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“In principle, Ukraine does not independently exist,” said Russian Orthodox Church leader Kirill i during a June 18 address. Ukraine is instead part of “the historical territory of Russia,” the patriarch said, according to a report by the Kiev-based Espreso tv. Such a stance on Ukraine mirrors that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2005, Mr. Putin said the demise of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” Ever since, his prime objective has been the rebuilding of Russia’s influence in its former Soviet periphery—especially in Ukraine. Although Putin never tried to hide what he...

The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines MASM.KL jetliner suffered a further setback on Thursday after Australian officials said wreckage from the aircraft was not on the seabed in the area they had identified.... The search was narrowed last month after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black box recorders were heard near where analysis of satellite data put its last location, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) off the northwest coast of Australia. "The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered...

KUALA LUMPUR: The captain of Flight MH370 has been identified as the prime suspect by a Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of the plane after checks cleared all other people on board, a media report said today. The criminal inquiry does not rule out the possibility the Boeing 777-200 plane was lost due to mechanical failure or terrorism, but the police view is that if it was the result of human action, the captain was the most likely perpetrator, The Sunday Times reported. Malaysia's special branch focused the inquiry on Captain Zaharie Shah, 53, after intelligence checks failed to...

MH370 Captain Plotted Route To Southern Indian Ocean On Home Simulator Detectives investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 three months ago discover new evidence which has renewed suspicions about its pilot 22 Jun 2014 The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane which disappeared in March with 239 people on board had plotted a flight path to a remote island far into the southern Indian Ocean where the search is now focused, investigators have discovered. The route, which was deleted before MH370 disappeared on March 8, was made on a home flight simulator machine used for practice by...

What follows is a riveting video and set of pictures regarding the increasing tensions in the South China Sea. We are not likely to know what went on before what is shown in the video that may have provoked the Chinese. But this is what happened in the South China Sea last month when a couple of Veitnames fishing vessels came too close to a Chinese operation: Chinese vessel rams and sinks a Chinese fishing vessel - Youtube Video Let's take a hard look at several of the frames of the video itself. Large Chinese vessel chasing Down a small...

(CNN) -- The four acoustic pings at the center of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane's black boxes, a U.S. Navy official told CNN. The acknowledgment came Wednesday as searchers wrapped up the first phase of their effort, having scanned 329 square miles of southern Indian Ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the Boeing 777-200.

Japan and China on Sunday accused each other's air forces of dangerous behavior over the East China Sea, with Japan saying Chinese aircraft had come within a few dozen meters of its warplanes. Japan's defense minister accused Beijing of going "over the top" in its approach to disputed territory. China's defense ministry said Japanese planes had carried out "dangerous" actions during its joint maritime exercises with Russia. Tensions have been running high between China and its neighbors over Beijing's assertive stance on claiming land and sea territory. Japan's defense ministry said Chinese SU-27 fighters came as close as 50 meters...

A Vietnamese woman belonging to an outlawed Buddhist movement died Friday after setting herself on fire in protest against China's actions in a territorial dispute with Vietnam, according to activists and local media. The woman, 67-year-old Le Thi Tuyet Mai, surrounded herself with seven banners denouncing Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea before dousing herself in gasoline and setting it alight early Friday morning in front of the Reunification Palace in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. [....] “I offer my body as a torch to light the path of all patriots,” one of the banners displayed by Mai read,...

WASHINGTON — The United States' top naval officer said the Navy’s growing presence in the Asia-Pacific region is beginning to show results and shape events, but acknowledges it will be ‘a long-term effort.’ Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, said he hopes the U.S. Navy will be able to expand cooperation with India once its new government takes its place. Speaking Monday at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Greenert said the growing military-to-military dialogue with China is beginning to show results, especially in the South China Sea, where maritime tensions between China and its...

A large number of People’s Liberation Army troops have reportedly been spotted heading towards the China-Vietnam border as tensions between the two countries continue to escalate, reports Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily. Sing Tao Daily is generally considered to be aligned to Chinese state media. Thousands of Chinese nationals living or on business in Vietnam have already fled the country amid anti-China riots, which were sparked by a tense standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese naval ships near a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters off the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on May 4. The Chinese foreign ministry...

