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Last week the man in charge of America’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) defense system was fired by Barack Obama. Of course you have heard almost nothing about this from Obama’s kept media. They have no curiosity about why General Michael Carey, a man with a sterling record of service to our nation; and as a 35 year Air Force officer would be fired with no reasons offered by this anti-military Administration. In the middle of his golf tour and a few threatening statements to Ted Cruz, Barack Obama found time to flop General Carey from his position as commander of...

Moscow's migrant workers have seen this story before and they believe they have reason to be afraid. When an unidentified man -- believed to be from the Caucasus -- stabbed and killed a young ethnic Russian on October 10, triggering the capital's worst ethnic riots in three years, police made hundreds of arrests. By late on October 13, they had wrested the southern district of Biryulyovo from Russian nationalists, who had overturned cars, smashed windows and stormed a vegetable warehouse looking for migrants. But by October 14, nearly all the rioters had been released from custody. And now, the authorities...

The fragment is so large that divers have been unable to lift it. Instead, it's been dragged along the bottom of the lake on a metal sheet. At 1,257 pounds--that's 570 kilos--It will be almost as big as the Holsinger meteorite, which landed in Arizona 50,000 years ago, and broke the scales when it was weighed earlier today. The rock will be tested to verify that it is from space and not from somewhere more mundane.

How do you settle a rather sizeable bill for your milk delivery? If you are a cash-strapped superpower the answer is, apparently, to offer up a pair of fighter jets and a nuclear submarine as payment. The extraordinary offer was made by Russia to New Zealand in 1993, a new book reveals. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was struggling to pay the $100m it owed New Zealand for a range of imported dairy products. In a meeting with Russian officials to thrash out payment terms, Jim Bolger, then New Zealand prime minister, was "absolutely stunned" to be...

Iraqi and Lebanese Shi'ite militia backed by Syrian army firepower overran a southern suburb of Damascus on Wednesday, opposition activists said, in a blow to Sunni Muslim rebels trying to hold onto strategic outskirts of the capital. At least 20 rebels were killed when Hezbollah guerrillas and Iraqi militiamen captured the town of Sheikh Omar under cover of Syrian army artillery and tank fire and aerial bombardment, the activists said, with tens of Shi'ite fighters killed or wounded.

Leadership: Iran's back to chanting "death to America," China's calling for a "de-Americanized" world, Russia kicks us to the curb in the Mideast and Venezuela hauls off five of our sailors. And what does the White House say? The sharp rise in anti-American incidents from antagonistic regimes stands in stark contrast to the environment three decades ago, when Ronald Reagan was president. As Beltway intelligentsia derided the Gipper as an "amiable dunce," the world's leading troublemakers saw the U.S. president entirely differently: as someone they'd rather not tangle with. That's why Iran's ayatollahs dropped the U.S. diplomatic hostages they'd been...

A group of Syrian clerics have issued a ruling - or fatwa - allowing people living in besieged suburbs of Damascus to eat meat that is normally forbidden. In a video, the Muslim clerics said people could eat cats, dogs and donkeys to stave off hunger. The fatwa comes amid reports of starvation in the besieged, rebel-held Damascus suburb of Muadhamiya. Aid agencies have urged the government to allow humanitarian supplies to the area, where many residents are trapped. Hundreds of civilians, some carried on stretchers, were able to flee Muadhamiya at the weekend following a temporary ceasefire. 'Absurd situation'...

Police in Moscow have named Azerbaijani man Orkhan Zeynalov as the suspected murderer of a young Russian whose death sparked major riots targeting migrants. Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, was stabbed to death in front of his girlfriend as the couple were returning home in the Biryulyovo district on Thursday. Ill-feeling has risen towards Moscow's Muslim migrants, thousands of whom gathered for street prayers on Tuesday. The tension came just as Russia was being commended for tackling racism. "Substantial efforts have been made to react firmly to the escalation of racist violence in Russia, and there has been a decline in the...

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which "support the possibility" the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned. In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings. Arafat died in France on November 11 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death. No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow's request. His remains were exhumed in November 2012 and...

MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday called for increased protection for Russian weapons manufacturers’ intellectual property rights on the global arms market. “The world arms market is rife with examples of illegal copying of others’ designs, and we have encountered these problems on past occasions,” Putin said at a meeting of the Russian Commission for Military-Technological Cooperation with Foreign States. “Our task is to ensure a high level of protection for our science-intensive goods and intellectual property, and defend the rights of Russian producers, companies and inventions’ creators,” Putin said. The president also urged...

MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian military delegation about to visit Brazil will offer joint development of a fifth-generation combat aircraft “of the type” of its own most newest fighter to Brazilian defense officials, a member of the delegation told RIA Novosti Monday. The proposal appears to be in support of an unsolicited offer by Russia’s combat aircraft maker Sukhoi of its Su-35 fighter, that has been struck off Brazil’s shortlist for its air force’s F-X2 tender for the purchase of 36 fighter jets worth $4 billion. Russia is still hoping to sell the Su-35s or similar aircraft...

“As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” writes Liu Chang in Xinhua, China’s official news outlet. But can China build a de-Americanized world? Can China lead the global economy? As we wrote in previous pieces, the answer is most likely not, as China lacks four conditions that make its economic growth sustainable. First, China...

IAEA experts are trying on the ground to sort out work to do away with the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. But the situation grows increasingly tense despite all efforts by the government. Hundreds of tons of radioactive water leaked out of the reservoirs and reached the subterranean waters just days ago. It may have likewise leaked into the ocean, says an expert in nuclear physics and nuclear power generation, Igor Ostretsov, Doctor of Engineering. “I am absolutely certain that the radioactive water leaks into the ocean have never stopped, because the plant molten corium is continuously...

Hundreds of outraged Muscovites -- blaming a migrant for the fatal stabbing of a local -- attacked businesses in a southern district of Moscow run by natives of the Caucasus. Police detained over three hundred people during the unrest on Sunday

Moscow legislators backtracked on claims that they are considering the return of a monument honoring the founder of the Soviet secret police to the center of the city. The city parliament made no plans concerning the return of the statue of Felix "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, legislature speaker Vladimir Platonov said on Ekho Moskvy radio Saturday. City lawmakers have no right to pitch such initiatives anyway and can only rule on their funding, said Platonov, a member of the ruling United Russia party. Fellow city lawmaker Andrei Metelsky said earlier Saturday that the Dzerzhinsky statue was a historical landmark and could...

Moscow (AFP) - Moscow police were on Monday holding almost 400 people under arrest after the Russian capital was rocked by some of its worst ethnically-fuelled rioting in years, sparked by the killing of an ethnic Russian allegedly by a Muslim migrant from the Caucasus. An initially peaceful protest in the Biryulyovo district of Moscow to protest the killing of Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, rapidly descended into bloody clashes with the police that left the glass doors of a shopping centre smashed and cars upturned. The crowd chanted "Russia for Russians!" and other nationalist slogans during a protest that swelled to...

American action film star Steven Seagal will become the face of a new Russian firearm, the actor announced at a Moscow news conference Friday. Seagal also used the occasion to practice some local phrases, give two thumbs up to the Russian army and criticize the weapons used by President Vladimir Putin's bodyguards. The U.S. actor has established friendly relations with Putin, who shares a penchant for martial arts with Seagal, and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. One of Putin's associates, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, asked the American star earlier this year to lobby for easing restrictions on the sale of...

Greece and Israel signed a joint declaration last week that further enhances their cooperation in the energy sector and acts as a guide for the development of relations of wider geopolitical significance for the two Mediterranean countries. It also makes clear that the two sides with proceed with a series of actions for the joint extraction and exploitation of hydrocarbons. The two states “will examine ways and means for the better development of natural resources in the Eastern Mediterranean and their transfer to the energy market,” reads the confidential agreement, which has been seen by Kathimerini. This phrase refers to...

My colleague John Markoff wrote earlier Tuesday about the barrage of cyber-attacks on Georgia’s technology infrastructure. Others have covered the story as well. But not all stories appear to be accurate. Several reports suggest that data from Georgia and the neighboring countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan has been stripped from Google Maps. One story says that “the relevant maps went blank as soon as fighting broke out,” according to the Azerbaijan Press Agency.

Not that the Russians would use Google for their navigation, but It seems odd that their are no cities on Google maps.

(Reuters) - Demonstrators, some chanting racist slogans, vandalized a shopping center and scuffled with police in a Moscow neighborhood on Sunday after the killing of a young man that residents blamed on a migrant from the Caucasus. Protests over the death in the southern Biryulyovo district began peacefully until a group of young men began smashing windows in the shopping center. The crowd grew to number several thousand and demonstrators scuffled with police when they tried to make arrests, a Reuters witness said. Pictures showed at least one policeman with minor injuries and video footage showed a car and rubbish...

