KRASNOARMEISK, Ukraine (AP) — Armed men identified as Ukrainian national guard opened fire Sunday on a crowd outside a town hall in eastern Ukraine, and an official for the region's insurgents said there were fatalities.

The bloodshed in the town of Krasnoarmeisk occurred hours after dozens of armed men shut down voting in a referendum on sovereignty for the region. One of them identified the group as being national guardsmen.

An Associated Press photographer who witnessed the shooting said two people were seen lying unmoving on the ground and insurgent leader Denis Pushilin was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying there were an unspecified number of deaths.

Several hours earlier, the men came to the town about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the regional capital, Donetsk, and dispersed referendum voting that was taking place outside the town hall and they took control of the building. In the evening, more arrived in a van and a scuffle broke out with people who were gathered around the building. Then they fired shots.

Witnesses to the shooting posted a number of videos on YouTube. One of the videos shows several armed men holding AK-47s yelling to the crowd "go home, get out of here." One then cocks his weapon, and seconds later a man from the crowd steps forward and approaches another gunman, also carrying an AK-47, to speak with him. The gunman fires a warning shot over his head, but that doesn't deter the man. He continues to approach as shots continue and the man is struck by a bullet, falls to the ground and can be seen bleeding from his leg.

The video, shot by someone at the scene of the confrontation, has been authenticated based on accounts by AP journalists at the site and was consistent with AP's own reporting on what happened.

Eastern Ukraine has been gripped by unrest for the past month as pro-Russia insurgents occupied police stations and government buildings. Ukrainian forces have mounted a limited offensive to try to drive them out.

The Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Sunday conducted referendums on declaring the regions as so-called sovereign people's republics. Leaders of the vote, which is regarded as illegitimate by the central government and the West, say that sometime after the referendum, a decision will be made on whether to remain part of Ukraine, declare independence of seek annexation into Russia.

By Matt Robinson and Alessandra Prentice

DONETSK/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Pro-Moscow rebels declared a resounding victory in a referendum on self-rule for eastern Ukraine, with some saying that meant independence and others eventual union with Russia as fighting flared in a conflict increasingly out of control.

Organizers in the main region holding the makeshift vote on Sunday said nearly 90 percent had voted in favor.

Well before polls closed, one separatist leader said the region would form its own state bodies and military after the referendum, formalizing a split that began with the armed takeover of state buildings in a dozen eastern towns last month.

Another said the vote simply showed that the East wanted to decide its own fate, whether in Ukraine, on its own, or as part of Russia.

"Eighty-nine percent, that's it," the head of the separatist electoral commission in Donetsk, Roman Lyagin, said by telephone when asked for the result of a vote that the pro-Western Ukrainian government in Kiev has condemned as illegal.

Separatists say majority vote in favor of self-rul …Play Video

Sunday's vote went ahead despite a call by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to postpone it - a move that briefly raised hopes for an easing of tension. Western leaders have accused Putin of destabilizing Ukraine, a charge Moscow denies.

The European Union declared the referendum illegal and prepared to increase pressure on Russia on Monday by taking a first step towards extending sanctions to companies, as well as people, linked to Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.

A festive atmosphere at makeshift polling stations in some areas belied the potentially grave implications of the event. In others, clashes broke out between separatists and troops over ballot papers and control of a television tower.

Zhenya Denyesh, a 20-year-old student voting early at a university building in the rebel stronghold of Slaviansk, said: "We all want to live in our own country". But asked what he thought would follow, he replied: "It will still be war."

In the southeastern port of Mariupol, scene of fierce fighting last week, there were only eight polling centers for a population of half a million. Queues grew to hundreds of meters (yards) in bright sunshine, with spirits high as one center overflowed and ballot boxes were brought onto the street.

Shots ring out in Eastern UkrainePlay Video

On the eastern outskirts, a little over an hour after polls opened, soldiers from Kiev seized what they said were falsified ballot papers, marked with Yes votes, and detained two men.

They refused to hand the men over to policemen who came to take them away, saying they did not trust them. Instead, they waited for state security officers to interview and arrest them.

On the edge of Slaviansk, fighting broke out around a television tower shortly before people began making their way through barricades of felled trees, tires and machinery for a vote the West says is being orchestrated by Moscow. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said one serviceman was wounded.

A man was later reported killed in a clash in the eastern town of Krasnoarmeisk, Interfax-Ukraine news agency said, adding to a toll so far in the dozens but creeping higher by the day.

