[Beirut Daily Star] Thirty-eight people died in an arson attack against a trade union building in Ukraine's southern city of Odessa late Friday, after a day of violent festivities between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian Death Eaters, according to officials.Ukraine's Interior Ministry, which spoke of a "criminal arson attack," said 30 of those killed were asphyxiated by smoke and eight died trying to escape by jumping out of windows.
Earlier, festivities between the pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian protesters killed four people -- the first eruption of violence in the south after weeks of mounting unrest in Ukraine's east, and the bloodiest day since Kiev's Western-backed government took power.
The U.S. threatened to hit Russia with devastating new sanctions within three weeks if it continued its "destabilization" of Ukraine, where authorities struck pro-Moscow rebels.
Intensifying the war of words that has characterized the monthslong crisis, Obama threatened to expand punitive sanctions to broad sections of the Russian economy if Moscow continued to foment chaos in the former Soviet Republic ahead of planned May 25 presidential polls.
"If in fact we see the disruptions and the destabilization continuing so severely that it impedes elections on May 25, we will not have a choice but to move forward with additional ... severe sanctions," Obama said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as
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.
Previously the administration has said such measures would only come into force if Russia sent its 40,000 troops on the border into Ukraine.