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Moscow police have detained a Canadian national named Michael Jackson on charges of attempting to steal a wallet from a woman in the capital’s underground, the police reported on its website. The 50-year-old was caught red-handed at an underground station in southeastern Moscow on Monday as he pulled the wallet from the woman’s pocket, the report said. An investigation is under way. If found guilty, Jackson faces a fine of up to 200,000 rubles ($6,500) and a prison term of up to five years.

Is WikiLeaks biased against the West and the US in particular? This news item would tend to indicate so. According to Christian Science monitor Moscow correspondent Fred Weir, Kremlin funded media outlet Russia Today, is to hire WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This despite the fact that Assange remains under house arrest in Britain, awaiting a Supreme Court decision on his extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations

Quote: homeland.house.gov/hearing/subcommittee-hearing-jihadist-use-social-media-how-prevent-terrorism-and-preserve-innovation Subcommittee Hearing: Jihadist Use of Social Media - How to Prevent Terrorism and Preserve Innovation Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence | 311 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 | Dec 6, 2011 2:00pm On Tuesday, December 6, 2011 the Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will hold a hearing entitled "Jihadist Use of Social Media - How to Prevent Terrorism and Preserve Innovation." The Committee will meet at 2:00 p.m. in 311 Cannon House Office Building. Witnesses Mr. Evan F. Kohlmann Flashpoint Global Partners Mr. William McCants Analyst Analyst for the Center for Naval...

In happier times Russian university students could expect a bright future as part of the country’s elite. Instead the country is experiencing a serious brain drain as graduates head abroad, and many other young people dream of doing so: 40 percent, according to one survey. It is of serious concern to the authorities in the run-up to parliamentary elections on December 4. One first year maths student at Moscow State University said if she continued her studies she would probably go abroad, because she did not believe the government was putting enough money into science development. The loss of more...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on Thursday, openly admitted the US had encouraged protests in Russia after Vladimir Putin's United Russia party held on to power in the most recent elections. Saying Putin's accusation that the US was meddling in domestic Russian affairs was "well-founded," Clinton said that still "doesn't justify Russian military counter-measures" taken once the protests erupted. The secretary added the United States was not alone in "expressing concerns" over voting irregularities.

Tens of thousands wait for hours in freezing temperatures to kiss belt that Christians believe was worn by Jesus' motherMOSCOW — Braving freezing cold temperatures and ice-covered sidewalks, tens of thousands of Russians stood in line Wednesday to see and kiss a newly arrived relic of the Virgin Mary in Russia's largest Orthodox cathedral. The Virgin Mary's Cincture, a belt that Christians believe was worn by Jesus' mother, was brought to Russia last month from Mount Athos, a monastic community in Greece. Kissing the relic, which is encased in an ornamental box, is believed to help barren women conceive and...

Massachusetts anti-military law professor attended University of Moscow 53 mins ago Michael Avery, a Suffolk University Law School professor who made headlines for an email to colleagues calling care packages for United States soldiers abroad “shameful,” attended the University of Moscow from 1968 through 1969, The Daily Caller has learned. Avery’s studies in the U.S.S.R. coincided with the height of the Cold War and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, punishing a period of liberalization known as “The Prague Spring.” That 1968 invasion marked the launch of the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” which declared: “When forces that are hostile to socialism try...

MOSCOW—Tens of thousands of Muslim men knelt shoulder-to-shoulder in prayer on the freezing streets of Moscow on Sunday to celebrate the religious holiday of Eid al-Adha. Estimates of the number of Muslims living or working in the Russian capital run from 2 million to as high as 5 million, but the city has few mosques. Police said 170,000 people celebrated the holiday in Moscow, including 80,000 who gathered on the street outside what was once the main mosque.

Thousands of far-right Nazi-saluting nationalists marched in Moscow today in a 'Take Back Russia' protest at Muslim migrants. Resentment is growing over the migrants from Russia's Caucasus and the money the Kremlin sends to those troubled regions. Chanting 'Russia for Russians' and 'Migrants today, occupiers tomorrow,' about 5,000 demonstrators

A Hizbullah delegation was welcomed by officials in Moscow on Wednesday for the terror group’s first official visit to the Kremlin. The three-man delegation, headed by Hizbollah MP Mohammad Raad, is scheduled to meet Russian officials for talks on developments in Lebanon and the region, a Hizbollah source told Lebanon's The Daily Star. The source said discussions will also touch on bilateral ties and issues of common interest. Russia has opposed Western intervention in Syria as the uprising there enters its seventh month, as has Hizbullah, which has close ties to the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Damascus....

