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The breach could result in devastating flooding, potentially killing thousands of civilians as well as disrupting the cooling systems for the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam in Russia’s Kherson Region, located on the Dnepr River upstream from the city of Kherson, suffered significant damage on Tuesday morning, according to a local official and several videos shared on social media. The upper part of the key infrastructure was “destroyed as a result of a strike,” the mayor of Novaya Kakhovka, Vladimir Leontyev, confirmed to RIA Novosti. While several of the dam’s floodgates were damaged and unleashed an...

RUTH DAVIDSON IS the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. Last night, Davidson, who is engaged to Wexford woman Jen Wilson, announced that she was off for two weeks and bid farewell to her followers with a suggestive photo of Gillian Anderson. “Right, I’m off for a fortnight,” she wrote. “In the mean time, here’s @GillianA just sitting round the house in stilettos & seamed stockings. As you do.”

THE UK GOVERNMENT is facing demands to reveal the details of a secret flight through Scottish airspace which was at the centre of a plot to capture whistleblower Edward Snowden. The plane, which passed above the Outer Hebrides, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, was dispatched from the American east coast on June 24 2013, the day after Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow. The craft was used in controversial US ‘rendition’ missions. Reports by Scottish journalist Duncan Campbell claim the flight, travelling well above the standard aviation height at 45,000 feet and without a filed flight plan, was part of a...

Over the past two weeks, the GOP primary race has become a contest between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the two frontrunners in both national polls and in the state Iowa. The pair will stand next to each other at tonight's GOP primary debate in South Carolina, positioned center stage as a result of their standing in the polls. The contest between them is tonight's main event. The Trump/Cruz squabble is mind-numbingly stupid at almost every level. It is not a contest of ideas or policies, but a battle of attitude and insult, of culture-war positioning and social media put-downs....

"Centralists in America fear that, if Scotland votes yes, it may set a chain of events in motion that could affect many more western regions," the movement organizers wrote. "Suddenly, the impossible seems possible." With some new attention on Texas nationalism comes repeated arguments for independence: Yahoo columnist Rick Newman notes that — with its GDP of $1.6 trillion and population of 27 million — Texas would be the 13th largest country in the world if it obtained independence from the United States. He also wrote Texas could lure companies away from the United States and survive on the strength...

While Scottish government draft guidelines currently allow teachers with moral objections to opt-out of certain aspects of the country’s new sex-ed curriculum, several National Health Service boards have objected to the opt-out clause. They are also objecting to provisions allowing parents to opt their children out of the classes. “It is extremely concerning that teaching staff would be provided an opportunity to refuse to participate in this particular aspect of the curriculum,” said the board, one of the largest in the country. Another NHS board warned against allowing parents too much influence over children, saying that the decision about whether...

Edinburgh Napier University has developed a new biofuel made from whisky by-products.It is the result of two years work by the universities biofuel research centre. The £260,000 project was funded by Scottish Enterprise's Proof of Concept programme. It has been welcomed by WWF Scotland's director Dr Richard Dixon who said it would help a "clean environment" industry to reduce transport emissions. As part of the research, the centre was provided with samples of whisky distilling by-products from Diageo's Glenkinchie Distillery in Edinburgh. The team focused on the whisky industry to develop biobutanol, the next generation of biofuel which gives 30%...

First it was frogs in France, now Red Squirrels in Scotland. Has World War III begun? Are the animals taking over? Could PETA be behind this animal uprising? Read More... Craig DeLuz Visit The Home of Uncommon Sense... www.craigdeluz.com

Germans are America’s big ethnic secret. No people and no culture has contributed more to what the United States is and is becoming. In the nation’s ethnic tangle, no root runs deeper than German America. As a scattered community only fitfully conscious of its own existence, none has more successfully pursued wealth, power and intellectual influence. And as a philosophical force in US politics — a whole political mindset — none has greater potency. Germany as a European state may have lost her way, the German language may struggle to keep its world grip, but the German spirit is alive...