehicles and playing with empty ammunition belts. The only items that seemed to be missing were live rounds and the keys to the tanks' ignitions. "There are tanks all over the forest, abandoned," an unnamed reporter on the video says. "If you need one, come and get it." Locals in a nearby village said the...

Hmm. I wonder which of the many glorious aspects of Mother Gaia it was that first attracted President Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones to the environmental movement. Was it, perhaps, his love of fluffy bunnies - especially those ones with the long floppy ears and the sweet pink noses? Was it the sight of the mighty redwoods in Northern California or the sea otters frolicking amid the kelp off Big Sur or the manatees basking so cutely amid the shimmering propellors of the Everglades?

I have a modest suggestion for how to end France's impasse over youth job contracts: the French government should pay for a group of student leaders to spend a couple of weeks in Yekaterinburg. It wouldn't cost much, since there's now a cheap direct flight to and from Paris operated by Ural Airlines (slogan: your dreams. our wings.) Yekaterinburg is Russia's fifth largest city, about the size of Marseilles and Lyons combined. Assuming the French students have an open mind, they should be astonished, unsettled and perhaps a little ashamed of what they find there. The under-25s in Yekaterinburg dress...

MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 25 (RIA Novosti) - A portable antiaircraft missile system has been seized from a local criminal group in Yekaterinburg in the Urals region in the east of European Russia, the Russian Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. According to acting minister Rashid Nurgaliev, this happened in January, when a "large network of organized crime" was exposed in the city. A disassembled Igla system was found in a hideout in a private house. Before that, the police used to find this kind of weapons only with militants in Chechnya, Nurgaliev said. The hideout was found to contain an entire arsenal...

Siberian Graveyard's Secrets YEKATERINBURG, Russia In a medieval Siberian graveyard a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, Russian scientists have unearthed mummies roughly 1,000 years old, clad in copper masks, hoops and plates - burial rites that archaeologists say they have never seen before. . Among 34 shallow graves were five mummies shrouded in copper and blankets of reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Unlike the remains of Egyptian pharaohs, the scientists say, the Siberian bodies were mummified by accident. The cold, dry permafrost preserved the remains, and the copper may have helped prevent oxidation. . The discovery adds...