Vladimir Putin declared on Saturday that he planned to reclaim the Russian presidency in an election next March that could open the way for the former KGB spy to rule until 2024. The announcement, greeted by a standing ovation at a congress of the prime minister's ruling United Russia party, ended months of speculation over whether he or President Dmitry Medvedev would run. The two have ruled in a power 'tandem' since Putin was forced by the constitution to yield the presidency in 2008 after serving a maximum two consecutive terms, and Putin said they had agreed several years ago...

Moscow, September 15, Interfax - Depiction of Orthodox crosses appeared on a new 500 ruble banknote issued on September 6. Official website of the Bank of Russia represents a drawing of the new banknote, on its backside crosses crown churches of the Solovki Monastery. The previous banknote depicted the monastery in its "Soviet" variant without crosses. Depictions of cupolas and crosses appeared at the banknote after Patriarch Kirill's petition to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin told Interfax-Religion on Thursday. He reminded that once when the Patriarch visited Solovki...

Destruction, 1931-1990The site of the Cathedral is a very important one for urban developers. After the revolution this, along with ideological principles, became the reason for the decision to destroy the Cathedral. The plan entailed constructing a grandiose Palace of Soviets on the site of the Cathedral. This palace was meant to be the largest building in the world - a monument to victorious socialism and Lenin - the leader of the world proletariat. A new Moscow, with no vestiges of the "cursed past and its' monuments" was to arise around this Palace. A massive wave of propaganda preceded the...

Krasnogorsk, August 25, Interfax - Optional classes on elementary Orthodoxy will be introduced in children's day care centers of the Moscow region, the Minister of Education Lidiya Antonova said at a Moscow regional teachers' forum. "In 2011-2012, we introduce a new course on Orthodox Culture in young children's care system. New resource and reference materials will be released by September 1," Lidiya Antonova said. The course is now introduced in 430 centers with 27,000 young children enrolled. The optional course called "Benign World of Orthodox Culture for Young Children" will be introduced in 650 daycare centers of the Moscow region....

According to RIA Novosti's source within the Russian special forces, information about a planned terrorist attack along the route of the "Sapsan" was obtained by the FSB from an informer embedded within the North Kavkaz terror network. According to the source, the conscripted agent informed the FSB that leaders of the Dagestan terror network sent Islam Hamuzhev, a resident of Kabardino-Balkariya, to Moscow for the execution of the planned act. Prior to his departure, Islam completed a bomb-making course in a terrorist camp in Dagestan. Hamuzhev's plan, when in Moscow, was to find like-minded persons to execute the act...

NATO plans campaign in Syria, tightens noose around Iran - Rogozin Topic: Protests in Syria 05:48 05/08/2011 MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) NATO is planning a military campaign against Syria to help overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad with a long-reaching goal of preparing a beachhead for an attack on Iran, Russia's envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said. The UN Security Council condemned on Wednesday ongoing violence in Syria and urged the country's authorities to stop using force against peaceful protesters, while saying the current situation in the country has not yet called for NATO interference. "[This statement] means...

A passenger jet crash-landed Monday on a desolate stretch of road in northwest Russia, killing at least 38 people, the country’s state news agency reported. The plane reportedly took off from Moscow and contained 48 passengers and five crewmembers. It is unclear what brought the plane down about 2 miles from Petrozavodsk airport, its destination, reported Itar-Tass. But the Tupolev-134 plane caught fire and the fuselage was reportedly completely destroyed. Those injured were considered in serious condition. Authorities began an investigation into the crash; early signs point to a mechanical error, Itar-Tass reported, citing a source.

The Russian Orthodox Church is grateful to the Moscow city authorities and law enforcers for preventing a gay parade attempted in the city last Saturday. Over 60 people were detained in Moscow on Saturday during an attempted gay parade and a protest against it.

N.Korean Embassy Buildings in Moscow 'House Casino' A building that is part of the North Korean Embassy in Moscow is being used as an illegal casino, Russian media reported Thursday. According to the daily Izvestia, the North Korean government rented out a 2,000 sq. m administrative building adjoining the embassy to a company which registered it as a restaurant, but Russian authorities believe a casino has been operating there since December. The casino and the Embassy proper are separated by a fence, and only guests with bookings can enter. The casino has four roulette tables on the second floor, five...

