Suicide Bomber Strikes Russia. Another ‘Black Widow?’

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Photo Credit: Sergei Karpov/Reuters

Photo Credit: Sergei Karpov/Reuters

A suicide bomber detonated the equivalent of over 20 pounds of TNT near the entrance to a railway station in the central Russian city of Volgograd Sunday, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens.

The blast, which blew out the front windows of the huge Stalin-era structure, was recorded by CCTV and rebroadcast by the state-funded RT network.

In a statement the Kremlin’s Investigative Committee, Russia’s top police body, said that the bombing was “according to available evidence” the work of a female suicide bomber who triggered the device, which was loaded with shrapnel, as she approached the metal detectors near the station’s entrance and became nervous when she spotted a police officer. According to the statement, the casualties might have been far greater if she had succeeded in penetrating into the inner waiting area, which was crammed with New Year’s travelers preparing to board trains.

No one has claimed responsibility.

A similar bombing barely two months ago, which demolished a Volgograd city bus and killed six people, was revealed to be the work of a female suicide bomber from Russia’s insurgency-wracked southern province of Dagestan. Such women have been dubbed “black widows” because they often turn out to be family members of Islamist rebels killed by Russian security forces, recruited to stage revenge attacks on “soft” Russian targets.

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It’s Ironic that Some Really Thick Ice has Stonewalled this Ship – Here’s Why (+video)

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Photo Credit: 23am.com/flickr

Photo Credit: 23am.com/flickr

A Chinese icebreaker ship sent to Antarctica for the purpose of rescuing a trapped expedition vessel caught in ice was forced to call off the mission Friday — because it got stuck in ice.

According to Fox News, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the Chinese “Snow Dragon” came within six nautical miles from the Russian vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy Friday, but could not go any further because the ice was too thick.

Zhao Yanping, second captain of the Snow Dragon, told CNN the ship was not technically stuck, just not advancing forward because of ice up to ten feet thick.

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Russian-Led Alliance to Spend $1 Billion on Weapons in 2014

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Photo Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/AP

Photo Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/AP

As Russia prepares to assume the rotating presidency of a military alliance of former Soviet states in 2014, a senior official announced plans Thursday to spend $1 billion on weapons for the bloc’s rapid-reaction force.

Headquartered in Moscow, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) currently comprises Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and is often described as a Russia-led rival to NATO – and a bulwark against the Western alliance’s eastward expansion.

Evolving out of a Commonwealth of Independent States’ security treaty, it was established in its current form in 2002, during President Vladimir Putin’s earlier term at the Kremlin, a period that saw Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania join NATO in 2004, and Georgia and Ukraine explore the possibility to doing so too, to Moscow’s ire.

Under its charter, member-states are committed to defend each other if attacked and may also not join other military alliances.

A major CSTO development was a 2009 agreement to establish a joint rapid-reaction force, “to repulse military aggression, conduct anti-terrorist operations, fight transnational crime and drug trafficking, and neutralize the effects of natural disasters,” according to the RIA Novosti state news agency.

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Ice Foils Rescue Attempt of Russian Ship Stranded in Antarctica

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Photo Credit: John "Pathfinder" Lester

Photo Credit: John “Pathfinder” Lester

A Chinese icebreaker trying to reach a Russian ship trapped in Antarctica has been halted by thick ice within sight of the stricken vessel, a passenger and Australian rescue officials said on Saturday.

The Snow Dragon was one of three icebreakers dispatched to free the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which became stranded far south of Tasmania on Tuesday in ice driven by strong winds.

“Unfortunately Snow Dragon can’t get through. It’s standing by and waiting on another vessel to help. Everyone (is) well,” Chris Turney, an Australian professor who helped organize the voyage on the Russian ship, said via Twitter on Saturday

Earlier, Turney posted a photograph apparently showing the Chinese vessel, a speck on the horizon beyond an expanse of ice.

“It has encountered heavy ice and it’s not safe for them to continue to the Russian vessel for their own safety,” Andrea Hayward-Maher from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the rescue effort, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

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Report: Terrorists Freed in Deal Try to Kill Jews

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Recent terrorist events in Israel were orchestrated in part by jihadists freed by the Jewish state in the prisoner exchange that saw the release of captured Israeli solider Gilad Shalit, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.

The officials did not specify which jihadists were involved, but they said there is information Hamas terrorists released in the 2011 deal helped to plan last Sunday’s thwarted bus bombing in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam.

The same terrorist apparatus was behind the planning of several other recent attacks, including attempts this week to plant bombs near the Gaza-Israel border and the stabbing of an Israeli police officer in the West Bank.

The deal between Israel and Hamas that saw the release of Shalit called for the freedom of 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners, including terrorists directly responsible for the murder of Jews.

The first phase of the swap deal was executed in October 2011, when Israel released 450 prisoners, transferring some to the West Bank and Gaza while others were exiled abroad.

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Report: Islamists’ Slaughter of Syrian Christians Ignored by Obama, Major Media

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

The West has ignored the killing of Christians in Syria, a report said.

The Middle East Forum asserted that the United States and other NATO countries were overlooking reports of the killing of Christians by Islamist rebels. In a report, the forum cited the raid of Islamist units supported by the United States of the Christian town of Sadad in late October.

