Emergency crews in Ukraine are trying to stop a massive forest fire from spreading towards the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatesenyuk has flown over the area in the north of the country.

There was a warning that high winds were blowing the flames towards Chernobyl where, 29 years ago this week, a reactor fire led to the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

A 30 kilometre exclusion zone remains in place around the plant, which is still contaminated by radioactive particles.

Not a shred of evidence is given as to the identity or nationality of the hackers except the assertions of anonymous government officials. We have to wait until the seventh paragraph to read that they “are presumed to be linked to the Russian government, if not working for it.”

Despite the best attempts of some to portray the unrest in Baltimore as a kind of righteous resistance against an unjust system, the evidence suggests otherwise. By now we’ve all seen footage of the looting and the burning store fronts. For Baltimore, the past few days have been absolute madness as the vile and the ignorant took to the streets to wreck their city.

Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad ran a little article recently that we’re surprised no other news organization picked up. It concerned a proposal in the European Parliament in which the parliamentarians got to vote on raising their own paycheck (always a good idea). The best thing about the story is that not everyone voted in favor.

Most did though. It much amused me to see that apparently it was Angela Merkel’s party, the German Christian Democrats, which was behind the proposal. Initially, they had even wanted double what they actually got. Here’s some numbers and details – and please forgive me for not being a math wizard -.

(Toronto) – For the fourth consecutive year Ontario’s hospitals will suffer real-dollar budget cuts according to today’s Ontario Budget. This is the longest unbroken period of real-dollar public hospital cuts in Ontario’s history. Already, Ontario has cut hospital beds more drastically than virtually anywhere else in Canada, or the industrialized world. Maternity units, entire wards, even entire hospitals are threatened with closure. Despite all rhetoric and false claims, these are not services that are being replaced in community care. The hospital cuts are resulting in accelerated privatization, hardship for patients and unsafe hospital overcrowding that now ranks among the worst in the developed world.

While the government has openly announced its plans to privatize Ontario Hydro, the real-dollar cuts across all public services and health care also mean damaging – and potentially irreversible – cuts, closures and privatization of needed health care and other social services.

The mantra that saturated fat is bad for you and must be removed to reduce the risk of heart disease has been drummed into public consciousness for almost four decades. But independent scientific evidence shows that this advice has paradoxically increased our cardiovascular risk. And the obsession with total cholesterol levels has led to the over- medication of millions with statins with yet more harm than benefit.

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) re-opened the debate on dietary fat and cholesterol lowering drugs with major articles published in October 2013, especially one by cardiologist Aseem Malhotra at Croydon University Hospital, London on why saturated fat is not the major issue [1], and another by John Abramson at Harvard Medical School and three colleagues in US and Canada universities asking if people at low risk of cardiovascular disease should take a statin [2].

Why did the Baltimore riots seem like they were perfectly staged to be a television event? Images of police vehicles burning made for great television all over the planet, but why were there abandoned police vehicles sitting right in the middle of the riot zones without any police officers around them in the first place?

The Swedish political elite have plans to build a new city, funded entirely by Swedish taxpayers, to accommodate the massive wave of incoming immigrants. This radical plan also proposes the confiscation of summer homes and the conversion of old historical buildings and churches in order to facilitate the arrival of new immigrants. Meanwhile, Sweden's welfare system is plummeting as politicians suffer from Stockholm syndrome, trying to be a "humanitarian superpower." Native Swedes have been chosen to carry the weight of the world, sacrificing themselves on the altar of multiculturalism.

It’s best to shoot to kill with all suspects. Do not call for back up to help take them down. Do not rely on pepper spray or non lethal ammunition.

Merck & Co, Inc, is a health care company. The Company delivers health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, animal health, and consumer care products, which it markets directly and through its joint ventures. The Company’s operations are principally managed on a products basis and are comprised of four operating segments, which are the Pharmaceutical, Animal Health, Consumer Care and Alliances segments.

(*To Die For !)

Saudis have been helped by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has relied on the powerful Israel Lobby and his own rhetoric to divert the U.S. Congress from a focus on Al-Qaeda and its hyper-brutal spinoff, the Islamic State, to Iran, which both Saudi Arabia and Israel have designated their primary regional enemy.

