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BUENOS AIRES, August 5 (RIA Novosti) – Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro dismissed Tuesday accusations of Moscow’s alleged role in the deadly Malaysian passenger plane crash as “primitive.” “Accusing the Russian Federation of destroying the Malaysian Boeing during the flight is horrifying primitivism,” Castro wrote in an article published in Cuba’s Granma newspaper. “Neither President Vladimir Putin, nor Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov nor other Russian leaders could have ever done such a stupid thing,” Castro stressed. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17. All 298 people on board,...

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday that starting to trade with Cuba "is probably a good idea" and that the lengthy economic embargo against the communist island "just hasn't worked." Paul became the first potential Republican presidential candidate to offer some support for President Barack Obama's decision to try to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba. The president's surprise announcement on Wednesday was slammed by several potential GOP candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who said it amounted to appeasing the Castro regime. Paul said in a radio interview with Tom Roten of...

Sen. Rand Paul broke with the field of Republicans considering a 2016 presidential run on Thursday, calling President Barack Obama's decision to normalize relations with Cuba a "good idea" since the American embargo against Cuba "just hasn't worked." Paul, a likely presidential candidate, made the remarks in an interview with News Talk 800 WVHU's Tom Roten, just a day after his potential competitors for the Republican nomination -- former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz -- slammed the decision to normalize relations as a dangerous move. Rubio and Cruz are sons of Cuban immigrants. Paul...

Rand Paul Breaks With Rubio and Bush Over Cuba Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the latest potential presidential candidate to weigh in on policy changes to Cuba and the libertarian leaning Republican's position splits from other Republicans who are also considering a presidential run. Paul told Tom Roten of News Talk 800 in West Virginia that the 50-year embargo "just hasn't worked" and normalizing relations with the island nation is "probably a good idea." "If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- William Shakespeare asked "What's in a name?" It means plenty of controversy if you are referring to Coonskin Park. The head of the Kanawha County Parks and Recreation Commission, retired state Adj. Gen. Allen Tackett, wants to rename the park after Kanawha County Commissioner Hoppy Shores, who was just elected to his seventh term. The park's name is is generally associated with a type of a fur cap made from a raccoon skin, but Tackett said the term could be offensive to others. The commission is set to discuss the name change at a Thursday meeting.

Six moderate Democratic senators are asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to give states more time to comply with its climate rule for power plants. The moderate Democrats said that states should be responsible for developing their own “glide paths” toward the 2030 goal. The senators signing the letter were Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.).

What do you have going on tomorrow?” asks Craig, who is himself a state senator and was his daughter’s campaign manager. “I might see some friends. I have to write those thank-you letters.” The letters are to her supporters, some of the 18,000 West Virginians Saira will be representing in the 59th District — a mostly rural, mostly Republican region two hours from Washington. She won the election in November by beating her opponent, a 44-year-old attorney, with 63 percent of the vote, and since then she has become the most famous state legislator in the country, as well as...

Among Democrats, fighting is breaking out all over. The Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), is hurling criticisms toward the White House over Barack Obama’s handling of the recession and his myopic and politically ruinous obsession with reforming the nation’s health care system amid that economic downturn.In response, the White House took what Reuters called the “unusual step” of publicly pledging to veto an overdue plan to reform the nation’s tax code which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been in the process of negotiating with House Republicans. When Obama announced his intention to extend legal status to...

Democrats hope to take back control of the Senate in 2016, but their plans could be complicated by potential retirements. The two Democratic senators most likely to retire are Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who represent both sides of the party’s ideological spectrum. Boxer, whose fourth term expires at the end of 2016, has a paltry $149,000 in her campaign account, less than almost every other senator facing election next year. As the nation’s most populous state, California is expensive to cover with advertising. If Boxer decides to run for reelection, she would face a major fundraising...

10:30 p.m. Central Time: Fires continue, and while many protestors are still out in Ferguson, Missouri, reporters say the crowds had dwindled a bit. Some protestors are shouting profanity at police and members of the media. One building is engulfed in flames and is destroyed. CNN reports the building is a Little Caesars pizza restaurant.

