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Does the sun revolve around the Earth? About one third of Russians appear to believe so, according to a survey published today. Thirty-two percent of Russians reject a sun-centered Solar system, four percent more than in 2007 when a similar survey was conducted (Snip) The survey also found 55 percent of Russians believe that radioactivity is a human invention. Twenty-nine percent believe humans lived in the era of dinosaurs. Women are more likely than men to believe scientific superstitions, the survey found.

WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain's nuclear secrets The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

President Obama signed the START nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia this morning. Despite the great attention the president has devoted to this treaty -- and the vast coverage of the treaty negotiations by the media -- the White House refused to allow reporters or TV cameras in the room. Still photographers were the only representatives of the free press permitted to record the historic moment. Those cameras captured President Obama signing the documents, seated at the Resolute Desk. Behind him stood Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,...

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (AP) Russia's gold-medal celebration went into overtime. And that prevented them from boarding their flight Thursday morning, a day after they won the World Junior Hockey Championships. About 30 members of the Russian contingent were asked to get off a Delta Air Lines flight for being unruly as they boarded for takeoff early Thursday morning, an airport spokesman said. After players and managers spent the day at the Days Hotel across the street - where a front desk clerk said they were ''sleeping it off'' - a team spokesman said the group would fly out in two groups...

I saw this when Googling the blogs today. Interesting in many ways, but it really ties in with something I wrote back in August which should be a warning as to how far this country has edged towards the very Socialistic government that these people fled from. Many Russian immigrants to the "red borough" of Staten Island are flocking to the Republican Party, saying that the national Democrats' "socialistic" policies remind them too much of the top-down oligarchy they fled in their native land. With many of the borough's Russian arrivees already owning businesses and active in civic organizations,...

On Sunday night, after a weekend of wrangling, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) filed for cloture on the New START treaty, setting up a crucial Tuesday vote on whether to end debate. A final vote could come on Thursday. As Josh Rogin observes, keep an eye on Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) as the clock ticks...

White House officials said Friday that they have the 67 Senate votes needed to ratify a new U.S. nuclear-arms accord with Russia, and President Barack Obama will delay his planned vacation in Hawaii until the Senate votes. The declaration came after Maine's two Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, declared their support for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

The new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) currently under consideration by Congress is irredeemably flawed. Instead of accepting the "tax cuts for START" deal, Republican senators should reject the treaty for several reasons. Firstly, the treaty will severely reduce America's nuclear stockpile (to just 1,550 warheads, down from 5,113) and the number of delivery systems (to no more than 700 deployed systems and 800 in total) -- i.e. to wholly insufficient levels. Vice Chairman of the JCS Gen. Cartwright (a former leader of the Strategic Command) says that the minimum number of delivery systems needed is 860. The current number...

When I was growing up, the dark miasma of the Holocaust was still so pervasive that the famous slogan "Never Forget!" seemed almost irrelevant. How could anyone forget Hitler and his murderous goose-steppers? It was hard to imagine a world where that supreme evil was not remembered as a stern and awful warning. I heard Holocaust survivors insisting that we must never forget, and I thought they were just repeating the obvious. Why did they have to keep on saying it? Well, they were right, after all. They understood more about human nature than I did. It was necessary to...

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...