KIEV, October 31 -- Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Friday suggested considering the issue of expediency of gas supplies to south-eastern regions not controlled by Kiev. “I propose raising the issue at a meeting of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. I will speak with the president on the issue,” Yatsenyuk said at a meeting of the energy headquarters. He explained the step by the fact that Ukraine does not receive “hundreds of millions” of dollars for supplied gas from the regions. Earlier Friday, deputy head of Ukraine’s national oil and gas company Naftogaz Sergey Pereloma said the company under-received 700 million hryvnias ($54 million) in October, and losses may equal 6-7 billion hryvnias ($460-540 million) over the entire heating season, in line with his data. Pereloma said Naftogaz has technical capabilities to stop the gas supplies.
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PARIS, October 31 -- A fire broke out on Friday on the seventh floor of the "Maison de la radio" ("Radio house"), a vast circular building in Paris housing several media operations. Fire fighters said the blaze started on the seventh floor which is currently under reconstruction and employees were quickly evacuated from the building. Two radio stations, France Info and France Inter, stopped transmission due to the blaze. There were no immediate reports of injuries, according to a police source. Thick black smoke was seen billowing from the building, an iconic structure in the plush 16th district of Paris that has been undergoing significant renovation. Fire service chief Gabriel Plus told AFP that 16 fire engines had been dispatched and that they were setting up a command post on site. KOBANI, October 31 -- Fighters from the Islamic State have shelled the border crossing between Syria and Turkey in their latest attempt to stop an expected arrival of Kurdish troops from Iraq to help defend Kobani. Friday’s bombardment of the Mursitpinar post came a day after a first contingent of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces entered the Syrian town of Kobani from Turkey to join the effort to break an ISIS siege. ISIS on Friday also hit the al-Jemrok district in the north of Kobane with mortar shells and heavy machine gun fire. They also attacked Kurdish forces using a suicide car bomb. ISIS attacked Kobani six weeks ago, capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages in addition to parts of the border town. Kobani is now under attack from three sides and weeks of US-led air strikes have failed to break the ISIS assault. Syrian Kurds have pleaded for advanced weapons to help them gain the upper hand. Around 100 troops arrived by plane to south-eastern Turkey on Wednesday, joined later that night by a land convoy of vehicles carrying arms including a cannon and truck-mounted machine guns. Activists say there are about 1,000 Syrian Kurdish fighters and more than 3,000 ISIS members in the Kobani area. On Wednesday, a group of 50 Syrian rebels entered Kobani - also via Turkey - in a bid to help. The rebels are members of the Free Syrian Army and were meant to help the long-awaited Iraqi Peshmerga and the town's Kurdish defenders. The FSA is a loose umbrella group of mainstream rebels trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. MOSCOW, October 30 -- A Russian Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with a Fregat upper stage and a Meridian communications satellite has been successfully launched from the Plesetsk space port, Colonel Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesman for the Russian airspace defence forces “The airspace defence forces’ operational unit successfully launched the Soyuz-2.1a medium-class carrier rocket with a Meridian communications satellite from the Plesetsk cosmodrome at 04:43 Moscow time,” he said, adding that the rocket had been blasted off in a regular regime. The Fregat upper stage with a Meridian dual-use communications satellite has separated from the third stage of the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket, Colonel Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesman for the Russian airspace defence forces, told TASS early on Thursday. The Fregat upper stage will continue its mission to put the satellite onto its designated orbit. The Meridian dual-use satellite is tasked to ensure communication with sea vessels and ice patrol aircraft along the Northern Sea Route. Flight tests of the Soyuz-2 spacecraft were kicked off at Plesetsk in November 2004. Over the ten years since then, as many as 18 Soyuz-2 carrier rockets of various modifications - 1a, 1b, and 1v - have been launched. Rockets of the Soyuz-2 series replaced Soyuz-U launch vehicles used at Plesetsk from 1973 to 2012. Over this period, a total of 434 Soyuz-U boosters were launched to put into orbit about 430 spacecraft. The Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket was developed by the Progress Rocket and Space Centre. It is equipped with upgraded digital control and radio-telemetric systems and unrated engines of the first and second stages. HOLLYWOOD, October 29-- He was the TV dad loved by millions, the devoted funnyman who brought sunshine and dispensed pearls of wisdom to his doting wife and kids. But, according to shocking claims, comic legend Bill Cosby was a manipulative abuser who drugged and sexually assaulted more than a dozen young women. The 77-year-old has been dogged by accusations of sex assault for more than 20 years. The allegations were aired again last week when stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress launched an onstage tirade in Cosby’s hometown of Philadelphia, calling the The Cosby Show dad a hypocrite for his “smuggest old black man public persona”. Buress said: “Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ‘80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom. “Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, brings you down a couple notches.” Barbara Bowman alleges she was raped by Cosby when she was a teenage actor in the late 1980s after he offered to act as her mentor. She told MailOnline she felt