China began evacuating hundreds of its nationals from Vietnam (via at least 2 planes and 5 ships) as the anti-China protests have become increasingly deadly following Beijing's attempt to deploy an oil drill in Vietnamese dispuited waters (detailed here, here, here, and here)... *CHINA SENDING 5 SHIPS TO VIETNAM TO EVACUATE CHINESE: XINHUA*HUNDREDS OF VIETNAMESE SECURITY IN CENTRAL HO CHI MINH CITY*VIETNAM PRIME MINISTER ISSUES DIRECTIVE TO PREVENT PROTESTS*VIETNAM GOVT TAKES ACTION TO PREVENT RIOTS: BINH Hundreds of police and security forces are in central Ho Chi Minh city and the Chinese consulate is under heavy guard. Tensions across...

More than 20 people were killed in Vietnam and a huge foreign steel project set ablaze as anti-China riots spread to the centre of the country a day after arson and looting in the south, a doctor and company officials said on Thursday. A doctor at a hospital in central Ha Tinh province said five Vietnamese workers and 16 other people described as Chinese were killed on Wednesday night in rioting, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbours fought a brief border war in 1979. "There were about a hundred people sent to the hospital last...

HANOI - Rioting broke out at industrial zones in southern Vietnam during protests by thousands of workers angered by Chinese oil drilling in a contested area of the South China Sea, officials said on Wednesday. Workers smashed gates in the rioting on Tuesday and entered industrial parks housing factories in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces, which are central to Vietnam's sizable manufacturing interests.... Vietnam's state-run newspapers and its television channels reported the rioting on Wednesday, but did not show photographs or any video footage. "About 19,000 workers were demonstrating against China's violation of Vietnam's territorial waters," Tran Van Nam,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Well, well, well, looky here. Koko Jr. at RushLimbaugh.com just sent me a quick note. "Documents released Friday..." This is from July of 2010, folks, so it's from the archives at RushLimbaugh.com. "Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago. "Advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the [Nixon] administration, urged the [Nixon] administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the...

Vietnam said on Wednesday a Chinese vessel intentionally rammed two of its ships in a part of the disputed South China Sea where Beijing has deployed a giant oil rig, sending tensions spiraling in the region. The foreign ministry in Hanoi said the collisions took place on Sunday and caused considerable damage to the Vietnamese ships. Six people sustained minor injuries, it said. "On May 4, Chinese ships intentionally rammed two Vietnamese Sea Guard vessels," said Tran Duy Hai, a foreign ministry official and deputy head of Vietnam's national border committee. "Chinese ships, with air support, sought to intimidate Vietnamese...

A private company said it had found what it believes is wreckage of a plane in the Bay of Bengal that should be investigated as potential debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, but the possibility was dismissed by search coordinators. The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) managing the multinational search for the missing plane said it continued to believe that the plane came down in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia. The Bay of Bengal is located between India and Myanmar, thousands of miles from the current search area. The wreckage was reported by Australian geophysical survey company GeoResonance.......

KUALA LUMPUR: The probe into the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysian jet is now looking at the possibility that the plane may have landed somewhere as no debris has been found so far, a media report has said. A report in the New Strait Times quoting sources within the international team probing the disappearance said that among the areas it was revisiting was the possibility that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had landed elsewhere, instead of ending up in the southern Indian Ocean. "We may have to regroup soon to look into this possibility if no positive results come back...

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Unidentified material that washed ashore in southwestern Australia and is being examined for any link to the lost Malaysian plane is unlikely to have come from the jet, an official said Wednesday. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was scrutinizing photos of the object, which washed ashore 10 kilometers (6 miles) east of Augusta in Western Australia state. But Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the safety bureau, said an initial analysis of the material — which appeared to be sheet metal with rivets — suggested it was not from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. "We do not consider...

The eighth underwater drone mission to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has failed to find any evidence of plane wreckage on the sea bed. The Bluefin-21 submarine employed for the task has so far screened over two-thirds of the narrowed search area. The underwater hunt is expected to finish within this week, Since its fourth mission, the submarine was reprogrammed to scour the seas 604 feet below its permissible limit of 14,800 feet. The part of the Indian Ocean narrowed down for the search is deeper than the previously estimated range at some places, "The [underwater drone]...

The captain of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 received a two-minute call shortly before take-off from a mystery woman using a mobile phone number obtained under a false identity, as investigators question the pilot's estranged wife, a British newspaper reported. It was one of the last calls made to or from the mobile phone of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah in the hours before his Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur on March 8, reported The Mail on Sunday. Investigators are treating it as potentially significant because anyone buying a pay-as-you-go SIM card in Malaysia has to fill out a form giving...