Deputies of the Labour Party and party Democrats 66 of the Dutch Parliament called to suspend activities related to the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations with Russia in connection with the attack on Deputy Ambassador of the Netherlands, 60-year-old Onno Elderenbosch in Moscow.
Russian riot police detained dozens of protesters during unauthorized but peaceful rallies held in several Russian cities after anti-corruption blogger Aleksey Navalny was sentenced to five years for embezzlement on Thursday morning.
Around 2,500 supporters of the anti-corruption blogger Aleksey Navalny took to the streets in the heart of Russia’s capital for an unauthorized rally, according to Moscow police. The organizers of the protest however put the number of participants at over 10,000.
Police sources said that in total some 160 people were detained across Moscow, but protesters claim well over 200 were apprehended. Reports added that the riot police were mainly detaining the most strident protesters who were trying to disrupt the traffic and block the streets and those standing with banners. The detained were put into buses and taken to police stations. Some of the protesters were soon released due to lack of space in prison vans.
The people who were attempting to gather at Manezhnaya Square in the center of Moscow were clapping hands and shouting slogans like “Freedom to Navalny!” and “Shame!”
After the protesters were pushed back from Manezhnaya Square, a part of the crowd organized decentralized protest “promenades” in central Moscow streets with groups of several hundred people gathering in different places in central Moscow.
The most devoted Navalny’s supporters continued to demonstrate in Kitai-Gorod for several hours after the main crowd dispersed.
Riot police cordoned off the area of Manezhnaya Square and the adjacent Tverskaya and Mohovaya streets, forming columns to prevent the people from blocking the traffic. Crowds of people surrounded the State Duma building, as well as Hotel National and Moscow Hotel opposite Red Square.
Meanwhile, Navalny’s electoral team has urged activists to bring water and food to the protesters and called for the protest to continue overnight.
Another unauthorized rally was held in the northern city of St. Petersburg where more than 800 people gathered on Malaya Sadovaya Street. At least 30 people have been detained, Itar-Tass news agency reported adding that the police were only taking away those chanting slogans.
Following the court’s verdict to the anti-corruption blogger, the first spontaneous demonstrations took place in the city of Kirov, where Navalny’s trial was held and where the opposition activist is currently being held at a detention facility. About a hundred people gathered outside the court, holding banners criticizing the verdict. Several have been taken into custody including one of the leaders of Navalny’s support team, Nikolay Lyaskin.
Smaller protests have been taking place in several other Russian cities including Samara, Kazan and Voronezh.
On Thursday morning a Kirov court sentenced Aleksey Navalny to 5 years in prison for embezzlement. The court ruled that Aleksey Navalny and his accomplice, Pyotr Ofitserov, caused 16 million rubles ($500,000) in damages to the state-owned Kirovles timber company.
“Any attempts to hold unauthorized actions will be thwarted in accordance with the current law,” Moscow police had warned prior to the gathering. They further said those calling for such protests could be persecuted.
Straight out of Russian news, Vladimir Putin has called for the nation’s strategic bombers to enter a state of ‘full combat readiness’ following the ‘snap drills’ that were initiated after Israel bombed Russian-made missiles within Syria.
As I reported on Sunday, Russia’s large scale amassing of over 160,000 troops, naval ships, fighter planes, and strategic bombers has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media — with only Russian-based news services really reporting on the entire event. From the Israeli bombing of the Russian missiles to the ‘snap drills’ calling upon Russian forces to enter this period of ‘full combat readiness’, it appears that only RT has been analyzing the situation and looking at what’s going on based on military sources.
Tabloid Media too busy to cover brewing world conflict
Originally being revealed by an anonymous intelligence individuals within the US military and shared with CNN as reported by the Israeli National News, the revelation that Israel was behind the strike on the Russian-made missiles in Syria may be behind the reason for the combat drill — assuming the Russians found out before the general public. Unfortunately, the US mainstream media is too busy covering the minor intricacies of what George Zimmerman ate for breakfast today to discuss the potential brewing of mega conflict.
