FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — The Rev. Al Sharpton pressed police Tuesday to release the name of the officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in suburban St. Louis, and he pleaded for calm after two nights of violent protests over the young man's death.

Police said death threats prompted them to withhold the name of the officer, who was placed on administrative leave after fatally shooting 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, where the incident has stoked racial tension, rallies and a night of looting.

Investigators have released few details, saying only that a scuffle unfolded after the officer asked Brown and another teen to get out of the street. At some point, the officer's weapon fired inside a patrol car, police said.

"The local authorities have put themselves in a position — hiding names and not being transparent — where people will not trust anything but an objective investigation," Sharpton said during a news conference in St. Louis where he was joined by Brown's parents.

He also echoed pleas for peaceful protests by the NAACP and Brown's father, Michael Brown Sr., who told the crowd: "I need all of us to come together and do this right. ... No violence."

President Barack Obama also urged calm, saying people must comfort each other "in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds."

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon told a standing-room only crowd at a community forum Tuesday night that the shooting feels "like an old wound torn fresh" in a nation still struggling with race relations.

The forum, held at a church, was organized as an alternative response to two nights of unrest in which more crowds have burned stores, vandalized vehicles assaulted reporters and taunted officers. Ferguson's mayor and police chief also attended the meeting and were welcomed with applause.

Earlier in the day, Police Chief Tom Jackson said he had decided against releasing the officer's name Tuesday after death threats were called into police and City Hall and posted on social media. Jackson said it could be weeks before he releases the name.

"If we come out and say, 'It was this officer,' then he immediately becomes a target," Jackson said. "We're taking the threats seriously."

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People march in locked arms through the streets of downtown Clayton. Mo. on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014, …

The officer has been with the force for about six years and was on a routine patrol when he encountered the two young men, Jackson said.

Police have not disclosed the race of the officer, but witnesses said he was white. Brown was black.

The Ferguson police force has 53 officers, three of whom are black. Jackson said the city has had trouble recruiting and retaining black officers.

The fullest account of Brown's death so far has come from Dorian Johnson, who said he was walking home from a convenience store with Brown when they were approached by an officer in a squad car who, using expletives, ordered them to move to the sidewalk.

In the hours after the shooting, Johnson told news crews that he and Brown had kept walking and explained to the officer they were near their destination. The officer then reversed his car "to where it almost hit us."

The officer, Johnson said, tried to open his door, but he was so close to the men that it "ricocheted" back. Johnson said the officer then reached through the window, "grabbed my friend around the neck" and tried to pull him into the car. The officer then reportedly pulled out his weapon and said, "'I'll shoot you,' or 'I'm going to shoot,'" Johnson said.

When the officer opened fire, Brown was hit and started to bleed, Johnson said. Johnson ran to hide behind a car.

Brown "kept running, and he told me to keep running because he feared for me, too," Johnson said.

Johnson said the officer pursued Brown with his weapon drawn and fired again.

When Brown felt that shot, he turned around and put his hands in the air and started to get down on the ground. But the officer kept firing, Johnson said.

"And my friend died. He didn't say anything to him. He just stood over and he's shooting."

Authorities have not commented directly on Johnson's account.

Another witness, Phillip Walker, told the AP he was on the porch of an apartment complex overlooking the scene when he saw a white officer with Brown, who was "giving up in the sense of raising his arms and being subdued." Walker said the officer then "stood over him and shot him."

Police have said there is no security or police video of the confrontation.

St. Louis County police are leading the investigation into Brown's death, and the Federal Aviation Administration agreed to order flight restrictions over Ferguson until Monday to give police helicopters unfettered access to that airspace.

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Lieb reported from St. Louis. Associated Press writer Jim Suhr in St. Louis also contributed to this report.

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Follow Alan Scher Zagier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/azagier.

Moscow (AFP) - A convoy of nearly 300 trucks carrying what Russia says is humanitarian aid for victims of fighting in eastern Ukraine moved slowly towards the border on Wednesday despite concerns by Kiev and the West over the shipment, Russian officials said.

But Kiev again insisted it would not allow the convoy on its territory.

