By Richard Balmforth and Natalia Zinets

KIEV (Reuters) - Protests in eastern Ukraine in which pro-Russian activists seized public buildings in three cities are part of a plan to destabilize Ukraine and bring in Russian troops, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said on Monday.

Saying Russian troops were within a 30 km (19 mile) zone from the Ukrainian border, Yatseniuk told a government meeting: "An anti-Ukrainian plan is being put into operation ... under which foreign troops will cross the border and seize the territory of the country.

"We will not allow this," he said.

Pro-Russian protesters in the east seized official buildings in three cities - Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk - on Sunday night, demanding that referendums be held on whether to join Russia.

A similar move preceded a Russia-backed takeover of Crimea in March followed by annexation of the peninsula by Russia.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Monday the main regional administration building in Kharkiv had been cleared of "separatists".

Pro-Russian protesters storm regional government b …Play video

But police said protesters occupying the state security building in Luhansk had seized weapons and highway police had closed off roads into the city.

"Unknown people who are in the building have broken into the building's arsenal and have seized weapons," a police statement said. Nine people had been hurt in the disturbances in Luhansk.

Mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine has seen a sharp rise in tension since Moscow-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's overthrow in February and the advent of an interim government in Kiev that wants closer ties with Europe.

Russia has branded the new leadership in Kiev illegitimate and has annexed Ukraine's Crimea region, citing threats to its Russian-speaking majority - a move that caused the biggest standoff between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War.

YANUKOVICH CALL

The protesters appeared to be responding in part to Yanukovich, who fled to Russia after he was ousted and who on March 28 issued a public call for each of Ukraine's regions to hold a referendum on its status inside the country.

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Pro-Russian activists hold a huge Russian national flag in front of the regional administration buil …

Separately, Ukraine's defense ministry said a Russian marine had shot and killed a Ukrainian naval officer in Crimea on Sunday night.

The 33-year-old officer, who was preparing to leave Crimea, was shot twice in officers' quarters in the locality of Novofedorovka. It was not clear why the Russian marine had opened fire.

Yatseniuk said that though much of the unrest had died down in eastern Ukraine in the past month there remained about 1,500 "radicals" in each region who spoke with "clear Russian accents" and whose activity was being coordinated through foreign intelligence services.

But he said Ukrainian authorities had drawn up a plan to handle the crisis.

"We have a clear action plan," he said, adding that senior officials would head to the towns concerned.

Avakov on Sunday accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating the "separatist disorder" and promised that disturbances would be brought under control without violence.

Russia has been pushing internationally a plan proposing the "federalization" of Ukraine in which regions of the country of 46 million would have broad powers of autonomy.

Ukraine, while drawing up its own blueprint of constitutional changes for 'de-centralization' in which smaller municipalities would be able to develop their own areas by retaining a portion of state taxes raised, says the Russian plan is aimed at breaking up the country.

Referring to the Russian plan, Yatseniuk said: "It is an attempt to destroy Ukrainian statehood, a script which has been written in the Russian Federation, the aim of which is to divide and destroy Ukraine and turn part of Ukraine into a slave territory under the dictatorship of Russia," he said.

"This is not going to happen," he said.

"I appeal to the people and the elites of the east. Our common responsibility is to preserve the country and I am sure that no-one wants to be under a neighboring country. We have our country. Let's keep it," he said.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Grove and Pavel Polityuk, and Lina Kushch in Donetsk; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Ukraine blames Russia for stirring unrest

Pro-Moscow protesters storming state buildings in three cities is part of a grander plan, Kiev says.
'We will not allow'

U.N. has to cut Syria food rations for lack of donor funds

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations has been forced to cut the size of food parcels for those left hungry by Syria's civil war by a fifth because of a shortage of funds from donors, a senior official said on Monday.

Nevertheless, the United Nations' World Food Programme managed to get food to a record 4.1 million people inside Syria last month, WFP deputy executive director Amir Abdulla told a news conference, just short of its target of 4.2 million.

As the humanitarian crisis within Syria intensifies, its neighbors are also groaning under the strain of an exodus of refugees that now totals around 3 million, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.

"We know that this tragedy, together with the tragedy of the people displaced inside the country, 6.5 million, now shows that almost half of the Syrian population is displaced."

Donor countries pledged $2.3 billion for aid agencies helping Syria at a conference in Kuwait in January, but only $1.1 billion has been received so far, including $250 million handed over by Kuwait on Monday, U.N. officials said.

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Syrian refugees stand near their damaged belongings, a result of a clash between security forces and …

The delay meant that the standard family food basket for five people, which includes rice, bulgur wheat, pasta, pulses, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, and wheat flour, had to be cut by 20 percent in March to allow more people to be fed, WFP said.

Guterres's office needs more than $1.6 billion to fund fully its operations this year in response to the crisis, but has received only 22 percent to date, a UNHCR statement said.

Some 2.6 million Syrian refugees have registered in neighboring countries, while hundreds of thousands more have crossed borders but not requested international assistance.

Guterres pointed to the huge burden this was imposing on Syria's neighbors. In Lebanon, the more than a million registered refugees are equal to almost a quarter of the resident population.

At least one Syrian refugee was killed in Jordan's sprawling Zaatari camp when hundreds of refugees clashed with security forces, residents said on Saturday.