And when you throw Edward Snowden into this mix of tensions between world powers, it’s additional fuel on the fire amid all of this diplomatic turmoil. And with the intelligence leak that it was Israel who blew up Russia’s missiles after they deemed them to be a threat to the country, you have a real serious key going into the ignition of world war.
An excerpt from the Russian report on the English version of the .RU website RIA Novosti reads:
Tu-95MS_intercepted_by_Typhoon_2007_UK_MoD_
“Russia’s air base of Tu-95MS Bear-H strategic bombers in the Amur Region is switching to full combat readiness as part of massive snap drills in the Eastern Military District, the Defense Ministry’s press office reported on Sunday… The exercise, which involves over 160,000 servicemen, some 1,000 armored vehicles, 130 aircraft and 70 warships from the Pacific Fleet, was ordered by President Vladimir Putin on Friday evening.”
Whether or not escalations reach the point of conflict, and I certainly hope they do not (as Israel vs Russia is the absolute ‘perfect storm’ setup to launch the next world war and potential nuclear armageddon), the amassing of over 160,000 troops and strategic bombers with orders to achieve ‘full combat readiness’ is newsworthy. But apparently not to the mainstream media within the United States. A simple Google search at the time of writing for ‘Russia 160,000 troops’ will in fact bring up forums, social media posts, Russian websites, and small-time blogs.
In three years, Russia will have the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, capable of providing energy and heat to hard-to-get areas as well as drinking water to arid regions.
The unique vessel should be operational by 2016, the general director of Russia’s biggest shipbuilders, the Baltic Plant, Aleksandr Voznesensky told reporters at the 6th International Naval Show in St. Petersburg.
The Akademik Lomonosov is to become the spearhead of a series of floating nuclear power plants, which Russia plans to put into mass-production.
The floating power-generating unit, aimed at providing energy to large industrial enterprises, port cities and offshore gas and oil-extracting platforms, was designed on the basis of nuclear reactors which are equipped on the icebreakers ships. The technology has proved itself for over 50 years of successful operation in extreme Arctic conditions.
The floating power plant is a vessel with a displacement of 21,500 tons and a crew of 69 people. It’s non-self-propelled and therefore has to be towed to the desired destination.
Each ship will have two modified KLT-40 naval propulsion reactors together providing up to 70 MW of electricity or 300 MW of heat, which is enough for a city with a population of 200,000 people.
The floating nuclear power plants are expected to be used in remote regions of Russia’s high north and Far East, which currently see economic growth suffering from a lack of energy.
For export purposes, the floating power plant can also be modified as a desalination plant able to produce 240,000 cubic meters of fresh water on a daily basis.
15 countries, including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Namibia, Cape Verde and Argentina, have previously expressed interest in acquiring such power stations.
The manufacturer stresses that the process of fuel enrichment on the vessels complies with the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) dealing with nonproliferation of nuclear arms.
Like every atomic station the floating power plant is designed with a safety margin, exceeding any possible threats, which makes the reactors invulnerable to tsunami waves or crashes with other ships or on-land structures.
The power-generating unit is to be replaced by a new one after 40 years, with the used reactor returned to a specialized facility for re-utilization.
The vessels are said to be safe for the environment as they don’t release any hazardous substances during operation.
The construction of the maiden floating nuclear power station, Akademik Lomonosov, began in 2007 at the Sevmash Submarine-Building Plant in Severodvinsk.
A year later it was transferred to the Baltic Plant, but was stalled for the last two years due to a lack of financing.
The new deal to finalize the construction of a floating power unit for the floating nuclear power plant was signed between the Baltic plant and the Russiam state Rosenergoatom company in December 2012.
The draft law to ban advertising of medications on television and radio, as well as in all non-specialized print media was submitted to the State Duma.
The bill was authored by State Duma deputy Andrei Belyakov.
Belyakov believes that the advertising medical devices and drugs should be possible only in specialized publications, as well as in the places where medical and pharmaceutical activities are held, such as exhibitions, conferences, seminars, etc.