Moscow (AFP) - US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden warned of dangers to democracy in the first video released of the fugitive since Russia granted him temporary asylum in August. "If we can't understand the policies and programmes of our government we can't grant our consent in regulating them," Snowden said in one of the short video clips posted on the WikiLeaks website Friday night. The anti-secrecy group said the videos were filmed Wednesday when Snowden met with a group of four retired US ex-intelligence workers and activists now seeking to promote ethics within the profession. Snowden, a former National Security...

A United States Commercial vessel was seized by Venezuela as it was doing seismic testing in Guyanan waters for Anadarko Petroleum Corp, when a Venezuelan ship detained it and is now escorting it to Margarita Island in Venezuela. For decades Gyana and Venezuela have disputed the borders, but this is the first incident to come out of it. "It was then clear that the vessel and its crew were not only being escorted out of Guyana's waters, but were under arrest," the ministry said. "These actions by the Venezuelan naval vessel are unprecedented in Guyana Venezuela relations."

The Russian-Japanese relations are going through tough times. There is no war, but there is no peace treaty either. The current state of affairs has to do with the fact that the Russian state border in the Kuriles was not recognized by Japan and a number of other countries. Over 65 years this border has not been legally protected. These islands can be called a conflict and destabilizing point in the Asia -Pacific region. The Russian and Japanese leaders discussed issues of bilateral relations on October 7th. According to the press-secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, the parties paid...

. The furor in the West over Russia’s new law placing restrictions on the discussion of homosexuality continues to dog the conductor Valery Gergiev, who is one of Russia’s most important cultural exports these days. Mr. Gergiev, a prominent supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who signed the law, drew protests Thursday night at Carnegie Hall, just as he did last month at the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera. Shortly after Mr. Gergiev walked onto the stage at Carnegie Hall to begin leading the celebrated Mariinsky Orchestra in a program of three Stravinsky ballets, the concert was...

Lon Snowden visited his son, but the place and time of the meeting "are not being been revealed for security reasons", said Russia's state-run TV channels Rossiya 24 and Channel One. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden met four former US security officials in Russia late on Wednesday, it has emerged. The officials - who now campaign against what they describe as the misuse of state secrecy - said they had presented Mr Snowden with the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award. The award is given annually by a group of retired CIA officers. The officials told Russian media Mr Snowden...

MOSCOW, Ocotber 8 (RAPSI) – A Russian police advisor in Liberia saved a child from ritual sacrifice, the Russian Interior Ministry reports on Tuesday. Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Safronov, an advisor on operational issues to the Liberian National Police, reportedly tracked down an individual that was preparing to sell a child for the purposes of ritual sacrifice. In a sting operation, a woman acting as a buyer met a man who intended to sell the child and agreed upon the price of $150. The seller was then told that the child was purchased for the purpose of ritual killing, and still...

Turkey has begun building a two-metre high wall along its border with Syria in an attempt to stem border security and smuggling problems. The move comes as the United Nations forecast that another two million refugees will flee the Syrian conflict in 2014. Turkey is sheltering around a quarter of the two million people who have already fled Syria's conflict. Construction workers have begun digging foundations for the wall in Nusaybin, a border district six miles (10 km) north of the Syrian town of Qamishli. An unnamed government official in the Turkish capital, Ankara, said: "We haven't had border security...

While Geert Wilders and assorted online provocateurs may like to talk about banning the Qur'an as an extremist text, few take the idea seriously. Except in Russia, perhaps, where on 20 September, a court in the Russian city of Novorossiysk banned a translation of the holy book of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. To be fair, it is one of several available in the country. This version, the work of an Azeri theologian named Elmir Kuliyev, was declared illegal for promoting extremism through "statements about the superiority of Muslims over non-Muslims"; "negative evaluation of persons who have nothing to do...

Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded an apology from the Netherlands on Tuesday after what Moscow says was an attack on a Russian diplomat in The Hague by armed men over the weekend. Russia has lodged a formal diplomatic protest over the incident, in which it said a minister-counselor at its embassy in the Netherlands, Dmitry Borodin, was badly beaten in his home in front of his children by the unidentified assailants. “We are awaiting an explanation, an apology and also punishment of those responsible,” Putin said at a news conference after an Asia-Pacific summit in Indonesia, calling the incident a...

