NC Renegades

US pressure could undermine Russia-Israel relations, Duma Committee on International Affairs vice chairman Alexander Romanovich implied in a briefing to Israeli reporters and academics Monday.

“Nothing can harm the good relations between our two countries, as long as another power doesn’t intervene. I won’t name it,” Romanovich said.

The lawmaker’s comments came several weeks after Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman made it clear that Israel plans to refrain from taking a position on the Ukrainian crisis. The policy comes from a concern that it would anger Moscow and have a ripple effect on Israeli security concerns in the region, like Syria and Iran.

Washington, however, does not back the position, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki saying last month that the US was surprised when Israel skipped a vote on the matter in the UN General Assembly.

Romanovich, a member of the opposition, said he cannot understand Western suspicions that Russia will try to invade Ukraine, saying commentators “are ignoring what Putin said clearly.”

“Nobody wants to cross the border into Ukraine. Our troops are in Crimea, not Ukraine,” he stated.

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First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to monitor their older relatives, friends and co-workers for any racially insensitive comments they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they’re made.

The first lady spoke on Friday to graduating high school students in Topeka, Kansas, and in remarks released over the weekend, Obama said students need to police family and friends because federal laws can only go so far in stopping racism.

“[O]ur laws may no longer separate us based on our skin color, but nothing in the Constitution says we have to eat together in the lunchroom, or live together in the same neighborhoods,” she said. “There’s no court case against believing in stereotypes or thinking that certain kinds of hateful jokes or comments are funny.”

To address these limitations in the law, Obama asked students to take steps to “drag my generation and your grandparents’ generation along with you” in the fight against racism.

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Two days after WND uncovered a U.S. State Department plan to buy hundreds of pounds of plastic explosives and thousands of containers of liquid explosives, the agency – which refuses to comment on the discovery – awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts for the blasting supplies.

The explosives, including hundreds of pounds of C4, originally were to be shipped to Sterling, Virginia, home to the Diplomatic Pouch and Mail Unit, or DPM/U. The unit is tasked with sending secure pouches and crates to U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, as previously reported.

The original contracting documents still mention the DPM/U shipping destination and list a State Department contracting office address in Dun Loring, Virginia, site of a diplomatic-security field office.

But the new contract awards suddenly identify the contracting office address as 1701 N. Ft. Myer Dr., Arlington, Virginia – headquarters of the Office of Security Management within the State Department Construction, Facility and Security Management Directorate.

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