According to the author of the bill, the proposed initiative should become the next step, designed to ensure the protection of Russian people's health. Citizens prefer to follow colorful advertising, rather than medical recommendations. The bill is to regulate the uncontrolled and dangerous use of drugs and to ensure the accuracy of provided information about medicines.
In Soviet times, the Ministry of Defense was working on a secret project aimed at creating a superhuman with paranormal abilities. Under this project, a group of scientists managed to get in touch with a foreign civilization. The head of this top-secret project shared some details with reporters for the first time.
On a regular winter day in Moscow, in the comfort a room with a fireplace, journalists were given a real sensation. A senior retired official of the Ministry of Defense, lieutenant-general in reserve, PhD, a fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences Alexey Savin said that in the late 1980's a group of researchers from the Expert Management Unit of General Staff managed to make a contact with representatives of another civilization. Interestingly, none of the journalists were particularly surprised but, rather, relieved with the "confession."
Vasily Yeremenko, a Major General of FIB in reserve, academician of the Academy of Security, Defense and Law Enforcement, was the first to speak to the press. In Soviet times he served in the KGB and supervised the Air Force and development of aviation technology. Among his assignments was collection of information by the Air Force of the facts of appearance of unidentified flying objects. According to Vasily Yeremenko, by that time there was an ample amount of such information.
Missile units were even given a directive in case of detection of UFOs. The main task was not to create opportunities for reciprocal aggression. In 1983-1984 at the testing grounds of the Academy of Sciences by Vladimirovka, the Ministry of Defense and the KGB organized a large-scale study of paranormal phenomena. The military training site was not a random choice. Experts have long come to the conclusion that UFOs inevitably appear in places where military equipment and weapons are tested.
"We can say that we learned to summon UFOs in Vladimirovka. To do this, we dramatically increased the number of military flights and movement of the equipment. If the intensity on our side increased, UFOs appeared with the probability of 100 percent," explained Yeremenko. After six months of tests the authoritative commission came to three main conclusions.
First, modern science was not yet able to identify such phenomena. Second, it could be reconnaissance equipment of the U.S. or Japan. Third, it could be an impact of an extraterrestrial civilization. "The UFO topic today is ubiquitous. Precisely because of its scandalous nature serious scientists are not willing to identify their position on this issue. Pilots often see such objects, but they have a veto on this topic, so do astronauts. In confidential conversations they talk about their experiences meeting with UFOs, but they are afraid to speak publicly about this," said Vasily Yeremenko.
He believes that this subject requires a serious approach because it is a security issue. Yet, it is still a closed topic both in the U.S. and in Russia. Lt. Gen. Alexey Savin proceeded to reveal some aspects of the engagement of the Ministry of Defense. He headed the Expert Management Unit of the General Staff, whose task was to examine various unusual phenomena.
The main project of the unit was a state program on the discovery of intellectual human resources. The goal of the program was to identify ways to make the human brain work in a special regime of super-powers, making a person a superhuman. The Scientific Council of the program was led by an Academician Natalya Bekhtereva, who until her death served as a scientific director of the Institute of Human Brain of RAS.
Over two hundred highly skilled professionals from across the country participated in the program. "In the process of research, we came to the conclusion that a human was an energy and information system that receives information from outside. This is precisely why a human can manifest paranormal abilities," said Alexey Savin. In order to identify this external source of information, three groups were created. One group was formed from scientists, another - from military, and the third one was composed of women.
The group of women made the most significant progress in the research. Savin explained that they "wanted to make a contact with representatives of other civilizations. And we did it." According to him, a special method has been developed that allowed the human brain to tune into a contact. "We had to tune energy-contour of the human brain to a particular wave, like a radio," Alexey Savin explained.
No hypnosis, drugs, or other similar methods were used in the course of the experiment. A special system of testing was also developed to separate the incoming reports from hallucinations and insanity of the experiment participants. The experimental results were impressive: six participants were given a chance of physical contact, and two of them even managed to visit an alien ship. According to Savin, representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations revealed themselves gradually, giving away the information as they saw fit.