MORE SANCTIONS LOOM

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Members of a local election commission sort ballots as they start counting votes of today's refe …

Western leaders, faced with Russian assertiveness not seen since the Cold War, have threatened more sanctions in the key areas of energy, financial services and engineering if Moscow disrupts a presidential election planned in Ukraine on May 25.

EU officials have prepared a list of 14 people and two Crimean companies active in the energy sector that ministers are likely to add to the EU sanctions list, EU diplomats said.

But the EU will remain far behind the United States in the severity of the sanctions it has imposed on Russia. Some European governments fear tough trade sanctions on Russia could undermine their own economies, just recovering from the financial crisis, and provoke Russian retaliation.

Moscow denies any ambitions to absorb the mainly Russian-speaking east, an industrial hub, into the Russian Federation following its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea after a referendum in March.

But in a sign it may have set its sights beyond Crimea, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said he had brought a petition by residents of Moldova's Russian-speaking breakaway region of Transdnestria backing union with Russia.

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Members of a local election commission empty a ballot box as they start counting votes of today' …

Ukraine's Interior Ministry called the eastern referendum a criminal farce, its ballot papers "soaked in blood". One official said two-thirds of the territory had not participated.

Ballot papers in the referendum in the regions of Donetsk, which has declared itself a "People's Republic", and the much smaller Luhansk, were printed without security provision, voter registration was patchy and there was confusion over what the vote was for. Separatists in Luhansk said only 5 percent had voted against.

A man who identified himself as a 33-year-old engineer with the first name of Sergei, voting in the industrial center of Mariupol, said he would answer "yes" to the question printed in Russian and Ukrainian on the ballot: "Do you support the act of state self-rule of the Donetsk People's Republic?"

"We're all for the independence of the Donetsk republic," he said. "It means leaving behind that fascist, pro-American government (in Kiev), which brought no one any good."

AUTONOMY, INDEPENDENCE, ANNEXATION

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A Ukrainian soldier aims his rifle at an army checkpoint during a referendum on self-rule in the sou …

But in the same line of voters, 54-year-old Irina saw a "yes" vote as endorsement of autonomy within Ukraine.

"I want Donetsk to have its own powers, some kind of autonomy, separate from Kiev. I'm not against a united Ukraine, but not under those people we did not choose, who seized power and are going to ruin the country," she said.

Others see the vote as a nod to absorption by Russia. Annexation is favored by the more prominent rebels.

The current Ukrainian government came to power when President Viktor Yanokovich was toppled in February after mass protests in Kiev.

Pro-Western activists were angered by his decision to discard a cooperation accord with the EU in favor of closer ties with Moscow. They also accused him of corruption penetrating all areas of the Ukrainian state.

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Members of a local election commission empty a ballot box as they start counting votes of the refere …

One leading separatist said Ukrainian troops would be declared illegal occupiers once results of Sunday's referendum were announced.

"It is necessary to form state bodies and military authorities as soon as possible," Denis Pushilin, a leader of the self-styled Donetsk republic said, according to Interfax news agency.

Lyagin, head of the rebel central electoral commission in Donetsk, also took a strong position on the results.

"That can be considered the final and official result," he said, reporting exact figures of 89.07 percent for and 10.19 percent against. "We demand the right to self-determination, and we will get it."

He said the result meant Ukraine's May 25 presidential election would not take place in the Donetsk region.

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Members of a local election commission sort ballots as they start counting votes of today's refe …

Speaking to reporters earlier, he had appeared to have a less radical position.

"With the announcement of the results, the status of the Donetsk region does not change in absolute terms. We do not cease to be a part of Ukraine, we do not become a part of Russia," he said, although he left those options open.

Moscow has massed troops on the border and Kiev fears they may be called in as peacekeepers. Serhiy Pashinsky, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, said a column of armored vehicles on the Russian side of the border bore the colors of U.N. peacekeeping forces. He offered no evidence or detail.

"We warn the Kremlin that the appearance of these forces on the territory of Ukraine would be assessed as military aggression and we would react as we would in the case of military aggression," he told reporters.

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, and Adrian Croft and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, Writing by Ralph Boulton, Philippa Fletcher and Peter Cooney; Editing by Eric Walsh) nL6N0NX14M

Pro-Russia rebels declare a resounding victory in a referendum on self-rule for eastern Ukraine.
'We all want to live in our own country'

DENVER (AP) — Dozens of snowplows were taking to the streets of Denver early Monday, after a powerful spring storm dropped heavy snow across parts of Colorado and Wyoming, even as stormy weather moved into the plains states and drew warnings about conditions ripe for severe thunderstorm and tornadoes.

