Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the United States is looking to purchase hemp seed to help Ukraine's ailing economy, which has been hurt by a corrupt government and recently an invasion by Russia into its Crimea region.

Hemp is related to marijuana, but does not contain Tetrahydrocannabinoids (THC), the intoxicating ingredients that make a pot smoker high. Hemp is used in a variety of items including building materials, personal hygiene products, textiles like carpeting and ropes and foods such as margarine and cooking oil.

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ODESSA, Ukraine -- No one outside a small sympathetic circle knows that Iren is infected with H.I.V., not even her mother. Telling, she said, would only "make trouble." It would also invite unkind assumptions, given the way AIDS has cut through Ukraine, the nation with the worst problem in a region where the disease is spreading with alarming speed.

"People would think I used drugs or I was a prostitute," said Iren, who asked that her full name not be printed.

[continues 1046 words]

KIEV, March 23 (Itar-Tass) - The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry does not have information on the detention of a Ukrainian Il-76 plane in Peru on suspicion of transporting narcotic drugs.

Acting ministry spokesman Igor Grushko neither confirmed nor refuted the related press reports on Tuesday. Ukraine does not have an embassy in that Latin American country.

The ministry said the information had not been confirmed by the Russian embassy in Peru. They noted with a reference to Russian correspondents that the plane was on its way to Jordan with Peru timber on board.



[end]

KHMELNITSKY, Ukraine, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Drug addicts tending pigs and chickens at a top secret Soviet nuclear missile base - - the very idea would have had Cold War generals packing their bags for Siberia.

Yet that pastoral scene has become a reality at the former base of the Red Army's Fifth Strategic Missile Regiment, hidden away among the hills and barren fields of western Ukraine.

Soviet troops pulled out from Khmelnitsky after the Union collapsed in 1991. Now only a crumbling concrete obelisk screaming "Glory to the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces!" stands as a reminder that here nuclear apocalypse was once just the touch of a button away.

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