Clashes in Ukraine as Putin Stays Defiant

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Photo Credit: AFP / Dimitar DilkoffPro-Russian activists with clubs and whips clashed with pro-Kiev supporters Sunday as tens of thousands rallied across Ukraine in rival protests, and Russian President Vladimir Putin dug in his heels in the standoff with the West.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a strong rebuke to the Russian strongman, telling him a planned Crimean referendum on joining the Russian Federation was illegal and deploring the lack of progress on creating an international diplomatic group to resolve the crisis.

In phone conversations with Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, Putin in turn accused Ukraine’s new leaders of failing to rein in “ultra-nationalist and radical forces”.

Defying Western condemnation of the March 16 referendum, he asserted the pro-Russian authorities in Crimea organising the vote were legitimate and acting “based on international law”.

But Kiev got crucial backing as US President Barack Obama invited interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to the White House on Wednesday to show support.

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Vietnam Says Cannot Find Object from Missing Jet

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Photo Credit: AP / Andy WongBy Associated Press.

Vietnamese searchers on ships worked throughout the night but could not find a rectangle object spotted Sunday afternoon that was thought to be one of the doors of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that went missing more than two days ago.

Doan Huu Gia, the chief of Vietnam’s search and rescue coordination center, said Monday that four planes and seven ships from Vietnam were searching for the object but nothing had been found.

The Boeing 777 went missing early Saturday morning on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

The plane lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam, and searchers in a low-flying plane spotted an object that appeared to be one of the plane’s doors, the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper said, citing the deputy chief of staff of Vietnam’s army, Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan.

The jetliner apparently fell from the sky at cruising altitude in fine weather, and the pilots were either unable or had no time to send a distress signal, adding to the mystery over the final minutes of the flight.

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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 mystery: Jet’s door may have been found, officials say

By Fox News.

Vietnamese aircraft spotted what they suspected was one of the doors belonging to the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on Sunday, as troubling questions emerged about how two passengers managed to board the Boeing 777 using stolen passports.

The discovery comes as officials consider the possibility that the plane disintegrated mid-flight, a senior source told Reuters.

The state-run Thanh Nien newspaper cited Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of Vietnam’s army, as saying searchers in a low-flying plane had spotted an object suspected of being a door from the missing jet. It was found in waters about 56 miles south of Tho Chu island, in the same area where oil slicks were spotted Saturday.

“From this object, hopefully (we) will find the missing plane,” Tuan said. Thanh Nien said two ships from the maritime police were heading to the site.

An authority told Reuters that it was too dark to be certain the object was part of the missing plane, and that more aircraft would be dispatched to investigate the site in waters off southern Vietnam in the morning.

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China Draws ‘Red Line’ on North Korea, Says Won’t Allow War on Peninsula

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/STRINGERChina declared a “red line” on North Korea on Saturday, saying that China will not permit chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, and that peace can only come through denuclearization.

China is North Korea’s most important diplomatic and economic supporter, though Beijing’s patience with Pyongyang has been severely tested following three nuclear tests and numerous bouts of saber rattling, including missile launches.

“The Korean peninsula is right on China’s doorstep. We have a red line, that is, we will not allow war or instability on the Korean peninsula,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on the sidelines of China’s annual largely rubber-stamp parliament.

Wang called upon all parties to “exercise restraint”, adding that “genuine and lasting peace” on the peninsula was only possible with denuclearization.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited China last month and said after talks in Beijing that China and the United States were discussing specific ways to press North Korea to give up its nuclear program.

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Central European Nations Appeal to Congress for Faster Exports of US Natural Gas

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Photo Credit: REUTERSCentral European nations are now appealing to Capitol Hill leaders to get the United States to increase its natural gas exports should Russia cut off its supply to Ukraine, amid the political turmoil in that country.

Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic sent a letter Friday to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. And a similar letter is expected to be sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada.

Ambassadors from the four countries — known as the Visegrad Group — want Congress to support faster approval of natural gas exports, arguing the supply is essential to the region’s economic stability.

“The presence of U.S. natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe,” they told Boehner. “And congressional action to expedite [liquefied natural gas] exports to America’s allies would come at a critically important time for the region.”

The concern has grown over the past few months amid the political upheaval in the Ukraine that resulted last month in residents ousting President Viktor Yanukovych and became a major concern several days ago when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into the country’s Crimea region.

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Russia, China Expanding Their Militaries As U.S. Shrinks

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Photo Credit: APAs the United States prepares to draw down its military to, if President Barack Obama gets his way, pre-World War II levels, countries around the world that do not exactly share our interests are building up their militaries.

First up on the build-up list – Russia. Even as Russia continues to occupy Crimea, and even as France is hosting talks to defuse that crisis, France began sea trials of the first of two Mistral-class amphibious assault/helicopter carrier ships the Russian Navy bought in 2011 for $1.6 billion, the Vladivostok. The Vladivostok is still on track for a fall 2014 delivery to the Pacific Fleet, with its sister ship, the Sevastopol (yes, it’s named after that Sevastopol in Crimea), due for delivery to the Black Sea Fleet in 2015.

The Mistral-class ships can accomodate 900 troops on a short-term basis along with a normal compliment of 16 helicopters. Ominously, when the Russians ordered the ships, GlobalSecurity.org noted Russian media quoted a Russian naval commander as saying the Mistral would have done in under one hour some of the tasks it took the existing Black Sea Fleet over a day to do during the Russian incursion into Georgia.