Fearful of further offending the powerful Saudi-Israeli alliance, President Obama is deploying the U.S. Navy to seal off poverty-stricken Yemen so the Saudi air force has free rein to pummel its regional rivals from the air while the population faces a humanitarian crisis on the ground, reports Robert Parry.

Israel’s widespread practice of recruiting Jewish citizens and officials of other countries to serve as vehicles of Israeli policies has the potential to foment a new and possibly violent backlash, once the greater population has been made aware of such treasonous activities.

Ray loathed warmongering and would approve of my second hero. This is Scott McIntyre, a young SBS soccer journalist who, in four now famous Tweets, set out to counter the authoritarian sludge that demands that Australians celebrate the centenary of a criminal waste of life in the British imperial invasion of Turkey a century ago — in which Australians and New Zealanders, the “Anzacs”, took part — rather than recognise unpalatable truths about the past and present.

Opportunistic politicians and journalists have turned this melancholy event into a death cult that puzzles foreigners. Federal governments have spent almost $400 million promoting it as a fake patriotism – more than Britain, France, Germany and Canada combined: countries that lost many more men in the 1914-18 bloodfest. Today, the military and venal militarism are virtually off-limits for real public criticism.

Why? Australia, a nation without enemies, is now spending $28billion a year on the military and war and armaments in order to fulfil a tragic, entirely colonial and obsequious role, now as Washington’s “deputy sheriff” in the Asia-Pacific.

At first glance, there is not the slightest doubt: to us, the universe looks three dimensional. But one of the most fruitful theories of theoretical physics in the last two decades is challenging this assumption. The "holographic principle" asserts that a mathematical description of the universe actually requires one fewer dimension than it seems. What we perceive as three dimensional may just be the image of two dimensional processes on a huge cosmic horizon.

Up until now, this principle has only been studied in exotic spaces with negative curvature. This is interesting from a theoretical point of view, but such spaces are quite different from the space in our own universe. Results obtained by scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) now suggest that the holographic principle even holds in a flat spacetime.

What a difference a job title ($695-an-hour corporate lawyer versus Senator) and a few years makes... Well, moves like this definitely help explain his rise to the top (of the American political pond where only the scum rises to the top).

What a total and utter hypocrite Ted Cruz is. Most people don't even realize if this guy gets in, Goldman Sachs will literally be living in the White House. Oh sure, Cruz's wife Heidi, who up until recently worked in Latin American mergers and acquisitions for the too-big-to-fail banking giant, took a little time off to help him run his campaign for president... but let's stop kidding ourselves.

Nooooo. They wouldn't do that... would they? Kill 3,000 of our own citizens just to create a freedom-less police state and theater of seemingly never ending multiple wars (on terror) for profit and empire?

Outspoken Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr. blasted Baltimore rioters and the left-wing agenda he says created the powder keg that blew up into violence.

On Fox News’ “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” Clarke told the host that liberal policies, not the death of accused drug dealer Freddie Gray, are responsible for the violence in the city.

Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr. has spoken out against the riots in Baltimore. He lays the blame squarely at the feet of liberal policies which he says have created a powder keg which has exploded into violence.

Thousands of California residents were left without power recently after their so-called “smart” meters exploded due to an unexpected power surge. According to CBS Sacramento, more than 5,000 homes in the Stockton area were left with blackened, charred, and completely destroyed smart meters after a dump truck crashed into a nearby utility pole, pulling the static line down onto the distribution line.

At least 1,000 U.S. doctors say they think Dr. Mehmet Oz should resign from his faculty position at Columbia University in New York, a new poll finds.

Russia has been consistently fulfilling all points of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), including its Article VI, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

A recent article by Jorge Elbaum, the former executive director of DAIA (Delegation for Argentine Jewish Associations), the principle Argentine Jewish umbrella groups, published in the Buenos Aires daily Pagina 12, provides a detailed account of the damaging links between the State of Israel, US Wall Street speculators and local Argentine Zionists in government and out.

An election candidate who wants rock music banned, gay people jailed and feminism abolished has rejected claims she is extreme

Susan Anne White, who caused a stir when she stood in last year's council elections, is now aiming to become MP for West Tyrone.