The Senate narrowly rejected legislation to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline on Tuesday, handing a defeat to the oil industry and dealing a major blow to Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, who staked her political career on the outcome. The Senate voted 59-41 for the legislation, falling one vote shy of the 60 needed for passage under the deal bringing it to the floor. But Keystone supporters insisted the defeat would be short-lived. Republican leaders are vowing to try again after they take over the chamber in January — when they will have more than enough votes to get a measure...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon traded jeans and a light brown sweater for a khaki green prison uniform – and a once promising political career for a serial number on Tuesday. At his sentencing last month, his attorneys asked a federal judge to allow the felon to spend his birthday and the coming holidays with his wife and children in Charlotte. Instead, Cannon kicked off his 44-month sentence just before noon Tuesday. Cannon entered prison when he stepped out of a black SUV in front of Federal Correctional Institution Morgantown and checked in with the guards. He was...

In the wake of two federal court rulings striking down West Virginia’s marriage protection amendment, which had previously defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, the state tax department has announced starting next year, it will remove the words “husband” and “wife” from all tax forms and informational materials, replacing them with the more gender-neutral “spouse.” Until then, the agency says same-sex couples can use the current tax forms with the understanding that a married household may have two “husbands” or two “wives” under the new definition of marriage in the state. According to a notice...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The former CEO who oversaw the West Virginia mine that exploded in 2010, killing 29 people, was indicted Thursday on federal charges related to a mine safety investigation that followed the blast.

Documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) from the Department of Justice provide "hard evidence" that former Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) should have been prosecuted after NLPC exposed his questionable financial dealings, and triggered a Justice Department investigation. CREW executive director Melanie Sloantold Politico yesterday, "It was clear the Justice Department should have indicted Mollohan." Mollohan was defeated for re-election in 2010 in a Democratic primary. His ethics woes were a key issue in the campaign. Although we have not yet had the opportunity to study the underlying documents, CREW has released a very concise...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Mark Maynard owns a used car lot, runs a towing business and spends his spare time on a professional drag racing pit crew. And despite not raising a dime for his Republican campaign and agreeing with his Democratic opponent on almost all the issues, he defeated West Virginia's longest-sitting state senator.The same momentum helped Republicans win a U.S. Senate seat held for decades by a Democrat, sweep three congressional seats and take majorities in the Legislature for the first time in eight decades. "Everybody's low approval rating of the president and the way he was running...

Mark Maynard owns a used car lot, runs a towing business and spends his spare time on a professional drag racing pit crew. And despite not raising a dime for his Republican campaign, he defeated West Virginia's longest-sitting state senator. That was the kind of election it was for West Virginia Democrats. As voters took out their disgust with President Barack Obama, Maynard defeated Sen. Truman Chafin, a lawmaker Republicans previously had bothered to challenge only once in three decades. Not a single campaign check came Maynard's way, nor did he report spending anything. Potential donors told Maynard he didn't...

Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) pledged on “Fox News Sunday” to be “extremely aggressive” in trying to rollback some regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency. “Extremely aggressive,” she said when asked how aggressive she would be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations. “That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. “We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job,...

Dems Realize “War on Coal” Cost Them Coal Country by Daniel Greenfield People are funny that way. They cling to their bibles and guns. And then if you declare war on them, they don’t want to vote for you. Coal-heavy districts in West Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois that had been steadily moving away from Democrats in recent elections appear to have completed that shift Tuesday, when they overwhelmingly backed Republicans who vowed to oppose what they call President Barack Obama’s “war on coal.”In West Virginia, once a long-time Democratic stronghold, Republicans will take control of both houses of the state...

In the wake of Tuesday’s drubbing, soft Democrats in Congress are pledging to stand with the president’s party… for now. So-called independent Sen. Angus King (I-ME) backed off his pledge to caucus with the majority party in the 114th Congress on Wednesday. He was joined by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) who represents a state which is shifting rapidly from blue to red without the requisite stopover into purple territory. The story is not the same on the state-level. As the fallout from the 2014 tsunami settles, a wave of party jumpers is sapping the Democrats of authority on the...