“One of the worst Christian massacres — complete with mass graves, tortured-to-death women and children, and destroyed churches — recently took place in Syria, at the hands of the U.S.-supported jihadi rebels; and

the U.S. government and its mainstream media mouthpiece are, as usual, silent — that is, when not actively trying to minimize matters,” the report said.

Author Raymond Ibrahim said the Islamist rebels held Sadad for more than a week and killed 45 Christians. The town’s 14 churches were said to have been destroyed in what could be seen in the videos released by the militias.

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Comparison with Orwell’s ‘1984’: Edward Snowden’s Christmas Message (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

What do Pope Francis, German President Joachim Gauck and the American “whistleblower” Edward Snowden have in common? This year all three of them have broadcast a Christmas message in which they reflect on their own actions and those of their fellow human beings. Pope Francis did so in the Christmas Eve Mass in the Vatican, Joachim Gauck on German television, and Snowden’s forum is the British television broadcaster Channel 4.

For the past 20 years, Channel 4 has broadcast an “alternative” Christmas message as part of its program. It’s always an unusual speech by people from whom one would not necessarily expect a Christmas message, such as the then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008.

Comparison with Orwell’s ‘1984’

Snowden’s television address was his first appearance in several months. The pre-recorded video was broadcast on Wednesday (25.12.2013) at 5.15 p.m. UK time. In it, Snowden warned viewers about the risks inherent in the way we use modern technology.

“A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all,” he said. “They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters.” He reminded us that, this year, we learned that governments had introduced a system of mass surveillance that watches everything we do.

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Supreme Leader: If Jesus Were Here He Would Fight America

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Photo Credit: Office of the supreme leader

Photo Credit: Office of the supreme leader

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marked Christmas Day with social media messages tying Jesus into political rhetoric directed at the United States.

“If Christ were among us today, he would not spare even a single moment to fight the leaders of despotism and global arrogance,” he said on Facebook, using the Islamic Republic’s favored term for America.

“Nor would he tolerate hunger and wandering of millions of people, degenerated by the hegemonic and colonialist powers into war, corruption, and violence,” he added.

On Twitter, Khamenei tweeted another message containing a veiled dig at the U.S.: “Jesus Christ was a minister of a heavenly justice to call all oppressed on earth for emancipation from the thralldom of bullying despots.”

In a separate message he claimed that Jesus is as important to Muslims as he is to Christians: “No doubt that Jesus Christ has no less value among Muslims than he has among the pious Christians.”

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Another Dark Christmas for Iraq’s Christians

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/AHMED SAAD

Photo Credit: REUTERS/AHMED SAAD

By Alexander Dziadosz.

It’s Christmas in Baghdad, and once again Iraq’s Christians are celebrating behind blast walls and barbed wire.

At least 34 people died in bomb attacks in Christian areas on Wednesday, some by a car bomb near a church after a Christmas service. A church attack in 2010 killed dozens.

As prayers are offered and gifts handed out, many are wondering what a surge in violence to its worst levels in half a decade and politicking ahead of April elections means for a community whittled down by years of carnage and migration.

On Christmas Eve, the Mar Yousif Syriac Catholic church in western Baghdad looked like a walled fortress. Soldiers and police ran bomb detectors across cars, searched trunks and bags and patted down visitors before the evening ceremony.

Inside, the red confetti-strewn Christmas tree, bright blue-and-white tile mosaic, and strings of Santa Claus-themed bunting contrasted with drab streets strewn with concrete blocks and barbed wire outside.

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Karim Kadim

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Karim Kadim

Christmas day bombings in Iraq’s Capital kill 37

By Sinan Salaheddin.

Militants in Iraq targeted Christians in three separate Christmas Day bombings in Baghdad, killing at least 37 people, officials said Wednesday.

In one attack, a car bomb went off near a church in the capital’s southern Dora neighborhood, killing at least 26 people and wounding 38, a police officer said.

Earlier, two bombs ripped through a nearby outdoor market simultaneously in the Christian section of Athorien, killing 11 people and wounding 21, the officer said.

The Iraq-based leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Louis Sako, said the parked car bomb exploded after Christmas Mass and that none of the worshippers were hurt. Sako said he didn’t believe the church was the target.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Iraq’s dwindling Christian community, which is estimated to number about 400,000 to 600,000 people, often has been targeted by al-Qaida and other insurgents who see the Christians as heretics.

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US Embassy in Kabul Attacked on Christmas Day

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Photo Credit: Jonathan Saruk/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Jonathan Saruk/Getty Images

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul was hit by indirect fire before dawn on Christmas Day but no Americans were hurt, as attacks elsewhere in Afghanistan killed at least six people Wednesday, officials said.

Two rounds struck the sprawling embassy compound but it was not immediately clear which part of the complex, and a U.S. Embassy official said the incident was under investigation.

“At approximately 6:40 local time in Kabul, approximately two rounds of indirect fire impacted the U.S. Embassy compound,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. “All Americans are accounted for and no injuries were sustained.”

Indirect fire can refer to either mortars or rockets.

The Taliban promptly claimed they fired four rockets at the American Embassy on Wednesday and said they inflicted heavy casualties. But the insurgents often exaggerate their claims.

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