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Syrian refugees girls walk in front of the remains of the belongings of other refugees, which were d …

"Let us not forget that in Jordan, in Lebanon and other countries, we have more and more people unemployed, we have more and more people with lower salaries because of the competition in the labor market, we have prices rising, rents rising - and that the Syria crisis is having a dramatic impact on the economies and the societies of the neighboring countries," Guterres said.

"And so it is very easy to trigger tension, and it is very important to do everything we can to better support both the refugee community and the host communities that generously are receiving them."

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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U.N. cuts food rations to war-torn Syria

A funding shortfall of $1.2 billion forces a reduction in the basic provisions for the standard family food basket.
Millions displaced

The goal is to put a human face on what drone operators are said to call 'bug splats'

In an attempt to put a face on civilian victims of U.S. drone strikes, a group of artists has installed a massive portrait of a girl facing up from a field in Pakistan.

The poster, measuring 90 by 60 feet and made of vinyl, was unrolled with the help of locals two weeks ago in a village in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region in northwest Pakistan, where residents say attacks by the pilotless aircraft are a part of daily life.

"Although there is awareness for drone attacks, it’s rarely humanized," a representative for the artist collective wrote in an email to Yahoo News. "This installation is our attempt at showing that."

As many as 900 civilians may have been killed and 600 seriously injured, including children, in more than 330 strikes since 2004, according to an Amnesty International report on the U.S. drone program in Pakistan released last fall. On the ground, that's created a culture of fear.

The White House has downplayed the number of civilian deaths associated with drone strikes while highlighting the number of militants killed. But those who live in Pakistan's tribal region say that is subterfuge.

According to the group, the project "was inspired after learning that drone operators refer to kills as ‘bug splats,'" since "viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed," says a post on the project's website, NotaBugSplat.com. "Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an innocent child victim’s face."

The unidentified child in the poster "lost both her parents and two young siblings in a drone attack," the website says.

The installation was designed to be captured by satellites, however, "We don't know if it is still there or not," the representative wrote in an email. The villagers were encouraged to "use the fabric for roofing and other useful purposes. The art was always meant to be utilized and not discarded after it was photographed."

The collective declined to reveal the identity of its members — comprised of artists from the United States, France and Pakistan — out of concern for their safety.

"Some of our team members are in Pakistan and we want to be sensitive to their safety over the next couple of days," the representative wrote. "This area is pretty dangerous."

Orphan child poster greets drone operators

The unidentified Pakistani girl reportedly lost her parents in an attack launched by the pilotless aircraft.
Stunning image

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider whether a New Mexico photography company had free speech grounds to refuse to shoot the commitment ceremony of a same-sex couple.

The court's refusal to intervene means an August 2013 New Mexico Supreme Court decision against the company remains intact. Albuquerque-based Elane Photography had said its free speech rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution should be a valid defense to the state's finding that it violated the New Mexico Human Rights Act. The law, similar to laws in 20 other U.S. states, bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The company's owners, Elaine and Jonathan Huguenin, are Christians who oppose gay marriage. Because taking photographs can be seen as a form of speech, the First Amendment protects them from being required to "express messages that conflict with their religious beliefs," their attorneys said in court papers. Elane Photography has previously declined requests to take nude maternity pictures and images depicting violence, its lawyers said.

The dispute arose in 2006 when Vanessa Willock asked the company if it would photograph the commitment ceremony between her and her partner, Misti Collinsworth. When Elane Photography declined, Willock filed a successful complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission.

Willock and her partner had their commitment ceremony in 2007, using a different photographer.

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FILE: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts (R) with then new Associate Justice Samuel Ali …

Elane Photography appealed the commission's decision, raising objections under both the First Amendment and a state law protecting religious freedom. The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled for the state in an August 2013 decision. The company's Supreme Court appeal was limited to the First Amendment question.

Attitudes toward gay relationships have changed rapidly in the United States in recent years. New Mexico is one of the 17 states where gay marriage is now legal.

Recent court and legislative decisions making gay marriage legal have gained momentum since the Supreme Court's rulings in two cases last summer, one striking down a key part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and another allowing gay marriage in California to proceed.

In February, Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, vetoed a bill viewed by critics as a license to discriminate against gays and lesbians in the name of religion. The law, heavily criticized by the business community, would have allowed business owners to claim their religious beliefs as legal justification for refusing to serve same-sex couples or any other prospective customer.

The case before the Supreme Court is Elane Photography v. Willock, U.S. Supreme Court, 13-585.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and Jonathan Oatis)

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Tehran (AFP) - Iran said Monday it aims, at talks with world powers this week, to wind up the negotiating phase and move on to drafting a final accord on its nuclear programme.

"We will try to finish the discussions in this round and start writing the draft of the comprehensive agreement from the Iranian month of Ordibehesht," which starts April 21, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying by state-run television upon arrival in Vienna for the Tuesday-Wednesday talks.

Zarif was to hold a dinner meeting later Monday with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who is leading the negotiations on behalf of six world powers -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.

The Vienna meeting is the third round of negotiations aimed at reaching a lasting accord to end the decade-long standoff over Iran's nuclear programme.

Western nations and Israel have long suspected Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability alongside its civilian programme, charges denied by Tehran.

Under an interim agreement reached last year that expires July 20, Iran froze key parts of its nuclear programme in return for limited sanctions relief and a promise of no new sanctions.

Reeling from double-digit inflation, high unemployment, stagnation and mismanagement, Iran's oil-reliant economy has struggled under US-led sanctions aimed at curtailing its nuclear ambitions.