
Ukrainians prepare for war at the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster
CNN
It's a frigid Friday in Ukraine's Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and dozens of journalists in fluorescent yellow vests are frantically elbowing each other as they vie for camera position in a town where no one has lived since 1986.
Chernobyl has been abandoned since the world's worst nuclear disaster here three decades ago. But with tens of thousands of Russian troops amassing on Ukraine's border with Belarus just a few miles away, the ghost town is now playing host to security forces training for war. Ukraine is using Chernobyl to prepare for another potential cataclysm.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently denied that the Kremlin is planning an incursion into Ukraine. Russia's deployments in Belarus are ostensibly linked to joint exercises due to begin on Thursday. However, satellite photographs show Russian camps being established close to the border with Ukraine, hundreds of miles from where the exercises are taking place.

Cuba is going dark under US pressure. How the crisis unfolded and why its troubles are far from over
Almost three months after the US effectively imposed an oil blockade on Cuba that worsened its energy crunch, nearly every aspect of Cuban society has been feeling the strain.

The Department of Homeland Security has been ensnared by a partial government shutdown as Congress did not act to fund the agency by the end of Friday. But nearly all DHS workers will remain on the job — even if many won’t get paid until the lapse ends — and the public probably won’t notice much of a change.











