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YENAKIEVE, Ukraine – On a recent spring morning, an important visitor watched Russian-backed rebels conduct infantry maneuvers on the sunlit training grounds outside this town in eastern Ukraine. "The general is very pleased," rebel battalion commander Ostap Cherny told his troops, referring to the figure in camouflage encircled by five armed guards. The man -- almost certainly a Russian military officer -- became alarmed when he saw two journalists approach. His entourage shielded him from all sides, warning that photos were forbidden, and the group soon sped off in a four-car motorcade, with the "general" safely inside a black Toyota...

The head of the legislature in Russia's Chechnya region says that Russia will provide arms to Mexico if Washington supplies weapons to Ukraine. Chechen Parliament Speaker Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov said the arms would be aimed at reigniting U.S.-Mexican disputes over “territories annexed by the United States in the American states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and part of Wyoming.”  “We will perceive arms shipments to Ukraine as a signal to respond in kind,” Abdurakhmanov said in a March 24 statement posted on the Chechen parliament’s website. Abdurakhmanov is a close associate of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed strongman who...

Federal spending and debt are out of control If America does not change course, the future will be dramatically worse. Now more than ever, it is crucial that Americans understand what our nation's spending, taxes, and debt mean for them and their families. The Heritage Foundation's Federal Budget in Pictures offers a unique tool to learn about the federal budget in a clear and compelling way. What if a Typical Family Spent and Borrowed Like the Federal Government? If a median-income family spent and borrowed like the federal government does, it would spend $61,000 despite earning only $52,000. It would...

NATO’s supreme commander says cease-fire now exists in “name only” Russian officials announced on Wednesday plans to send a seventh convoy across the border into Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas region, amid widespread accusations that the Kremlin is sending arms to separatist forces instead of aid to civilians. The announcement follows reports from the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) that 43 unmarked green military trucks were spotted heading toward the rebel stronghold of Donetsk on Tuesday. “Five of the trucks were each towing 120mm howitzer artillery pieces. Another five were each towing partly-covered multi-launch rocket systems,” read a statement released by...

WASHINGTON — It was late spring, and Republican leaders knew that if they wanted to win the Senate, they needed to crush the enemy: not Democrats, but the rebels within their own party. And Chris McDaniel, a Senate candidate from Mississippi who had a history of making sexist and racially insensitive remarks, was a problem. Candidates like Scott Brown, running for the Senate in New Hampshire, called the National Republican Senatorial Committee to complain that if Mr. McDaniel was not stopped, he could drag the whole party down. Strategists inside the committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill were envisioning nightmares of...

Filmed over Magazine Beach Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently, a large hawk gave Amazon a reason to rethink the company’s Prime Air drone delivery initiative. YouTube user and software developer Christopher Schmidt has been taking his Phantom FC40 quadcopter drone out into public areas to fly it around the skies a couple times each week. To capture 1080p video during his weekly flights, Schmidt uses a GoPro Hero 3+ Black attached to his quadcopter drone. However, a large hawk took offense to the quadcopter drone loudly buzzing in the same airspace. The GoPro camera captured the hawk swooping in from...

Giving lie to Vladimir Putin’s claims that Russia isn’t fighting in Ukraine, up to 80 Russian troops were killed in a skirmish there last month, according to information released by an opposition politician. Members of an elite Russian paratroop force talked about the brutal battle near Luhansk, a city in eastern Ukraine, in telephone transcripts leaked to politician and newspaper publisher Lev Shlosberg. “We’re —— walking along looking for these —– Ukrainians,” one paratrooper says in an account reported by the Sunday Times of London. “We get out into the open and are seen, kapow!” the paratrooper says. “We dashed...

Face it, people: You've made it clear you want a low price more than you want comfort, so this airline has provided it. Good morning. This is your captain. We'll be cruising today at an altitude of 30,000 feet, and we expect to arrive at our destination on time. Then we'll spend 45 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up, because apparently, the airport folks had no idea we were coming. Our flight crew will be coming through the cabin shortly to offer you a choice of lukewarm beverages along with a tiny chemical-infused snack that...

BRUSSELS — Eight weeks after a Malaysia Airlines plane disintegrated over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard and triggering a frenzy of East-West finger-pointing, investigators, in their first account of the calamity on Tuesday, released evidence consistent with an attack by a surface-to-air missile but shed no clear light on who was responsible. A preliminary report issued in The Hague by the Dutch Safety Board, which is leading an international effort to get to the bottom of the tragedy, gave some indirect support to assertions by the United States and Ukraine that pro-Russian rebels shot down the aircraft with...

The Alfred Fisher Mansion,the largest residential listing in Detroit, has sold for $1.6 Million in deal that closed in late August. Designed by architect Richard Marr and built in 1926, the mansion contains 15 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, a ballroom, sun room, and a billiards room. There is also an indoor pool. These listing photos don't do the interior justice (there's a strange party situation in the basement) but the grounds are looking lovely. When the mansion first came on the market the ask was a mere $1.2M...."