Russia’s government is temporarily seizing $7.6 billion in savings from non-state pension funds while it carries out inspections, a move critics say looks like a “confiscation” aimed at plugging a hole in next year’s state budget. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told ministers Thursday that the government needs to check that the money Russians channel to private pension funds is safe. To do this, it will seize 244 billion rubles ($7.6 billion) from non-state pension funds and put them into the state pension fund. Pension funds hold more than $100 billion in assets. Nearly half of that is mandatory savings managed...

Edward Snowden has apparently been living a life of poverty in Russia, surviving on meager charitable donations.

Democrats say we must accept ObamaCare, because it was legally passed by the Legislative branchand signed into law by the country's leader. Well, so was Russia's law against homosexual propaganda. So, does the Obama Administration also think all Americans should accept that law as settled too? Will we see Obama tell all protesters, in the run-up to the Olympics, that they must accept that "settled law" too, and should stop their childish protests against it?

Actor Jude Law and musician Damon Albarn have joined around 800 people protesting outside the Russian Embassy in London over the arrest of 30 Greenpeace activists. The pair, along with Paul Simonon from The Clash, have called the arrests a disgrace and described them as a personal blow as their friend Frank Hewetson is among those being held. Relatives of the activists have also organised several protests across the country for the six Britons who are in custody, and a further 47 demonstrations are being held around the world.

Free Republic:October 6, 2013-U.S. Expected To Be Largest Producer of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hydrocarbons in 2013What are the ramifications of America's newly emergent status as the world's largest producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons in 2013?The conventional wisdom of America's preeminent status as global superpower being on the wane is a consensus difficult to deny even if one were to take the current wholly corrupt, dysfunctional, inept leadership out of the equation. It may very well be that the US economy has been irrevocably diminished, the reality of which would certainly take a toll on America's influence and...

Energy Revolution: America's natural gas boom threatens Russia's economic strategy, an expert says, leaving it with few alternatives to rescue its economy while threatening to shatter its energy stranglehold on Europe. Russia's abundance of energy resources has long allowed it to use energy both as a foreign policy weapon and as the bedrock of the Russian economy. Whenever energy prices rose, Russia benefited and its neighbors often felt the restraining leash of dependence on Russian energy, particularly natural gas. Government-controlled energy giant Gazprom was in such a strong position it could demand decade-long contracts and link the price of gas...

The EU has started legal action against Russian energy giant Gazprom, the bloc’s competition chief said on Thursday (3 October). … The anti-Gazprom claims say it is abusing its dominant market position to demand extortionate prices for gas and preventing countries from diversifying their energy supply. Lithuania says it pays 35 percent more than Germany for gas under its contract with Gazprom. …

The foreign minister of the Netherlands said Friday he is seeking to obtain via diplomatic channels the release of Greenpeace activists who were charged with piracy by Russia after the environmental group protested at an oil platform in the Arctic Sea. Two Canadians — Alexandre Paul of Montreal and Paul Ruzycki of Port Colborne, Ont. — are among those facing the piracy charge, which can result in a 15-year prison sentence upon conviction. Frans Timmermans, the Dutch foreign minister, also said Friday he will file suit to recover the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which was seized by the Russian government...

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration Note: Petroleum production includes crude oil, natural gas liquids, condensates, refinery processing gain, and other liquids, including biofuels. Barrels per day oil equivalent were calculated using a conversion factor of 1 barrel oil equivalent = 5.55 million British thermal units (Btu). The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States will be the world's top producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons in 2013, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. For the United States and Russia, total petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbon production, in energy content terms, is almost evenly split between petroleum and natural...

In the midst of a significant American political crisis, it is easy to forget that twenty years ago this week, Russia’s former president Boris Yeltsin shelled Moscow’s White House—where the country’s parliament met at that time—in a considerably more dramatic and probably more consequential executive-legislative conflict than today’s in Washington. Yet Americans would do well to remember the events that led to the October 1993 crisis. Unfortunately, few still appear to recall October 3 and 4. Even The Washington Post seems to have forgotten; despite its current editorial-page editor’s service as Moscow bureau chief at that time, the paper’s timeline...

Russian state TV presenters are using ever more extreme language to vilify government opponents - even comparing Western nations to the Nazis. To mark the anniversary of the 1938 Munich Agreement, that handed the Czech Sudetenland to Hitler, Rossiya 1's current affairs flagship News of the Week likened the West's handling of Syria to the actions of Nazi Germany. "How did the Germans get the Sudetenland?" asked anchor Dmitry Kiselev. "Under the pretext of defending human rights," he answered, accusing the US, Britain and France of using talk of Syrians' rights to "encourage terrorist intervention". A Rossiya 1 news bulletin...