"No humanitarian convoy of Putin's will be allowed to cross the territory of the Kharkiv region," Ukraine's interior minister Arsen Avakov wrote on Facebook. "Provocation by the cynical aggressor will not be permitted on our territory."

Around 280 trucks are carrying more than 1,800 tonnes of "humanitarian supplies", including medical equipment, baby food, sleeping bags, and electric generators, according to Russian media.

President Vladimir Putin has justified sending the aid due to the "catastrophic" situation in the besieged rebel strongholds of Lugansk and Donetsk, where officials have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster because of shortages of food, water and power.

But there are concerns by Kiev and the West that Moscow could use the operation as a cover for sending in troops.

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Pro-Russian militants sitting atop a truck wave as they drive past a checkpoint in Makiivka, 15 kilo …

Russian media said the shipment had passed through the city of Voronezh on Wednesday, which would put it less than 300 kilometres (190 miles) from the border crossing at Shebekino, where the foreign ministry said the aid would enter Ukraine.

A Rossiya TV report from Voronezh said the convoy had over 500 kilometres to travel, and at an average speed of 60 kilometres an hour it would arrive at the border only in the evening.

"It's a long drive and a bit tough, but how can we not help our Slav brothers," one of the drivers of the white trucks said.

Kiev has said the trucks would be stopped at the border for any aid to be unloaded and transported into conflict-torn eastern Ukraine with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that an agreement had been reached for the trucks to be inspected by Ukrainian authorities before continuing on with ICRC and Ukrainian representatives on board.

But Ukraine, which has accused Moscow of supplying the pro-Russian separatists with weapons, said no final agreement had been reached with the ICRC.

"I can say that Lavrov's statement is not true. Talks between the Red Cross and Russia are still continuing," said a source close to Ukrainian authorities.

Time running out for beseiged Iraqis as West boosts aid

Dohuk (Iraq) (AFP) - Time was running out for starving Yazidis trapped on an Iraqi mountain Wednesday as the West ramped up efforts to assist survivors and arm Kurdish forces battling jihadists.

The United States has carried out air strikes against members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in the area of Mount Sinjar, where the UN refugee agency says 20,000-30,000 people, many of them members of the Yazidi minority, are besieged.

Thousands more poured across a bridge into camps in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday after trekking into Syria to escape, most with nothing but the clothes they wore.

Some women carried exhausted children, weeping as they arrived to the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

But there are still large numbers on the mountain, said 45-year-old Mahmud Bakr.

"My father Khalaf is 70 years old -- he cannot make this journey," he told AFP when he crossed back into Iraq.

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Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community carry their children as they cross the Iraqi-Syrian borde …

UN minority rights expert Rita Izsak has warned they face "a mass atrocity and potential genocide within days or hours".

The displaced who managed to flee a siege that began 10 days ago found relative security in Kurdistan but complained that their living conditions had hardly improved.

"We were besieged for 10 days in the mountain. The whole world is talking about us but we did not get any real help," said Khodhr Hussein. "We went from hunger in Sinjar to hunger in this camp."

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that Washington is looking at options to bring the trapped civilians out.

"We will make a very rapid and critical assessment because we understand it is urgent to try to move those people off the mountains," he said.

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Iraqi Minister of Communication Haider al-Abadi speaks during the fourth plenary session of the UN-s …

- More US military advisors -

Washington has already said it would ship weapons to the cash-strapped Kurds and on Wednesday France followed in US footsteps.

"The president has decided, in agreement with Baghdad, to deliver arms in the coming hours," President Francois Hollande's office said.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the United States has sent 130 more military advisors to northern Iraq to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis.

A US defence official said the temporary additional personnel would also develop humanitarian assistance options beyond the current airdrop effort in support of the displaced civilians trapped on Mount Sinjar.

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Royal Air Force personnel pilot a Hercules C130 transport plane on its flight to deliver a second su …

Britain said it has agreed to transport military supplies for the Kurdish forces from "other contributing states".

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Wednesday his country would join humanitarian airdrops in Iraq, and did not rule out the possibility of greater military involvement.