relieved when she heard Buress’s comments. “I was drugged and raped by that man,’ she told MailOnline. “He is a monster. He came at me like a monster. My hope is that others who have experienced sexual abuse will not be intimidated into silence by the famous, rich and powerful. If I can help one victim, then I’ve done my job.” Bowman, 46, told Newsweek magazine earlier this year how Cosby had taken advantage of her when she young and impressionable. She alleges Cosby plied her with alcohol numerous times and even warned her before they went on out-of-town trips: “You aren’t going to fight me this time, are you?” In 2004, Andrea Constand brought a civil lawsuit against Cosby claiming she had been sexually assaulted. The lawsuit grew to include 13 other women, all of whom reported being drugged and raped by one the entertainer. Cosby settled under undisclosed terms in 2006. Cosby has been married to Camille Hanks, the mother of his five children for 50 years. The most popular comedy stand-up of the 1960s, he was near bankruptcy in the 1980s when took the role of Dr Cliff Huxtable, the part that would elevate him to TV stardom. Tragically, he lost his only son Ennis, who was shot dead by an attempted robbery on the side of a highway in Los Angeles in 1997. WASHINGTON, October 29 -- Cygnus was to deliver to the International Space Station more than 2 tonnes of payload, including food, equipment and materials for scientific experiments The Antares rocket with the American cargo spacecraft Cygnus exploded during blastoff from NASA launch facility on the Wallops Island near the Virginia coast on Tuesday. The NASA website was transmitting a live broadcast of the rocket launch. The explosion occurred immediately after the liftoff at 18:23 pm, local time (01:23 am, Moscow time, October 29). There were no immediate reports about casualties or damage to the spaceport facilities. NASA said a special commission comprising representatives of NASA and Orbital Sciences will be formed to investigate the catastrophe. Cygnus was to loiter in orbit until Nov. 2, then fly itself to the station so astronauts can use a robotic crane to snare the capsule and attach it to a berthing port. The ISS, a $100 billion research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations, flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth. In addition to food, supplies and equipment, the Cygnus spacecraft was loaded with more than 1,600 pounds (725 kg) of science experiments, including an investigation to chemically analyze meteors as they burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Iraqi Peshmerga set to join Kobane battle ANKARA, October 28 -- Kurdish forces load weapons onto planes and vehicles as they prepare to join fight against ISIL in Syria. Dozens of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers are leaving Iraq for the besieged Syrian town of Kobani to help fellow Kurds in their battle against the ISIS. Reports tell that a convoy of 50-60 vehicles, including buses carrying soldiers and some vehicles towing canons, leaving the Iraqi city of Erbil on Tuesday afternoon. An Iraqi Kurdistan official in the city earlier told that more than 150 Peshmerga soldiers were ready to depart and that a plane was being loaded with light weapons. Supplies of heavy weapons were expected to be transported by road to Turkey, the officials said. Syrian Kurds have battled fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) group in and around Kobane since mid-September. Despite US-led air strikes supporting the Kurds, ISIS has kept up its assault. Last week the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) authorised about 150 Peshmerga soldiers to go to Syria to fight. Turkey has been reluctant to join the US-led coalition against ISIS. But after pressure from its Western allies, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last Wednesday that some Peshmerga soldiers from Iraq would be allowed to transit through Turkey to Kobane. Halgord Hekmat, spokesman for the KRG's ministry for Peshmerga affairs, has said the soldiers are "support forces" and will be armed with automatic weapons, mortars and rocket launchers. They are not expected to fight on the frontline. Open-ended deployment The deployment is open-ended, with Mustafa Sayid Qadir, the Peshmerga affairs minister, saying: "They will remain there until they are no longer needed." ISIS has captured dozens of Kurdish villages around Kobane and now also control parts of the town. The battles have killed more than 800 people, according to activists, and sent more than 200,000 people fleeing into Turkey. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the US-led coalition carried out three air strikes on Kobane on Tuesday, targeting a gathering of ISIS fighters. The US Central Command said more air strikes were launched in Syria and Iraq on Monday and Tuesday. In Syria, four air strikes near Kobane destroyed four ISIS fighting positions and a small ISIS unit, a US statement said. ISIS has taken over large expanses of land in Iraq and Syria and been accused of grave atrocities in both countries. TALLINN, October 28 -- A 15-year-old schoolboy has shot his German teacher dead in the Estonian town of Viljandi, local media reported on Monday. The teenager opened fire at the 56-year-old teacher when five other students were present in the classroom. Police detained the teenager who had never had behavior problems before. However, his latest Facebook status said, “Don't judge me because I'm quiet, no one plans a murder out loud”. Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas said he was shocked with the killing of the teacher. School shootings This is not the only such case that happened recently. On Friday, October 24 a high school student in Marysville, Washington, opened fire in the high school cafeteria, shooting dead one person and wounding four others before killing himself, law enforcement agencies reported. One girl was killed in the incident, four other victims remain in hospital. They are all in serious condition, and doctors are fighting for their lives. |
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