10,000 people from across the country peacefully protested in Baltimore in support of the seeking of justice of the death of Freddie Gray. Despite the fact that 100 of the 10,000 acted up and approximately 35 people were arrested after the peaceful protest, (that’s about 1%), much of the mainstream media used attention grabbing words in their headlines like ‘Protest Turns Destructive, (USA Today)’ ‘Scenes of Chaos In Baltimore… (NY Times), Dozens Arrested After Protest Turns Violent (WBAL TV). One website BreitBart.com’s headlines read: 1,000 Black Rioters In Baltimore Smash Police Cars, Attack Motorists In Frenzied Protest.

Following initial confusion about which ship was shot at, seized and confiscated by Iran, with Arabiya and Farsnews reporting it was a US ship with 34 soldiers on board, while the Pentagon subsequently stating there were no US personnel on the cargo ship which was a Marshall Island-flagged cargo vessel, the Maersk Tigris, the situation still remains fluid, especially considering the latest news out of the Pentagon:

U.S. SENT DESTROYER AND AIRCRAFT TO MONITOR SHIP, WARREN SAYS

But why if it isn't a US ship? And how will Iran react when the US naval "cavalry" arrives in its territorial waters?

Some more news on the ship in question: according to Bloomberg, the Maersk Tigris cargo vessel was in international waters when taken by Iranian navy, Cor Radings, external spokesman for Rickmers Ship Management, says by phone. Rickmers is manager of vessel. 24 crew on board ship; not known why vessel was taken. Rickmers trying to re-establish contact with vessel.

A defence contractor run by one of Britain’s best-known military figures is under criminal investigation by the US government’s watchdog against fraud and waste in Afghanistan, The Independent can reveal.

It can also be revealed that the company founded by Colonel Tim Collins OBE – who is best known for delivering a powerful speech to his men on the eve of the Iraq war – is facing questions over a $176m (£116m) US contract to train Afghan security forces in counterinsurgency.

"...my greater source of personal concern, outrage... is focused upon an American political elite that have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the US..., plunged tens of millions of good hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and followed that action around by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state."

Is it possible that there are people out there that are attempting to inflame the Baltimore riots for their own twisted purposes? I don’t know if you have noticed, but there has seemed to be lots of unprotected police vehicles parked very close to where all of the protests have been happening.

Make sure to watch that last video. It shows a man literally being dragged out of his store and ruthlessly beaten by a gang of young thugs. Because of the decisions that we have made as a society, this is what the future of our country is going to look like. This is something that I have been warning about for years, and now it is here.

Baltimore, Maryland (INTELLIHUB) — Sections of Baltimore plunged into full-scale chaos Monday with protesters setting stores and cars on fire as well as attacking police, random citizens, and members of the media.

Actually, as long as Israel insists on being “a Jewish state” instead of a democratic state of all its citizens, it must walk the path of apartheid. And, it can only get away with that through successfully maintaining an exceptional status - a status that puts it above international law.

Israeli attempted to sidetrack the Argentine investigation, by involving some of its powerful Wall Street assets and influential pro-Israel lobbies (the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC among others). Their purpose was to fabricate ‘evidence’ in order to implicate Iran in the crime and to manipulate their influential assets in Argentina, especially in this case, chief prosecutor Nisman and many of the leaders of DAIA, to accuse the Argentine government of complicity in an ‘Iranian cover-up’.

German Jewish family: We will never return to Israel ever. We are grateful to the German authorities for our salvation. Israel is a cruel and merciless country…..

Under the guise of the “War on Terror,” there has indeed been a systematic assault on free speech: though it’s been one waged by Western governments primarily against their Muslim citizens. For that reason, it has provoked almost no objections from those who dressed up as free speech crusaders that week.

A year and a half ago Congressman Derek Kilmer and his wife went on a $19,000 junket to Israel paid for by an Israel advocacy organization.
Now Kilmer is on the House Appropriations Committee, and he has introduced a bill to give Israel $286 million ABOVE the over $8 million per day it already it gets from American taxpayers.
Note: Had enough yet!