In particular, they talked about their government structure and education system. No information on the military could be obtained. The only thing they agreed to share was a scheme of the equipment for the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. The head of the experiment explained that humans were like small children to them. "Our civilization is too young to be of interest to them as a subject for a dialogue. Because we are also a part of the universe, we may harm ourselves and other civilizations with our foolish actions, so they are looking out for us. "
The program of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence had been developed for several years until politics intervened. In 1993, the study was stopped and the unit disbanded. According to Savin, he was able to retain only a small number of documents, most of them, including photo reports, are still in the archives of the Ministry of Defense. Incidentally, the unique method for the development of the phenomenal abilities of an individual, until recently, was used in the Academy named after Gagarin until it was disbanded by the former Defense Minister Serdyukov. Yet, the core of the research team was preserved.
"Four years ago we tried to repeat the experiment, and we were successful," said Alexey Savin. According to him, today this work continues, and the "brains and talented people are still present in the defense industry." Answering the question of Pravda.Ru why it was decided to announce it to the media Savin replied: "Why hide something from people? Instead, they need to prepare for new challenges."
He believes that there are two global challenges today: climate change and shortage of drinking water. Russia has a special role in this process. "When we pass the point of bifurcation, people from all over will run to us. How will we meet them, with weapons? Of course, we will have to negotiate." Maybe all this is a puzzle from the "textbook" for young civilizations? Perhaps, aliens have arranged an experiment to see how we would handle it.
Never in our history we had hundreds of human casualties from a meteor impact...
“The Lord often sends people signs and warnings via natural forces”
A Russian cleric from the Chelyabinsk Region which was devastated by a meteor shower this morning is labeling the event, which injured over a thousand people, a message to humanity from God.
“From the Scriptures, we know that the Lord often sends people signs and warnings via natural forces,” Metropolitan of Chelyabinsk and Zlatoust Feofan said in a statement released on Friday,” reports RIA Novosti.
The clergyman said that the meteor shower was “the Lord’s message to humanity,” and served as, “a reminder that we live in a fragile and unpredictable world.”
Given the fact that the supposed Mayan apocalypse was reported in Russia as if it had a serious likelihood of coming to fruition, it’s unsurprising that numerous lurid theories have emerged in the aftermath of the meteor shower.
According to a poll taken by the Ridus news agency, “51 percent of respondents believe the meteor is the start of an alien invasion,” the Washington Post reported.
As we reported earlier, other strange theories have emerged, including the claim by Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky that the event was not a meteor shower but a secret US weapons test.
Obscure reports which were later denied also suggested that the meteorite was blown out of the sky by Russia’s air defenses at an altitude of 20 kilometers.
It’s incredibly lucky that the meteor shower hit a relatively unpopulated area given the fact that it caused over a thousand injuries, mostly from broken glass and concussions caused by the shockwave. Three people are also in intensive care as a result of the explosion, which carried the power of a nuclear blast.
The meteor is the largest object to hit the earth since the 1908 Tunguska incident, which was blamed on a meteor despite the fact that no fragments were ever found.
While most space enthusiasts are busy watching the fly-by of the “city killer” DA14 asteroid, which some experts have suggested could be linked to the meteor shower, reports emerged earlier concerning the, “very strong likelihood of another meteorite entering the earth’s atmosphere in the next few hours,” although this claim appears to have been erroneous.
First footage of the crater:
And impact:
As updates roll in from Russia and the meteorite-related injury toll rises, you may be scrambling to remember what a meteorite really is. If you're a little rusty on your astronomy, here's some basic info about space rocks and why this one was unusual.
What is the difference between all these space rocks?
Asteroid: Any number of celestial bodies smaller than a planet that orbit the sun, between a few kilometers and a few hundred kilometers in diameter.
Comet: An icy body that orbits the sun, like an asteroid, that features a "coma," a thin, temporary atmosphere of gas and dust, and a tail.
Meteor: The glowing streak in the sky we see when an object from space enters the atmosphere and heats up.