The Mother's Day storm dropped more than a foot of sloppy, wet snow on parts of the two states. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for most of northern Colorado and parts of southern Wyoming for all of Sunday and for Monday morning.

Forecasters warned that instability ahead of the cold front created conditions for damaging winds as thunderstorms and tornadoes developed in Nebraska Sunday and threatened to push south. The storm also created high winds across the West.

Powerful thunderstorms produced tornadoes as they moved across Nebraska on Sunday caused damage in several towns and rural areas in the east of the state. Officials said the storms damaged homes and businesses in or near Sutton, Garland, Cordova and Daykin, and knocked out power to 18,000 utility customers. Large hail and strong winds seen in the state were expected to head south into Kansas, and a tornado watch was issued for parts of Oklahoma.

The storm was expected to weaken as it heads northeast from the Plains, possibly bringing rain as it moves into the Great Lakes, the weather service said.

Kyle Fredin, a meteorologist for the weather service in Boulder, said the weather pattern is typical for this time of year, and "it's going to be kind of the same thing pretty much through the end of June."

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A Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad passenger train arrives in Silverton, Colo., on Sunday, …

And the storm brought picturesque scenes to some areas.

"We got about a foot of snow and all the trees are covered. It looks like a beautiful painting," said Janie Robertson, owner of the Dripping Springs Resort B&B in Estes Park.

In Colorado, Department of Transportation officials said plunging temperatures and snow created icy road conditions, and multiple accidents were reported on several highways Sunday.

Denver officials said they were deploying 70 snowplows overnight to prepare for Monday's commute. At 3 a.m. MDT Monday, the weather service said it was still snowing around the city.

Julie Smith, a spokeswoman for Denver International Airport, said crews have treated runways in anticipation of dropping temperatures Sunday night.

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A truck moves off of Interstate I-70 to chain up before continuing eastward in Vail, Colo. on Sunday …

"At this point we are seeing some delays with our airlines while they are getting their deicing operations up and running, and we do expect the airlines to be fully deicing in the morning," she said.

Southwest of Denver, a seven-car pileup Sunday evening injured a sheriff's deputy and three civilians on U.S. 285 near the community of Doubleheader, The Denver Post reported. Weather was likely a factor in the crash, but its cause was still being investigated, sheriff's spokeswoman Jacki Kelley told the newspaper.

"The roads are just really bad out there," she said.

In another Highway 285 crash, the State Patrol said a Jefferson County Sheriff's deputy who was helping a motorist that slid off the roadway was taken to a hospital with undetermined injuries after the deputy's parked car was stuck by an SUV. Two people in the SUV were also hospitalized as a precaution.

Snow amounts could vary greatly as temperatures continue to drop later Sunday. But up to 15 inches could fall at higher elevations and 4 to 9 inches could fall at lower elevations, including Denver and other cities along Colorado's Front Range.

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Storm clouds can be seen forming just south of McPherson, Kan., on Sunday, May 11, 2014. Storms coul …

"May snow certainly isn't unheard of here in Colorado, even down in the Denver metro area," said David Barjenbruch, another weather service meteorologist in Boulder. "If we see the total accumulations that we are anticipating from this storm, we are certainly going to see a top 10 May snow event for the Denver metro area."

In southern Wyoming, the storm forced transportation officials to close a 150-mile stretch of Interstate 80 from Cheyenne to Rawlins on Sunday.

The weather service said mountainous areas in south-central Wyoming got up to 2 feet of snow, and the metro areas of Cheyenne and Laramie averaged 6 to 10 inches. Rob Cox, a weather service meteorologist in Cheyenne, said he expects more accumulation overnight, likely an additional 2 to 4 inches in some locations.

"There will be a lot of water after all this is said and done," he said, adding that there could be some localized flooding.

In the West, high winds at the bottom of the storm sent dust blowing across Arizona and New Mexico, and the Los Angeles area had been under "red flag" fire warnings, with authorities saying blazes could quickly spread out of control under low humidity, gusty winds and dry conditions.

The storm is the result of a low-pressure system moving east colliding with a cold air mass from the north. Spring-like weather was expected to return to the Rockies by Tuesday.

___

Associated Press writers Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, and Kristi Eaton in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

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Rocky Mountain states dig out after storm

A storm that brought heavy snow to Colorado could bring thunderstorms and tornadoes to the Plains.
7-car pileup

Nearly a year after Edward Snowden revealed himself as the National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower, Glenn Greenwald — the former Guardian journalist who helped unveil Snowden as the source of the leaks — is sharing more behind-the-scenes details of the events in Hong Kong in the hours before Snowden's announcement.