Vladimir Putin cannot appear weak, but the public won’t stand for full-scale conflict. So the stalemate continues Hatred is not a tame beast. Once unleashed, it can be surprisingly hard to coax it back into its pen – even for a popular leader such as Vladimir Putin. The stunning reversal of the fortunes of the Ukrainian army in rebel-held regions in eastern Ukraine is not so stunning when one considers the months of hysterical, frothing-at-the-mouth propaganda against the Ukrainian government on Russian state television.If you’re going to label the government of a neighbouring country a bunch of baby-killing Nazis, it stands...

KIEV, Ukraine — Russian forces in two armored columns captured a key southeastern coastal town near the Russian border Thursday after Ukrainian forces retreated in the face of superior firepower, a Ukrainian military spokesman said. The two Russian columns, including tanks and armored fighting vehicles, entered the town of Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov after a battle in which Ukrainian army positions came under fire from Grad rockets launched from Russian territory, according to the spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko. “Our border servicemen and guardsmen retreated as they did not have heavy equipment,” Lysenko said in a statement. Ukrainian authorities...

MOSCOW/ NOVOAZOVSK Ukraine (Reuters) - On Monday, a resident of Novoazovsk in south-eastern Ukraine said she saw a column of armored vehicles approach the town and start shooting. "It all started at 8:00 this morning, tanks appeared, no fewer than seven of them," the woman, who gave her name only as Lyudmila, told Reuters by telephone. "Right now I can hear rumbling, explosions ... the residents are hiding." In Kiev later that morning, Ukrainian officials said the column was an incursion by Russian troops which it alleges are fighting alongside pro-Moscow separatists, a claim Russia quickly dismissed as disinformation. That...

DONETSK Ukraine/BERLIN (Reuters) - A gun battle broke out in the center of the rebel-held Ukrainian city of Donetsk and residents ran for cover from artillery fire on Tuesday, taking a government military offensive into the heart of the retreating pro-Moscow separatist rebellion. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart will meet next week for the first time in months to try to end their confrontation over the separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine, their offices said. In a prelude to the talks between Putin and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to visit the Ukrainian capital Kiev...

The new rebel leader in east Ukraine's Donetsk region has said his forces include 1,200 fighters who underwent military training in Russia. Addressing a meeting, Alexander Zakharchenko said the fighters had trained "four months on the territory of the Russian Federation". The rebels, he said, had reserves of 150 combat vehicles, including tanks. An earlier mistranslation of his words suggested Mr Zakharchenko had said the vehicles were on their way from Russia. Russia has denied claims by Ukraine and Western reporters that military aid to the rebels has been crossing the border.[] Mr Zakharchenko, who became the prime minister of...

After being fired by Tottenham Hotspur, Coach Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) is back in the US-of-A, looking to make the most of his Premier League experience. Watch the Premier League on NBC and NBCSN starting Saturday, August 16th. For more:http://twitter.com/NBCSportsSoccerhttp://facebook.com/NBCSportsSoccer

Ukraine accused Moscow of mounting a cynical attempt to incite a pro-Russian rebellion on Wednesday, as uncertainty surrounded a 262-truck "aid convoy" that appeared to grind to a halt before reaching the border. The stand-off came as violence worsened in eastern Ukraine, with the United Nations announcing that the death toll in the four-month conflict had doubled in the past two weeks to more than 2,000. Government forces are seeking to press their advantage against the pro-Russian rebels, which has stoked fears that the aid convoy is part of a Russian plan to fend off the rebels' seemingly inevitable defeat....

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- Somewhere in southern Russia, a convoy of 280 white-painted trucks snaked its way Tuesday toward the Ukrainian border. Depending on whom you ask, what's inside may either be a treasure trove of relief goods for war-weary civilians, or the vanguard of a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine. With thousands of Russian troops still posted near the Ukrainian border and Ukraine's military putting increasing pressure on pro-Russian fighters around the city of Donetsk, many in Ukraine and elsewhere feared the latter. "Russia keeps inventing new excuses for their policy," Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danylo Lubkivsky, told reporters...

PARIS — On the evening of Aug. 3, a crowd of Ukrainian nationalists tried to block the entrance to a beachfront nightclub in the southern city of Odessa, waving sticks and shouting slogans that accused the night’s star attraction of being a traitor. The singer, Ani Lorak, a pop star who was Ukraine’s entry in the 2008 Eurovision song contest, finished her performance, but the evening ended with clashes between protesters and the police, several injuries and arrests. The motive for the protest, as reported in the local and Russian news media and by monitors from the Organization for Security...

DONETSK, Ukraine – As Kiev tightened the vise on the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, surrounding the eastern city and cutting off supply routes and all roads in, the Kremlin floated plans to send a "humanitarian" convoy through to help embattled pro-Russian insurgents. With the pro-Russian separatists facing continuous pressure in the now largely deserted city that once held 1 million people, rebel commander Igor Strelkov, also known as Igor Girkin, said the 5,000 separatists running the city are now on their own. Although some rebels are calling for a cease-fire in order to spare the city from being destroyed by...