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Twenty-Seven Illegal Aliens Convicted of Child Sex Crimes Arrested Near Mexican Border

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Twenty-seven illegal immigrants and convicted sex offenders were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents in February. 15 illegal immigrants who are members of violent street gangs were also taken into custody that month. The arrests happened in the Rio Grande Valley area.

Two additional men, one convicted for murder and another convicted for voluntary man slaughter, were also arrested in the area that month.

11 of the arrested gang members belong to the Los Angeles-based Mara Salvatrucha gang, better known as MS-13. The four others men were members of the 18th Street gang.

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Putin Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti/KremlinRussian President Vladimir Putin will appear on the Nobel committee’s agenda for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, possibly alongside several Russian dissidents.

Putin is one of 278 candidates — a record for the prestigious prize – who have been nominated and the nominees include such notables as Edward Snowden, Pope Francis and the individual formerly known as Bradley Manning.

Putin is believed to have been nominated for his role in averting a Western military strike on Syria and negotiating the agreement with the Bashar al-Assad regime to surrender its arsenal of chemical weapons.

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‘Delusional’: Krauthammer Slams Obama Admin’s Belief that Putin has ‘Blinked’ on Ukraine

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Photo Credit: Screenshot By Brendan Bordelon.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer dismissed as “delusional” the Obama administration’s belief that Vladimir Putin has halted his advance in Ukraine, claiming the Russian president is “lying through his teeth.”

Krauthammer spoke with Fox News’ Bret Baier to discuss the Russian invasion of Crimean region in southern Ukraine. Many assumed Putin would follow up this action with a full-scale invasion of eastern Ukraine. But in a rambling press conference Tuesday, the Russian president indicated there may be no reason to further escalate the situation.

President Obama seized on the comments, saying he hopes Putin may at least take a “pause.” But not everybody is buying it.

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Photo Credit: Dmitry Lovetsky/AP PhotoJohn McCain’s Advice to Obama on Russia: Wake Up! Get Real!

By Arlette Saenz.

Sen. John McCain blasted President Obama today for his handling of Russia, saying the crisis in Ukraine should serve as a wake-up call for the president about the Russian president’s intentions.

“It’s time we woke up about Vladimir Putin. It’s time this administration got real,” McCain, R-Ariz., said on the Senate floor. “We are on the verge of possibly of seeing a move to re-assert the old Russian empire, which is Mr. Putin’s lifelong ambition.”

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Russia test-fires ICBM amid tension over Ukraine

By Reuters.

Russia said it had successfully test-fired an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) on Tuesday, with tensions running high over its military intervention in Ukraine’s Crimea region.

A U.S. official said the United States had received proper notification from Russia ahead of the test and that the initial notification pre-dated the crisis in Crimea. The Russian Defence Ministry could not be reached for comment.

The Strategic Rocket Forces launched an RS-12M Topol missile from the southerly Astrakhan region and the dummy warhead hit its target at a proving ground in Kazakhstan, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov told state-run news agency RIA.

The launch site, Kapustin Yar, is near the Volga River about 450 km (280 miles) east of the Ukrainian border. Kazakhstan, a Russian ally in a post-Soviet security grouping, is further to the east.

Russia conducts test launches of its ICBMs fairly frequently and often announces the results, a practice seen as intended to remind the West of Moscow’s nuclear might and reassure Russians that President Vladimir Putin will protect them.

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N.Korea Poses ‘Growing’ Threat to US: Pentagon

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-JeNorth Korea poses a mounting threat to the United States due to its pursuit of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, the Pentagon said Tuesday in its latest strategy document.

Describing the regime in Pyongyang as “closed and authoritarian,” the Defense Department said the US military would maintain a major presence in the region and keep up investments in missile defense.

The North represents “a significant threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and is a growing, direct threat to the United States,” said the Quadrennial Defense Review, an update of the military’s global strategic outlook.

US forces would continue to collaborate closely with South Korea’s military “to deter and defend against North Korean provocations,” it said.

The release of the Pentagon’s strategic review came as North Korea flexed its military might three times over the past week, firing short-range Scud missiles and rockets into the sea. The test launches were timed to coincide with joint US-South Korean drills that Pyongyang opposes.

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Under Threat, Syria’s Christians Sign Accord with Islamists

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe city of Raqqa in northern Syria was once the residence of Harun al-Rashid, the famed fifth caliph of the Abbasid empire. That was the golden age of Islam, which produced the poetry, scientific thought and philosophy in which the moderate Hanafi stream flourished. The city subsequently went through centuries of ups and downs, through times of ruin and of prosperity, until last week it seemed to return to days of old, to the era of the great Islamic conquests, when a radical Islamist organization seized control of it.

For the first time in many generations, a dhimma (protection agreement) was signed between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – an Islamist branch of Al-Qaida – and leaders of Raqqa’s several thousand Christians. Members of ISIS gave the latter three options: accepting the agreement, converting to Islam, or risking death.

According to the 12 clauses in the accord, the Christians will commit to pay a twice-yearly poll tax of “four gold dinars” – which at today’s rate, comes to about $500 per person – with the exception that members of the middle class will pay half this amount, and the poor will pay a quarter of it, on condition they do not conceal their true financial situation.

The agreement permits the Christians to follow their religious practices, but they are prohibited from building new churches or rebuilding destroyed ones.

Furthermore, the accord states that Christians may not prevent members of their community from embracing Islam if they so desire. They are forbidden from bearing arms, from engaging in commerce involving pork with Muslims, and from acting against Muslim interests – for example, by giving shelter to spies or persons wanted by ISIS. Moreover, if Christians learn of a plot against the Islamic State, they must report it.

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