Chevron is trying to buy the city council election in Richmond, California using smears and confusion.

The battle over cutting Tasmania's old-growth forests will resume, with a government ban on protests condemned by the UN.

A Pakistani professor who promoted a liberal interpretation of Islam's social rules was assassinated.

Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin says that Putin has taken Russia back to "Soviet times of total lies", and that Putin's violence is preparing Russians to support a series of wars.

Putin's nationalist propaganda resembles the US propaganda used to convince Americans to have faith that the US is the "good guy" in every war, in disregard of all truth. However, Putin's version is even stronger.

Here's more about Mikhail Shishkin.

I am saddened by the Americans that grasp at straws to argue that Putin's lies are truth and that the fault lies entirely with Kiev.

There certainly is some wrong on Kiev's side. Its deal with the EU could pave the way for "shock capitalism" and disastrous debt. There are indeed neo-nazi militias fighting for Kiev.

Kiev's rejection of easterners' demands for limited autonomy was unjustified. But none of this alters the nature of Putin's military aggression in Ukraine.

A group of thugs (not necessarily official state thugs) attacked a BBC team in Moscow; while the team was reporting the attack to the official thugs, someone erased their computers' memories.

Apparently some of Putin's men wanted to stop them from reporting on a Russian soldier apparently killed in Ukraine.