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Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu initiated a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss bilateral issues, Iran and Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement. ... Netanyahu does speak to Putin by phone from time to time, so Tuesday night's conversation - though not a regular occurence - is by no means unprecedented. Russia is a major player in three areas of major concern to Israel: Iran, Syria and arms sales to the Middle East. ... On Monday, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied a Haaretz report last week...

MOSCOW (AP) — More than 10,000 people turned out in Moscow on Sunday for an anti-Kremlin rally to denounce Russian state television's news coverage, particularly of the crisis in neighboring Ukraine. In promoting the Kremlin line, state television has portrayed the new pro-Western government in Ukraine as a "fascist junta" under the control of the U.S. government and determined to oppress Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. The broadcasts have taken on a harsh anti-American tone. Some of those who took part in the demonstration, called a "March of Truth," carried blue and yellow Ukrainian flags. One woman, wearing a traditional...

The European Commission has ordered EU member states to stop holding bilaterals with Russia over the pork trade and has threatened to complain to the World Trade Organization, claiming that a Russian embargo on European pork is unwarranted. EurActiv France reports. According to informed sources, France, Denmark and the Netherlands established bilateral contact with Russia in an attempt to end the embargo on European pork. The embargo, which began in January over concerns of African swine fever in European wild boar, blocks all European pork on sanitary grounds. […] Brussels “called for Europe to speak with one voice, seeing as...

(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Monday of being guided in its foreign policy not by international law but by the "rule of the gun." "Our Western partners headed by the United States prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun," he told a joint session of parliament.

Ukraine’s fugitive president surfaced on Thursday in Moscow, where he was said to have been seen at an opulent five-star hotel and a Kremlin country retreat once favored by the late Boris Yeltsin. Viktor Yanukovych reportedly was granted protection in Russia, but he has not received a warm reception. Although Russia still considers him the legitimate president of Ukraine, the Kremlin has treated him cautiously and portrayed him as a coward who betrayed those who stood by him. …

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in...

MOSCOW — The two sides in what is developing into an East-West clash over Ukraine hardened their positions on Wednesday, with Russian officials denouncing what they called a coup by right-wing extremists, even as the United States and Europe threatened to impose sanctions on those responsible for the violence that has erupted in the capital, Kiev, and spread to other cities.

MOSCOW - A 10th-grade student armed with two rifles burst into his Moscow school on Monday and killed his 76-year-old geography teacher and a policeman before being taken into custody, investigators said. None of the children in School No. 263 at the time were hurt, said Karina Sabitova, a police spokeswoman at the scene. The school is for children in grades one through 11, as is typical in Russia. The student gunman also seriously wounded a second police officer who had responded to an alarm from the school, police said. Such shootings in Russian schools are extremely rare, but Moscow...

Amid recent terrorist attacks in Volgograd, a city of one million in southern Russia, a leading Russian Orthodox Church official has called upon the nation to do more to combat radical Islam. The Reuters news agency reported that militants are seeking to establish an Islamist state near Volgograd. “If the circulation of Nazi ideological clichés has been strictly limited or banned in certain cases, why not apply the same scheme to the radical interpretation of Islam rejected by most Muslims themselves?” said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations, according to an Interfax...

An Air Force general in charge of nuclear weapons repeatedly drank too much and behaved like a boor last summer during an official trip to Moscow, where he insulted his Russian hosts and hung out with two suspicious women he met at a hotel bar, according to an investigative report released Thursday. Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, who was commander of the Air Force´s arsenal of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, “acted in a manner that exceeded the limits of accepted standards of good conduct” during a four-day visit to Moscow in July, according to an investigation conducted by the Air Force

MOSCOW, ID SNIPPET: "The Moscow Police initially offered a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to the arrest of the person who’s responsible, but the Idaho State Fire Marshall’s office is now offering an additional $5,000 reward to apprehend those responsible. The anonymous tip line for the Idaho State Fire Marshall’s office is 877.752.7766 or call Moscow Police at 208.882.2677."

Nothing says class like an advertisement masquerading as a museum that benefits charity. At least that’s what luxury brand Louis Vuitton seemed to think when it began construction on a gigantic—100 foot long and 30 foot high—replica of one of its designer bags in the middle of Russia’s historic Red Square two weeks ago. But, as workers finished off the two-story structure this week, not everyone is happy. Russian residents have deemed the two-story designer bag, which sits steps from the Kremlin, as “tacky” and politicians decried “the decision to build a shrine to bourgeois excess near such ‘sacred ground,’”...

Moscow — No more mosques will be built in Moscow, despite the huge crowds that swamp the city's four public mosques on Muslim holidays, because they are mainly used by temporary workers, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has decided. In an interview with the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday, Mr. Sobyanin said that Moscow has about two million foreign residents, the vast bulk of them migrant workers from former Soviet Central Asia who are mainly Muslim. The city's economy "could not manage without them," he admitted. But he insisted that the vast throngs of Muslims who fill Moscow streets and wait,...

OMG. This is breathtaking -- Israel was always punished for being the proxy of the US in region. America was the big Satan, Israel the little Satan. Now that Obama has thrown Israel under the nuclear bus, hellzapoppin. Poor Israel, diving for dear life, when they should be diving for pearls. Obama's foreign policy failures are like an out-of-control snowball tearing down Mount Kilimanjaro. Just when you think it can't get any worse .... Egypt, Libya, Benghazi, Eastern Europe, Honduras, the Baltic states, Russia et al. And the King's sniveling subjects in the enemedia are still polishing his knob.

Moscow, November 20, Interfax - Moscow has a sufficient number of mosques, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. "I think that Moscow has enough mosques. Especially as we can see that most people participating in the celebration of Islamic holidays come from other regions and the suburbs of Moscow. Visitors constitute from 60% to 70% of the total number. But we cannot accommodate everyone. I think this is unnecessary," Sobyanin said in an interview published on the Komsomolskaya Pravda website on Wednesday. The city administration has not issued permits to build new mosques but the construction of a new building of...

VIDEO: Moscow Police Arresting Muslim Suspected of Killing Russia Man (Raw Footage!)

Zombie Pigeons Invade Moscow MOSCOW–This summer, zombie birds have come to Russia’s capital. In what some might compare to a horror film–or even a sign of the apocalypse–the streets of Moscow have been littered with dead and sick pigeons in the past week. Videos posted on the Internet show pigeons twisting their necks, walking backward in circles or standing completely still with their heads on the ground. Muscovites are calling them “zombie pigeons.” Corpses of those that don’t survive have been spotted across the city. Russia’s chief sanitary official, Gennady Onishchenko, said Friday that veterinarians had concluded the pigeons were...

More/video at Reaganite Republican...

Russia has not received extradition request for Snowden from the United States, the Justice Ministry said Thursday. The ministry did receive a letter from Eric Holder explaining some aspects of the U.S. position on the status of Snowden... The "document did not contain (a) request for the extradition or deportation of this individual," the statement said.

For nearly a decade, a band of cybercriminals rampaged through the servers of a global business who's who: Among the victims were 7-Eleven, Dow Jones, Nasdaq, JetBlue and JC Penney. Prosecutors say the hackers stole "conservatively" 160 million credit card numbers, and the dollar value of the crimes they helped facilitate is enormous — just four of the victims are out $300 million. The suffering caused to identity theft victims was "immeasurable," say prosecutors. On Thursday, five of the gang's members were indicted. One is in custody in the U.S., a second is awaiting extradition in the Netherlands, and three...