Summer of 2009 1) Hurricane Bill 2) big fire on La Palma Island 3) at the same time, same area, Russian subs and surface vessels were operating 4) Wonder of wonders, a Russian cargo ARCTIC SEA ship "disappears" after being fitted at the port of Murmansk.MURMANSK,  in spite of massive multinational hi-tech search and chase operation. 5) eventually the cargo ship is suddenly "found" in the same area off the Cape Verde Islands, where the Russian subs had been operating. 6) same area is home to the Cumbre Vieja Shelf, undersea volcanoes see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbre_Vieja and: http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.pdf and: http://www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mgs/explore/hazards/tsunami/jan05.htm It is...

Rather than the January 24th suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport (that claimed 36 lives and wounded almost 200) giving rise to a soul searching by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it has sadly given rise to hypocrisy on his part. Moscow’s investigation into the attack is still ongoing. But earlier this month, in a very chilling video, Doku Umarov—the self-styled emir of the Causasus Emirate—claimed responsibility for it.Threatening further attacks, Umarov said, "With Allah's grace, we will make this year for you a year of blood and tears."

Those responsible for the large-scale terrorist attack are named in a new criminal case The Moscow prosecutor’s office has canceled the order that terminated the criminal case concerning the terrorist attack on Dubrovka, which took place in October 2002. Igor Trunov, the attorney representing the victims’ interest, revealed this to ‘Svobodnaya Pressa’ (‘SP’). According to Trunov, the Moscow prosecutor’s office was instructed by the chief of the Russian Investigative Committee to carry out a supplementary investigation into the incident. Igor Trunov explains why prosecutors are once again investigating‘Nord-Ost’ ‘SP’: Igor Leonidovich (Trunov), the prosecutor’s decision to continue the investigation, what...

A suicide bomber planning an attack in Moscow on New Year's Eve was killed in her apartment when her bomb was prematurely detonated by an unexpected text message [from a mobile operator]. According to Russian security sources, the text message -- a remote trigger for a cell phone belt bomb -- wished her a happy new year, accidentally setting off the blast. The accident may have saved hundreds of lives, these officials believe, as the woman intended to use the bomb in a suicide attack near Red Square later that night. The woman is believed to be part of the...

35 people have been killed in an explosion at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport according to the airport spokesperson. Up to 168 are said to have been injured in what the Investigative Committee believes to be a terror attack.Eighty-six people have been taken to nearby hospitals, 46 of them are reported to be in critical condition. Some reports say there are foreign citizens among the victims, including those from the UK, Italy, France, Serbia and Slovakia. *************************snip************************************ FSB knew about possible terror attack – reports Russia’s Federal Security Bureau had known about a suicide bomber in the city, but their information was...

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin vowed revenge for a suicide bombing that killed at least 35 people at Russia's busiest airport and underscored the Kremlin's failure to stem a rising tide of attacks. Talking tough a day after the bombing, Russia's leaders ordered security services to root out the culprits behind the attack, which bore hallmarks of militants fighting for an Islamist state along Russia's southern flank. "This was an abominable crime in both its senselessness and its cruelty," Mr Putin told a meeting of ministers in Moscow. "I do not doubt that this crime will be solved and that...

London -- Airports around the world are likely to boost security checks in the wake of Monday's deadly bombing in Moscow, experts say. The blast, at the city's Domodedovo Airport, killed at least 35 people and left more than 100 wounded, several critically. Experts say it is significant that those who masterminded the attack chose to bomb the arrivals hall of the airport -- Moscow's busiest -- because it was an easier target than the heavily-policed departures area. "Arrivals has always been thought of as the 'soft' area of an airport," explained CNN's Richard Quest. "Nobody is flying anywhere, the...

For this being a very short video, it gives a direct, eyewitness account on the first few moments after the bombing of the Moscow Domodedovo Airport which first broke out on the news this morning. This is truly a reminder that in this age of the internet, iPhone, iPad, and 24/7 news, the global jihadi war knows now borders or countries.

A spokeswoman for Moscow's busiest airport says 35 people have been killed by an explosion in its international arrivals hall. Domodedovo Airport spokeswoman Yelena Galanova made the statement Monday on Russia's NTV television. Other officials put the death toll at 31 and said about 130 people were injured in the explosion Monday afternoon. President Dmitry Medvedev said it looked like a terror attack and the state RIA Novosti news agency said the blast may have been set off by a suicide bomber.