Washington has urged Iraqi premier designate Haidar al-Abadi to rapidly form a broad-based government able to unite Iraqis in the fight against jihadist-led insurgents who have overrun swathes of the country.

Abadi came from behind in an acrimonious process to select Iraq's new premier when President Fuad Masum on Monday accepted his nomination and tasked him with forming a government.

He has 30 days to build a team which will face the daunting task of defusing sectarian tensions and, in the words of US President Barack Obama, convincing the Sunni Arab minority that IS "is not the only game in town".

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Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters take position as they monitor the area from their front line positi …

- Maliki yet to quit -

On Wednesday, Maliki continued to defy international pressure to step aside, declaring that it would take a federal court ruling for him to quit.

"I confirm that the government will continue and there will not be a replacement for it without a decision from the federal court," Maliki said in his televised weekly address.

The two-term premier has accused Masum of violating the constitution by approving Abadi's nomination, and vowed he would sue.

But the prospects of Maliki -- who told AFP in 2011 that he would not seek a third term -- succeeding in his quest to cling to power appear dim.

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Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks in Baghdad during a political meeting to talk about the o …

Whatever ruling the court might deliver, analysts say Maliki has lost too much backing to stay in power.

International support has poured in for Abadi, including from both Washington and Tehran, the two main foreign power-brokers in Iraq.

The political transition comes at a time of crisis for Iraq.

After seizing the main northern city of Mosul in early June and sweeping through much of the Sunni heartland, jihadist militants bristling with US-made military equipment they captured from retreating Iraqi troops launched another onslaught this month.

They attacked Christian, Yazidi, Turkmen and Shabak minorities west, north and east of Mosul, sparking a mass exodus that sent the number of people displaced in Iraq this year soaring.

A week of devastating gains saw the IS jihadists take the country's largest dam and advance to within striking distance of the autonomous Kurdish region.

US strikes and cross-border Kurdish cooperation have since yielded early results on several fronts, with Kurdish troops beginning to claw back lost ground.

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — A rebel-held city in eastern Ukraine came under intensified shelling Wednesday as the U.N. revealed that the death toll from the fighting between government troops and separatists has nearly doubled in the last two weeks.

A spokeswoman for the U.N.'s human rights office, Cecile Pouilly, said the organization's "very conservative estimates" show the overall death toll has risen to at least 2,086 people as of Aug. 10, up from 1,129 on July 26.

Pouilly said at least 4,953 others have been wounded in the fighting since mid-April.

While the humanitarian crisis reaches critical stage in at least one major Ukrainian city, trucks apparently carrying some 2,000 tons of aid have lain idle at a military depot in Russia. Moscow insists it coordinated the dispatch of the goods, which range from baby food and canned meat to portable generators and sleeping bags, with the international Red Cross, but Ukraine says it's worried the mission may be a cover for an invasion.

A spokesman for local authorities in the main rebel-controlled city of Donetsk told The Associated Press on Wednesday that rocket attacks over the previous night had increased in intensity.

Several high-rise apartment blocks in a southwestern district in the city showed the effect of artillery strikes. In one, the facade of one of the top floors was blown away to reveal a shattered interior. Others bore smashed windows and gaping holes.

Associated Press reporters saw two bodies lying in a street Wednesday morning in Donetsk's southwestern Petrovsky district. The local government said three were killed, a figure that adds to the sharply mounting death toll.

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An armed pro-Russian separatist points at a bus riddled with bullet holes at a checkpoint on the out …

Shelling in Donetsk has damaged power plants and gas pipelines, leaving large parts of the city without electricity or gas, city council spokesman Maxim Rovinsky said.

Damage to residential buildings is an apparent result of two combined factors: The army has refrained from going into Donetsk, favoring an artillery campaign of attrition over close urban combat. And local residents have regularly revealed that damaged houses are often to be found near rebel firing positions, suggesting that the rocket attacks are responses to outgoing strikes.

Government troops and the volunteers fighting with them are also sustaining heavy losses while making regular territorial advances.

At least 12 militiamen fighting alongside the army were killed overnight Tuesday in an ambush outside Donetsk, a spokesman for their radical nationalist movement said Wednesday.