Whether credible or not, the Israeli military threat made a major comeback in New York on Tuesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN General Assembly Tuesday night very different from his previous ones: It lacked reproach, gimmicks and thrills. The arguments were factual and germane. Passion was kept at bay. It was clear that the Israeli statesman speaking to a thinly populated hall in New York, and to an anemic American public opinion, was a sad statesman. Once...

France had Rafale jets armed with Scalp missiles ready for strike on Syria By Richard Clements According to to French weekly le Nouvel Observateur (LNO) France came within hours of striking Syrian Chemical weapons sites after thinking that the U.S had planned a huge attack on Sept. 1, 2013. The report states that French President Francois Hollande had convened a meeting early in the morning of August 31; the plan on how France was going to attack the chemical weapons sites was formed during this meeting. According to LNO the French planned to fly Rafale jets supported by French tankers...

(Reuters) - Russia's senior Islamic clerics warned the country's leaders on Friday unrest could erupt in Muslim communities in Russia and beyond if a court decision ordering the destruction of a interpretive translation of Koran is not overturned. Tuesday's ruling by a court in Novorossiysk, a city in southern Russia, ordered the widely read text outlawed under a Russian anti-extremism law that rights activists say has been abused by local officials out of prejudice or to persecute groups frowned upon by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church. Rights campaigners said that the decision, which will apply nationwide unless it is overturned...

MOSCOW — The Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it evacuated its embassy in Libya after armed men stormed the complex the day before, apparently seeking revenge for the killing of a Libyan Air Force officer. And though it was clear how the attack ended — Russian security personnel expelled the attackers, killing two of them, and then the entire embassy staff left the country — why it started remained murky. “According to the information we have, the direct reason for this aggressive action toward our diplomatic mission was the murder on Oct. 1 by a Russian citizen, Ekaterina Ustyuzhaninova,...

Al Arabiya Dozens of angry protesters tried to storm Russia's embassy in Tripoli on Wednesday after reports that a Russian woman had killed a Libyan army officer, witnesses said. One of the attackers was killed by the gunfire, and four more were wounded, Libyan officials told the Associated Press. The sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades could be heard around the embassy, Al Arabiya’s correspondent added. Russia's Foreign Ministry confirmed the attack saying none of its staff was injured. Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Ekho Moskvy radio the attackers fired at the embassy in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and...

U.S. Is Poised to Overtake Russia as Largest Oil-and-Gas Producer By RUSSELL GOLD and DANIEL GILBERT CONNECT The U.S. is poised to overtake Russia as the world's single largest producer of oil and natural gas combined this year, a startling shift that is reshaping energy markets and eroding the clout of traditional petroleum-rich nations. Shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas have fueled a comeback for the U.S. that was unimaginable a decade ago. Russia meanwhile has struggled to maintain its energy output and has yet to embrace the technologies such as hydraulic fracturing that have boosted U.S. reserves. The...

Gunmen attacked the Russian embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Wednesday hours after news broke that a Russian woman had been arrested and accused of killing a senior military official. The Russian foreign ministry said diplomats were safe and had been evacuated after unknown attackers attempted to break into the embassy grounds. Four Libyans were wounded in the attack, local media reported. Gun and rocket fire echoed through the streets around the compound, as police and army units were deployed around the building in pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns. The attack came hours after Libyan authorities arrested a...

Moscow, October 2, - Deputy Chairman of the Russian Muftis Council Rushan Abbyasov has spoken with representatives of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom about the problems of Muslims in Russia. He expressed concern over the fact that the mass media often associated extremists with Islam, the press service of the Council reported on Tuesday. "It is precisely for this reason that in this country, like they are in the West, people are scared by the construction of new mosques. The local authorities also sometimes demonstrate a lack of understanding. As a result of this media policy, people are...

First it was the Americans. Now it is the Russians' turn. Al Arabiya reports (and Itar-Tass confirms) that "Gunmen attacked the Russian embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Wednesday, Al Arabiya correspondent reported. The sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades could be heard around the embassy, the correspondent added. No further details were immediately available." According to unverified reports on Twitter, the embassy had been evacuated before the attack (the Russian NSA appears to be more efficient than its US equivalent). The Russian embassy in Tripoli: RT adds: The Russian embassy in Tripoli, Libya, has come under fire and...