A few days before the Guardian revealed him as the source, Snowden told Greenwald that "an Internet-connected security device at the home he shared with his longtime girlfriend in Hawaii had detected that two people from the NSA" had come looking for him, Greenwald writes in an excerpt from an upcoming book, "No Place to Hide," published by the Guardian on Sunday.

Greenwald was skeptical that the visit meant the NSA suspected Snowden was behind the leaks, but he knew that he and filmmaker Laura Poitras had to hustle.

"We were determined that the world would first hear about Snowden, his actions and his motives, from Snowden himself," Greenwald writes, "not through a [demonization] campaign spread by the US government while he was in hiding or in custody and unable to speak for himself."

After taping a second video interview with Snowden, Greenwald writes, the reality of disclosing Snowden's identity set in.

"The relatively lighter mood we had managed to keep up over the prior few days now turned to palpable anxiety: we were less than 24 hours away from revealing Snowden's identity, which we knew would change everything, for him most of all," Greenwald writes. "The three of us had lived through a short but exceptionally intense and gratifying experience. One of us, Snowden, was soon to be removed from the group, likely to go to prison for a long time — a fact that had depressingly lurked in the air from the outset, at least for me."

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Activists from advocacy group Avaaz hold illustrations of former U.S. spy agency NSA contractor Edwa …

The Guardian published the story ("Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations") and accompanying video on June 9, 2013. (Last month, the paper won a Pulitizer prize for its Snowden reporting.)

"Poitras, Snowden and I followed the reaction to his exposure together, while I also debated with two Guardian media strategists over which Monday-morning TV interviews I should agree to do," Greenwald recalls. "We settled on Morning Joe on MSNBC, followed by NBC's Today show — the two earliest shows, which would shape the coverage of Snowden throughout the day."

Watch video

But with the entire world now looking for them in Hong Kong, media swarmed Greenwald's hotel before lawyers looking to represent Snowden could get there.

"Alan [Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian] is adamant that we give him all the support we legally can," Gill Phillips, the Guardian's chief lawyer, told Greenwald.

Poitras and Snowden were staying at a different hotel, which Snowden was trying to leave without being recognized.

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Accused U.S. government whistle-blower Edward Snowden is seen on a screen as he speaks via video con …

"I'm in the process of taking steps to change my appearance," Snowden said. "I can make myself unrecognizable."

Greenwald and Phillips then went to the lobby of their hotel to "lure the reporters, still waiting outside our door, to follow me. The lawyers would then wait for a few minutes and exit the hotel, hopefully without being noticed."

It worked, and the lawyers that Phillips vetted for Snowden met the whistleblower in his hotel room, and whisked him away to a "safe house." He was later granted asylum in Russia, where he remains.

Greenwald's interviews with "Morning Joe" and the "Today" show "were acrimonious and acerbic," he writes, because he felt Snowden was being attacked by journalists who had "resumed their accustomed role as servants to the government":

The story was no longer that reporters had exposed serious NSA abuses but that an American working for the government had "betrayed" his obligations, committed crimes, and then "fled to China." ... Sleep-deprived for more than a full week now, I had no patience for the criticisms of Snowden embedded in their questions: journalists, I felt, should be celebrating, not [demonizing], someone who had brought more transparency to the national security state than anyone in years.

Related video

Journalist Glenn Greenwald says "palpable anxiety" took over as the time came to reveal the NSA whistleblower.
How he slipped away

Boko Haram Releases Video Apparently Showing Kidnapped Girls

Boko Haram first claimed responsibility for kidnapping nearly 300 Chibok schoolgirls in mid-April in a video made public about one week ago.

RELATED: North Korea Attempts Daring PR Strategy of Calling South Korea’s President a ‘Prostitute’

Nigerians and members of the international community sympathetic to their plight are frustrated by the government's lack of action, a critique bolstered by a recent Amnesty International report claiming military officials had advance warning of the attack that led to the kidnapping, but failed to act to protect the schoolgirls. And the government has been refusing many offers by the U.S. and other countries to help search for the missing.

Still, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said on Sunday that he will accept help from Israel and that he is "very optimistic that with the entire international community deploying its considerable military and intelligence-gathering skills and assets in support of Nigeria's efforts … success will soon be achieved."

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/05/boko-haram-claims-video-shows-kidnapped-girls/362061/

The terrorist group's leader says the more than 200 abducted girls will be let go when all militant prisoners are freed.
Wearing full veils