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Sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman's boss was working for us. The head of Russia's spy operations in America defected just before he betrayed Chapman and her nine fellow sleeper agents last summer -- and the Kremlin has ordered a hit team to kill him as revenge, according to a bombshell report yesterday. Senior officials in Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's government said the double agent -- identified only as "Colonel Shcherbakov" -- was a devastating blow to Russia's SVR intelligence agency and touched off a probe.

The military airlifted the suspected hijackers of the Arctic Sea and most of its Russian crew from Cape Verde to Moscow on Thursday, after the lumber freighter mysteriously vanished and reappeared in the Atlantic. Eleven of the 15 crew members arrived in Moscow, while the captain and three sailors remained on the ship, which was adrift about 200 nautical miles from the West African island nation of Cape Verde. Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the freighter was sailing to the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. The sailors and their suspected captors arrived in two separate Il-76 cargo jets at the...

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...

Clinton is right: "Russians" in Israel don't really want peace, that kind of peace which Bill Clinton imposed on Serbs in Kosovo. Clinton's words that Russian-speaking Israelis are an obstacle to reaching peace can be understood in different ways. Excluding their emotional component, it is necessary to recognize that the immigrants from the former Soviet Union are most opposed to the Israeli/Palestinian peace process (or what is implied by this term). Let's look at the root of this phenomenon. The rose-colored glasses of "multiculturalism" hide the fact that there are three civilizations in our world: postmodern liberal democracies, states of...

Bill Clinton is right: Israelis from the FSU are not really interested in a peace agreement. Certainly not the kind of deal he helped impose on Serbs in Kosovo. Former US president Bill Clinton’s claims last month that Russian-speaking Israelis are an obstacle to peace can be understood in different ways. But excluding their emotional component, it is necessary to recognize that the immigrants from the former Soviet Union are mostly opposed to the peace process (or what is implied by this term). Let’s look at the root of this phenomenon. The rose-colored glasses of “multiculturalism” hide the fact that...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Travel Alert U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Bureau of Consular Affairs Europe October 3, 2010 The State Department alerts U.S. citizens to the potential for terrorist attacks in Europe. Current information suggests that al-Qa’ida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks. European governments have taken action to guard against a terrorist attack and some have spoken publicly about the heightened threat conditions. Terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests. U.S. citizens are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation...

SPRINGFIELD — Effingham County sheriff deputies have reported the early Sunday morning arrest of three men to the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force. The men, two from Russia and one from Kazakhstan, were found near Georgia Power’s Plant McIntosh on Old Augusta Road about 1 a.m. Sunday after a ranger with the Department of Natural Resources reported a suspicious vehicle, Effingham County sheriff’s spokesman David Ehsanipoor said.

SPRINGFIELD — Effingham County sheriff deputies have reported the early Sunday morning arrest of three men to the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force. The men, two from Russia and one from Kazakhstan, were found near Georgia Power’s Plant McIntosh on Old Augusta Road about 1 a.m. Sunday. Deputies reported the men, who were inside a 1995 Nissan Pathfinder, had a machete, shovel, wire cutters and ski masks. One man also had black silk stockings in his front left pocket. Arrested were Evgeniy Luzhetskiy, of Kazakhastan Nail Idiatullin and Rustem Ibragimov of Russia. All three reported they lived in Charleston, S.C.,...

NEW YORK – Their cover blown, 10 Russian spies have given up their lives in the U.S. and headed home, but in at least one case their children probably won't follow. A lawyer for Vicky Pelaez said Thursday that the teenage son she had with fellow Russian agent Mikhail Vasenkov during the decades they spent living in New York will most likely remain in the U.S., as will her 38-year-old son from a prior marriage. More at link... "He's 17 years of age. He'll probably stay with his brother," attorney John Rodriguez said. Arrangements were being made to relocate other...

A Russian software company today released a password cracking tool that instantly reveals cached passwords to Web sites in Microsoft Internet Explorer, mailbox and identity passwords in all versions of Microsoft Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail. Moscow based ElcomSoft, developer of the new password recovery tool, “Elcomsoft Internet Password Breaker,” says the product designed as tool to provide forensics, criminal investigators, security officers and government authorities with the ability to retrieve a variety of passwords stored on a PC. With a price tag of just $49, it doesn’t seem as though investigators and government authorities are...

An unmanned Russian cargo ship veered out of control near the International Space Station on Friday, sailing clear past the orbiting lab instead of docking on autopilot, as engineers on Earth struggle to determine what went wrong. The robotic cargo ship Progress 38 was slated to dock at the space station at 12:58 p.m. EDT (1658 GMT) but lost its navigational lock on the orbiting lab about 28 minutes before the rendezvous. "The Progress literally flew past the station, but at a safe distance from the outpost," NASA commentator Rob Navias said. "The station crew reported seeing the Progress drift...

The Cambridge couple who allegedly lived double lives as Russian spies and ordinary Americans took another step last fall to blend into what they claimed to be their adopted homeland -- they both registered to vote for the first time. But, according to the Cambridge Board of Elections, Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley never voted. At the request of the Globe, the board today released copies of the voter applications the couple mailed to Cambridge City Hall last October.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday criticized the arrests of suspects in an alleged Russian spy ring, saying U.S. law-enforcement authorities "went out of control." He voiced hope that the scandal would not harm relations between the two countries. Russia's Foreign Ministry acknowledged that some of the suspects are Russian citizens. It called on American authorities to give them access to lawyers and Russian consular officials, and to take into account the "positive character" of U.S.-Russian ties in treating the case. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday announced the arrests of 10 alleged deep-cover Russian agents, saying...

the russians know how to treat the pirates.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- The daughter of a Russian diplomat was hired Thursday as president of the company that will oversee the New Jersey Nets. Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Group announced that Irina Pavlova will be the team owner's representative in the New York area. Pavlova has extensive experience in business and finance. She earned an MBA from Stanford, worked as a financial analyst with Prudential Investment Corp. and became Russia's first employee for Google. She lived in Moscow and Washington as a child. Prokhorov, a billionaire who is Russia's richest man, has promised to revive the last-place Nets. His...

Claire Berlinski A Hidden History of Evil Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives? Though Mikhail Gorbachev is lionized in the West, the untranslated archives suggest a much darker figure. In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism...

Given Russia's reputation for excessive bureaucracy, it's only right that a company would exist to help businesspeople to set up, find the right translators, and also provide the right legal guidance to navigate the Byzantine direction of Russia's business bureaucracy. Center of Economic Planning consists of a professional team of skilled translators, auditors and IT specialists who will also not just help foreign businesses, but also help native Russians build their businesses.

Oh Boy, Russian Navy Gives Hell To Somali Pirates John Helmer May. 6, 2010, 10:42 AM The Russian Navy announced Thursday morning that its anti-submarine destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov had successfully liberated the Novoship oil tanker, Moscow University; released its 23-man crew unharmed; and killed or captured the Somali pirates who had boarded the vessel yesterday 800 kms off the coast of Somalia. The tanker had been under way with a cargo of crude bound for China. The 86,000-tonnes of oil on board remains secure, without fire or spill. This is the fourth success in four deployments by the Russian Navy...

Here is what I believed happened. They had to rig the time 15 minutes later as 'official' to coincide with the distance and the flight time from Warsaw because the ghost plane had come in a bit too early - something like that! In fact, the bogus story of the plane circling around the airport several times amounted to additional time, but was proven false. I also believed this plane left Warsaw on time, as they were on a schedule for a very important event. Read this one carefully because it contains so many of the points which I have...

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.