The situation in Luhansk, also in rebel hands, is yet more serious. City authorities said Wednesday they had entered the 11th straight day without power supplies. Running water has dried up and the few working shops are selling only basic essentials.

Rocket attacks remain a daily occurrence.

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A Russian convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid for Ukraine sets off from near Moscow in this s …

The scale of the crisis there sparked Moscow into sending a huge convoy of white trucks Tuesday carrying aid for the population in the Luhansk region.

Ukraine grudgingly agreed to the initiative, while expressing severe misgivings over failure by Russia to coordinate with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Andre Loersch, a spokesman for the ICRC mission in Ukraine, said he was still in the dark Wednesday about the final destination of the convoy.

Other than what appeared to be a few supply runs, the roughly 262 vehicles in the convoy lay idle at a military base in the southern city of Voronezh into Wednesday evening.

Under a tentative agreement, Ukraine and Russia had said the aid would be delivered to a government-controlled crossing in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, which hasn't been touched by the months of fighting that have wracked neighboring regions. The cargo would then have to be inspected by the Red Cross.

But accord has soured into acrimony with the spokesman for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday accusing Moscow of possibly planning a "direct invasion of Ukrainian territory under the guise of delivering humanitarian aid."

Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said that he "had information" that the convoy won't go through Kharkiv, but that "nobody knows where it will go."

That leaves the option for the convoy to go through a portion of the border further south that is under the control of the armed pro-Russian separatist rebels that the government has been battling for the last four months. This scenario would all but certainly not involve the Red Cross and is viewed with profound hostility by the Ukrainian government.

Lysenko said that any deliveries of aid "that don't have the mandate of the Red Cross ... are taken as aggressive forces and the response will be adequate to that."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted that the aid convoy was on the move inside Russia, but declined to comment on the route. He said the operation was proceeding in full cooperation with the Red Cross.

Amid the tensions, Putin traveled to Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in March, where he chaired a session of his Security Council. A meeting with Putin's entire Cabinet and most Russian lawmakers has been scheduled for Thursday.

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Grits reported from Donetsk, Ukraine. John Heilprin in Geneva, Yuras Karmanau in Donetsk, Peter Leonard in Kiev, and Natalya Vasilyeva in Sevastopol, Crimea, contributed to this report.

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Skye Gould/Business Insider

They say the Cold War is over, but Russia and the U.S. remain the leading supplier of weapons to countries around the world and are the two biggest military powers. Lately, tensions have been pretty high, too.

The U.S. supplies much of NATO and Middle Eastern allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Russia supplies other BRIC nations, as well as Iran, much of Southeast Asia, and North Africa.

We took numbers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2012-2013 to see whom the two rivals were supplying with weaponry. The U.S. dealt to 59 nations that Russia doesn't sell or send weaponry to, while Russia dealt to just 15 nations that don't receive U.S. arms.

Fifteen countries received weaponry from both the U.S. and Russia, including Brazil, India, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

The country that received the highest dollar amount of U.S. weaponry was the United Arab Emirates, with more than $3.7 billion in arms received over that period. Russia dealt the greatest value of weapons to India, sending more than $13.6 billion.

Overall, the U.S. sent more than $26.9 billion in weaponry to foreign nations, while Russia sent weaponry exceeding $29.7 billion in value around the globe.

Interestingly, the U.S. actually recieved roughly $16 million worth of weaponry from Russia. This was part of a $1 billion helicopter deal the two nations made so that the U.S. could supply Afghan security forces with equipment they were already more familiar with.

Importantly, SIPRI's totals don't measure the cost of the transaction but the cost of the weapons' production. The numbers are listed as the production value of the weapons sold rather than the amount they were actually sold for. In addition, SIPRI does not track the transfer of certain small arms.

SIPRI gives several examples to explain their chosen method. In 2009, six Eurofighters valued at $55 million each were delivered by Germany to Austria. Therefore the delivery was valued at $330 million, even though the actual transaction likely netted a much higher total. For comparison, when The New York Times listed the total of weapons sold by the U.S. at $66.3 billion in 2011, SIPRI came up with a much lower total based off of production cost of $15.4 billion.

You can read the full explanation of SIPRI's calculations here.