Ukrainian project "Petiole" is among 20 of the world's hottest start-ups of 2015

According to CNBC the Ukrainian startup "Petiole" is ranked one of the brightest ideas around the globe of 2015.

Petiole is a mobile-based recommendation system for precision 

agriculture. It's the tool to measure plant leaf area. It monitors dynamics of plant growth using leaf-area measurement, helping to understand how a plant reacts to different factors (weather, growth promoters, etc.). It is like a smart tracker for plant growth.

Time of measuring the plant leaf area is less than one second. It is 1000 times faster than using graph paper and 100 times faster than scanning and processing leaf image in Photoshop.

Petiole has a mobile app to make leaf-area measurement and data cloud service to collect, process data and show dynamics of growth in an affordable manner. After tweaking this service, the next steps for Petiole are to quantify leaf greenness and make diagnostics of leaf disease.

Original link: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/19/20-of-the-worlds-hottest-start-ups-of-2015.html

#StopFake Top Fakes of the Week about Ukraine

Fake #1: Barack Obama Accuses Ukrainian Authorities of Genocide

On September 23, Russia’n internet media posted false reports claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama had “accused Ukrainian authorities of the genocide of their own people” in a speech to a business roundtable. They cited CNN as their source.

They quoted Barack Obama as saying: “With the inability and unwillingness of Ukrainian authorities to improve things, their actions make the conditions of all the population considerably worse and can’t be called anything other than the genocide of their own people.”

The news was published on such websites as oppps.ru (http://oppps.ru/cnn-barak-obama-obvinil-vlasti-ukrainy-v-genocide-sobstvennogo-naroda.html), hollivizor.ru (http://hollivizor.ru/), jakos.net (http://www.jacos.net/ru/novosti/cnn-barak-obama-obvinil-vlasti-ukraini-v-genotside-sobstvennogo-naroda-89495), postsover.ru and on social networks.

Indeed, Barack Obama did speak at a business roundtable on September 16 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/16/remarks-president-business-roundtable), though these reports with the reference to genocide appeared almost a full week after the event. In reality, there is no reference to Ukraine in his speech, and CNN made no such reports (http://edition.cnn.com/search/?text=obama+ukraine).

Fake #2: Russian Media Lied about Ukrainian Election Violations

Russian media falsely reported that the 2015 Ukrainian local elections saw a record number of violations. They cited the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a non-governmental organization that had registered violations during the Ukrainian elections, as their source.

This news was reported by the Russian television network NTV (http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1555937), Rossiyskaya Gazeta (http://www.rg.ru/2015/10/26/narusheniya-site-anons.html), zavtra.ru (http://zavtra.ru/content/view/vyiboryi-na-ukraine-pobili-rekord-po-kolichestvu-narushenij/) and EurAsia Daily websites (https://eadaily.com/news/2015/10/25/nyneshnie-ukrainskie-vybory-byut-vse-rekordy-po-narusheniyam).

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine (http://www.cvu.org.ua/), however, did not register a record number of violations during the Ukrainian elections on 25 October 2015. Its Deputy Executive Director Vitaliy Teslenko have said that compared to the 2010 local elections, there were approximately 2.5 times fewer violations in 2015.

“More than 3,800 violations were registered on the day of elections in 2010,” he said. “Then we had only 2,500 observers. Now, in 2015, we had 4,300 observers, but they detected far less violations [1,500]”.

This is confirmed in the organization’s published report on the elections: “Comparing with the 2010 local election, the number of bribery of voters is far less.” (http://issuu.com/8612157/docs/____________________________________4e93f1fd74586b?e=16898265/30946110)

Original link: www.stopfake.org/en/news

Russian Terrorist Forces Shelled Residential Areas with MLRS Grad

In blatant violation of the Minsk Agreements, Russia and its proxies are escalating the situation in the Donbas region. Russian-backed terrorists continue shelling Ukrainian army positions with small arms, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.

Since November 1, Russian terrorist forces have carried out over 350 shellings and provocations along the contact line, including with 82 mm and 120 mm mortars and grenade launchers. At least 7 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed.

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in its reports has also confirmed the intensification of shelling in recent days. On November 15, positioned at the Donetsk railway station, the SMM heard a total of 229 explosions (anti-aircraft gun, one impacting 120mm mortar round, and undetermined weapons), as well as at least 250 bursts of small arms and heavy machine-guns.

Russian terrorist forces resumed using deadly multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) Grad and launched three rockets at the town of Krasnohorivka in Donetsk region on November 13 and 12 rockets at the residential areas of Krasnohorivka and Hirnyk towns on November 16 (video: https://youtu.be/PvQy_fx2bsg?t=65). Ukraine submitted the evidence of the Grad MRLS shelling to the OSCE SMM (http://www.mil.gov.ua/en/news/2015/11/17/ukrainian-party-of-jccc-submits-evidence-of-grad-mrls-use-to-osce-smm-(pictures)/).

According to the Ukrainian Intelligence Service, on November 16, an echelon of eight railroad cars with ammunition supplies and four tanks of fuel arrived at the railway station “Ilovaysk”. This is yet more evidence of Russia's breach of its commitments pursuant to the Minsk documents and direct fueling of military escalation in Donbas.

Ukraine calls on the international community to increase pressure on Russia in order to prevent the renewal of full-scale hostilities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

#StopRussianAggression