At least 31 people have been killed and 130 wounded by a bomb blast at Moscow's Domodedovo airport. Domodedovo is the city's largest and busiest air facility. Unnamed sources say that a Chechen Islamic terrorist group, the Caucasus Emirate, is believed to be behind the attack. The same group employed women as female suicide bombers in the bombing of the Moscow Metro subway last March. 40 people were killed in that attack...

Video taken immediately after the bombing.

Domodedovo airport: Blast rocks Moscow's main airport breaking news Moscow's Domodedovo airport - the busiest in the Russian capital - has been rocked by an explosion. Interfax news agency reports at least 10 people have died and 20 more are injured.

A bomb has been detonated at the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, killing at least ten people and wounding twenty others. Domodedovo is the busiest of the Russian capital’s three airports. Early suspicion has fallen on the “Caucasus Emirate,” an Islamist separatist movement in Chechnya, which has been held responsible for deploying two female suicide bombers against the Moscow Metro subway system in March 2010. Those attacks claimed over 40 lives. Chechen separatists supposedly trained a sizable group of “black widow” female bombers, and promised future terror attacks. Initial reports from the Domodedovo Airport suggested the new attack was the work...

The suicide bombing in Moscow’s Domodedovo airport presents our mainstream press with a true conundrum: how to a) avoid any mention of Islam and b) blame it on Sarah Palin. We’ll hear euphemisms: Chechen rebels, Chechen separatists, Chechen Tea Partiers, Chechen dissidents. The truth about the Chechen “rebellion” is that it is Islamic. As Putin plots revenge, our media will be avoiding the truth. Next we’ll have Tina Fey claiming she had Russia in her crosshairs from her house. (Joy Tiz is the author of It's Not Easy Being God: the Real George Soros)

Domodedovo blast: Explosion rocks Moscow's main airport Moscow's Domodedovo airport - the busiest in the Russian capital - has been rocked by an explosion.At least 10 people have been killed in the blast and that dozens more are reported to have been injured.Reports suggest a suicide bomber was behind the blast.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A blast at Russia's largest airport Domodedovo on Monday killed about 20 people, news agency Itar-Tass reported, citing a law enforcement official.

(Reuters) - Lenin may be turned out of his tomb if a campaign launched by members of Russia's ruling party succeeds in closing down his mausoleum on Red Square. "His presence as a central figure in a necropolis at the heart of our nation is an utter nonsense," member of parliament Vladimir Medinsky wrote on the official website of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. At www.goodbyelenin.ru -- a nod to the hit German comedy about the collapse of Communism -- the party ran a click-to-vote poll. It said over 100,000 people, or two in three of those taking...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday three top Russian officials should spend New Year's Eve in the dark after failing to fulfill their promise to repair damaged power lines. "You said everything would be fine by 1800 (1500 GMT)," Russia's de facto number one said in nationally televised comments to the three. "You should not have said anything if you were not sure," he added during a meeting that included the governor of the Moscow region as well as federal energy minister and the head of the local power utility. The televised comments were followed an hour later by news...

The Russian Ground Forces' Air Defense Force will become part of a united aerospace defense system, the Air Defense Force's chief has said. "In the course of the creation of a united aerospace defense system, the Russian Ground Forces' Air Defense Force will become one of its most important parts which together with other aerospace defense elements will be responsible for air defense and non-strategic missile defense at infrastructure and military facilities and troop deployment sites," Major General Alexander Leonov told journalists in Moscow on Saturday. The Russian Ground Forces' Air Defense Force includes such air defense systems as S-300,...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised on Thursday that a new mosque will be built in Moscow. "The construction of the mosque has been planned in Moscow. It will be done," Putin said during his annual Q&A session. The mosque will be built in southeast Moscow, in a district with a large number of ethnic Tatars, the vast majority of whom are Muslims. Local authorities vowed however to coordinate the construction of the mosque with the non-Muslim residents of the district. There are currently only four mosques in Moscow - or one for every 500,000 Muslims in the Russian capital.

MOSCOW (AFP) – The Russian government on Tuesday approved a plan to build a highway through a forest outside Moscow, in defiance of protests that had become a rare rallying cause for the opposition. Demonstrations against the building of the new highway between Moscow and Saint Petersburg through Khimki forest had prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to postpone the project, in a rare nod by the state to popular pressure. But Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said the government commission tasked with investigating the project had after all given its green light to the plan. The commission approved the building of...