Meteoroid: Small rocky or metallic pieces of debris flying through space that can come from a fragment of an asteroid or comet. They can be anywhere from the size of a speck of sand to the size of a large boulder.
Meteorite: The a portion of a meteoroid or asteroid that survives the journey through a planet's atmosphere to make impact.
Bolide: An especially bright meteor -- a fireball that explodes. Geologists use the term when they don't know the nature of an actual projectile to mean a large impactor that forms a crater.
Special bonus definition: Tektite! Pieces of natural glass that are believed to form when meteorites collide with the Earth, rapidly heating up quartz-rich soil and rock and sending the molten material flying over great distances. When it cools, it forms tektites.
When one of these space rocks has an orbit that swings within 1.3 AUs (about the distance between the Earth and the Sun) of our fair planet, it's deemed a near-Earth object.
As much as 100,000 tons of space-stuff lands on Earth every year, most of it dust from collisions in the atmosphere, according to geologist Denton Ebel, the American Museum of Natural History's curator of meteorites. Laurie Leshin, the dean of science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, puts that number at closer to 40,000 tons, but because most cosmic dust collects at the Earth's poles in ice or is collected by high-flying planes, it's difficult to get an exact number.
Addi Bischoff, a University of Muenster mineralogist, told the AP that strikes the size of this one happen five to 10 times a year, but not in an area where they would cause injuries. Most of them land in the desert or the ocean and don't cause much of a ruckus.
"The bigger ones that come in and survive are rarer," he says. The largest known meteorite to hit the Earth is the Hoba meteorite, a 60-ton hunk of iron discovered in Namibia in 1920. It's estimated that it fell less than 80,000 years ago.
What do we know about the meteorite that struck Russia?
Not much, yet. We know that it entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle, and isn't related to the asteroid 2012 DA14.
We don't yet know for certain if the meteorite, a bolide, was made of rock or of iron -- a tightly welded iron meteorite is denser than one made up of a pile of rubble. A statement from the Russian Academy of Sciences estimates the meteor was 10 tons and exploded 20 to 30 miles above the surface of the Earth. During a NASA press conference this afternoon, experts said it was probably not a metallic object because of the way it broke apart.
Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program told SPACE.com that "if the reports of ground damage can be verified, it might suggest an object whose original size was several meters in extent before entering the atmosphere, fragmenting and exploding due to the unequal pressure on the leading side vs. the trailing side."
It's likely that a sort of CSI: Meteorite will play out as scientists map out the area of destruction and the trail left in the atmosphere to determine the force of the impact and what the explosion must have been like. Right now, all we have to go on is a lot of amateur video.
Once actual data comes in, it's possible that this will change what we know about meteorites. "What we model and what we expect is almost never what we find," Ebel says. "We should expect to be surprised."
Why was this one such a big deal?
The object that blasted through central Russia today has injured more people than any other meteorite Ebel has heard of in human history. It's the biggest object to strike the Earth since the meteorite that exploded over Siberia in 1908, a blast that downed an estimated 80 million trees in an 830-square-mile area.
Near-Earth objects don't often hit urban areas. Though this meteorite may have been one of the largest objects to strike Earth in recent history, it was still relatively tiny -- some three meters in diameter, about the size of a refrigerator, according to Ebel.
Why did so many people get hurt?
Most of the damage seems to have come from the air burst generated when the meteor hit the Earth's atmosphere, moving at an estimated 33,000 miles per hour. Ebel likens it to a truck exploding up in the air. The Russian Academy of Science's estimate is that the meteor shattered between 18 and 32 miles above the Earth, releasing several kilotons of energy and sending meteorites across central Russia and part of Kazakhstan.
In 2003, a meteorite fell in a suburb south of Chicago, showering the area in debris, but it didn't blow out windows, possibly because it exploded higher in the atmosphere. In contrast, the pressure wave from this fireball blew out a ton of windows, injuring those that (understandably) ran to watch the exploding fireball streak across the skyline. The latest count has somewhere around 1,200 people injured, many in the city of Chelyabinsk. Most injuries are not thought to be serious, according to CNN's latest report.
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