Moscow, December 7, Interfax - Hieromonk Makary (Markish), lecturer of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk seminary, who worked as a programmer in the USA and graduated from the ROCOR Holy Trinity seminary believes that Russian citizens have more freedom of self-expression than Americans. "Those who remember Soviet rule should lose their tongue, if they start speaking about lacking freedom of self-expression. I lived in the USA and here in Russia freedom of expression is much higher than in the States though they have 200 year old democratic tradition," Father Makary said in his interview with Interfax-Religion. According to him, "the fact that anyone...

BEIJING – The 121-story Shanghai Tower is more than China's next record-setting building: It's an economic lifeline for the elite club of skyscraper builders. Financial gloom has derailed plans for new towers in Chicago, Moscow, Dubai and other cities. But in China, work on the 2,074-foot (632-meter) Shanghai Tower, due to be completed in 2014, and dozens of other tall buildings is rushing ahead, powered by a buoyant economy and providing a steady stream of work to architects and engineers. The U.S. high-rise market is "pretty much dead," said Dan Winey, a managing director for Gensler, the Shanghai Tower's San...

The latest controversy over Transportation Security Administration body scans and enhanced body pat-downs leaves no doubt: America truly is a nation of whiners. A CBS News poll found that 81 percent of Americans support full-body airport scanning. That reasonable view is being drowned out by elements on the left and the right who love nothing better than to proclaim that they are victims. First exhibit: Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who introduced the "American Traveler Dignity Act" to "protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse." Abuse? Have Americans become such babies that a pat-down designed to prevent another 9/11 causes adults...

CNN) -- A videotape on a Russian Web site allegedly showing a State Department employee having sex with a prostitute is a "smear campaign" meant to discredit the man, a State Department spokesman said Thursday. The employee, Brendan Kyle Hatcher, denied any encounter with a prostitute to his superiors at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, another State Department official said. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, "supports" Hatcher, who remains at his job at the embassy.

The current government has made progress in fixing the economy and reducing the atmosphere of lawlessness. But corruption is still rampant, and the newly centralized government is seen as a return to autocratic rule of the past. The problem with autocratic strongmen is that they tend to stay in power long past the point where they are effective. The czars and communists both suffered from this, and it is feared that new "democratic dictatorship" will do the same. Despite quality control and delivery problems, Russia continues to provide 60 percent of Indian arms imports over the last seven years. But...

The leaders of Moscow's 1.5 million strong Muslim community say they desperately need more places of worship. But a plan to build a new mosque has run into local opposition which is being fuelled by nationalists calling for a "clean Moscow" without Muslims and foreigners. Small trees are supposed to be keeping the Muslims out of Tekstilshchiki, a district in south eastern Moscow. A young man sets to work with his shovel, pushing it into the earth with a determined kick. Then he places a seedling into the hole and sprinkles earth over it. Using her watering can, Maria Sotova...

CNN's Senior International Correspondent in Moscow Matthew Chance interviewed the former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov on Wednesday.In a revealing and candid discussion, Luzhkov told CNN that "we are losing democracy inside the country," and refuted rumors that he was planning to leave the country. Russia, Moscow (CNN) -- Chance: Mr. Luzhkov, you were the mayor of Moscow for 18 years until last month when you were unceremoniously fired by the Russian president. Why do you think that you were dismissed?

Russia will buy foreign and possibly U.S. arms because the domestic industry has failed to modernize, Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has said. In an interview with Russian Newsweek, Serdyukov said Moscow was forced to buy from companies abroad as it plans to spend more than $600 billion to modernize its armed forces. "Our weapons often do not meet the required standards," he said. "We are acting as consumers in this situation ... our producers want to issue outdated models but we don't want to buy them." Serdyukov in the interview even suggested that Russia might buy weapons from its...

IN MOSCOW On Sept. 11 this year, the day protesters were challenging the construction of a mosque two blocks from New York's World Trade Center site, residents of an old industrial neighborhood were on the march in Moscow. They, too, were opposing construction of a mosque. New mosques are so contentious here that none has been built in over a decade. This is a city with perhaps 2 million Muslims, unless you believe it's 500,000, out of a population of 14 million - or 10 million. There are only six mosques, but with one at the Iranian Embassy and two...

MOSCOW – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday fired Yury Luzhkov, ending the 18-year rule of the Moscow mayor who gave the crumbling metropolis a glamorous facelift but was maligned for outdated values and bellicose posturing. Medvedev signed a decree relieving the 74-year-old mayor of his duties due to the president's "loss of confidence" in him, according to the Kremlin website.