17 Year-Old Russian Suspected of Recent Cyber-Attacks on US Stores (+video)
Photo Credit: Fox
According to the cybercrime firm Intel Crawler, there are at least 6 ongoing attacks on US stores.
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Mitt Romney Says That if it Were His Choice, Russia Would Not Be Hosting the Olympics (+video)
Photo Credit: AP
“But it’s not my choice. They are a player on the global stage. They have a right to make their bid. But, they do strain the view of people like myself as to their leadership and their characterization of the Olympic spirt,” Romney told FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace.
Russia got the green light to host the games from the International Olympic Committee in 2007. Romney indicated his concerns are more the political message that was sent rather than the logistical success of the games, though he also questioned the cost.
Pointing out that the 2014 Winter Olympics’ $51 billion pricetag is more money than was spent on all previous winter games combined, and that Putin signed a law last summer empowering police to arrest anyone who shows tolerance toward gays, Wallace asked Romney, “At some point, does the country hosting the Olympics … does that country’s values undercut what the Olympics are supposed to be all about?”
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Vladimir Putin Vows ‘Total Annihilation’ of Terrorists (+video)
Photo Credit: Reuters
In his traditional New Year’s Eve address, which was broadcast at midnight from the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, (5pm in Moscow), he praised Russia’s unity in the face of both terrorism and natural disasters and promised to continue an unrelenting fight against the bombers.
“In the past year we have faced problems and serious challenges including the inhuman terror attacks in Volgograd and unprecedented disasters in the Far East,” he said.
“Dear friends, we bow our heads in memory of the victims of these terrible attacks. We will strongly and decisively continue the battle against terrorists until their total annihilation,” he said.
Mr Putin earlier provoked a storm of condemnation on the Russian internet on Sunday after the message broadcast an hour earlier in Kamchatka, Russia’s most easterly timezone, made no mention of the attacks.
Read more about Putin vows to annihilate terrorists HERE.
Suicide Bomber Strikes Russia. Another ‘Black Widow?’
Photo Credit: Sergei Karpov/Reuters
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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Russian-Led Alliance to Spend $1 Billion on Weapons in 2014
Photo Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/AP
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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Russian Minister: We May Respond with Nukes to US Global Strike Program
Russia May Answer Conventional Attack With Nukes
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press.
Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional strike and sees them as a “great equalizer” reducing the likelihood of aggression, a senior Russian official said Wednesday.
While Russia amended its military doctrine years ago to allow for the possibility of using nuclear weapons first in retaliation to a non-nuclear attack, the statement by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin reflected Moscow’s concern about prospective U.S. conventional weapons.
Weapons that have been developed in the United States under the so-called “prompt global strike” program would be capable of striking targets anywhere in the world in as little as an hour with deadly precision. Russia, which has lagged far behind in developing such weapons, has described them as destabilizing.
Without naming the U.S., Rogozin told lawmakers in comments carried by Russian news agencies said that those who “experiment with non-nuclear strategic weapons” should remember that “if we come under attack, we will undoubtedly use nuclear weapons in certain situations to defend our territory and state interests.”
He said that it should discourage any potential aggressor.
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Photo Credit: RIA Novosti/Sergei Kazak
By RIA Novosti.
A senior government minister warned Wednesday that Russia could retaliate with a nuclear strike if a new US military strategy threatened its security.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that Russia was “preparing a response” to plans by the United States to develop a new fast-strike weapons platform capable of hitting high-priority targets around the globe.
He told the State Duma that the development of a global strike program was “the most important new strategy being developed by the United States today.”
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Saudis Turn to Russia in Move to Re-Balance Mideast
Photo Credit: WND Saudi Arabia is proposing a sweeping deal to Russia that solidifies Moscow’s position in the Middle East and Persian Gulf largely at the expense of the United States, according to informed Egyptian security officials.
The deal incorporates increased Russian involvement in Egypt, Syria and the Persian Gulf, and even involves a Saudi guarantee to aid against terror plots targeting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
The Egyptian officials said the deal seeks to replace the U.S. with Russia as the major weapons dealer to Egypt.
However, the weapons sales to Cairo are only the tip of the potential re-balancing iceberg that follows a major fallout with the Saudis after President Obama’s outreach efforts to Iran.
The Saudis asked for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while Riyadh would help establish a permanent central Russian role in the future of Syria, with a military presence in the country, the officials said.
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Pentagon and CIA Fighting State Dept. Plan to Allow Russian Space Agency to Build GPS Stations on U.S. Soil
Photo Credit: Pedro Ladeira/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesIn the view of America’s spy services, the next potential threat from Russia may not come from a nefarious cyberweapon or secrets gleaned from the files of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor now in Moscow.
Instead, this menace may come in the form of a seemingly innocuous dome-topped antenna perched atop an electronics-packed building surrounded by a security fence somewhere in the United States.
In recent months, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have been quietly waging a campaign to stop the State Department from allowing Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, to build about half a dozen of these structures, known as monitor stations, on United States soil, several American officials said.
They fear that these structures could help Russia spy on the United States and improve the precision of Russian weaponry, the officials said. These monitor stations, the Russians contend, would significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of Moscow’s version of the Global Positioning System, the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their targets and thirsty smartphone users to the nearest Starbucks.
“They don’t want to be reliant on the American system and believe that their systems, like GPS, will spawn other industries and applications,” said a former senior official in the State Department’s Office of Space and Advanced Technology. “They feel as though they are losing a technological edge to us in an important market. Look at everything GPS has done on things like your phone and the movement of planes and ships.”
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State Dept. Cites Russia, But Won’t Comment on S. Arabia’s Death Penalty for Gays
Photo Credit: APAlthough the U.S. State Department recently singled out Russia by name to criticize its law prohibiting homosexual propaganda aimed at youth, the same State Department refused to comment on Saudi Arabia where homosexual conduct is punishable by death.
On Oct. 24, Uzra Zeya, the acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, spoke at the ILGA-Europe annual conference in Zagrab, Croatia. ILGA is the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. In her remarks, Secretary Zeya said that promotion of human rights, including those for LGBT people, is a “foreign policy priority” of the United States.
Zeya praised new hate crimes legislation in Europe and then said, “But the United States remains extremely concerned about negative trends in a number of countries. The anti-gay propaganda law in Russia and the proposed law to strip gay parents of their parental rights are alarming.”
“Laws, even when it is unclear how they will be enforced, are incredibly important,” she said. “They are a statement of a country’s values and they have a teaching effect. Laws that validate discrimination, as we have seen in Russia, can lead to an increase in violence and harassment. This is particularly true when authorities don’t act to protect all of their citizens and when they fail to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by or against particular groups.”
Assistant Secretary Zeya also said, “I’ve singled out Russia but, as you all know, it is not the only place where there were disturbing events in 2013.”
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Russian Spy Agency Seeks To Expand NSA-Style Internet Surveillance
Photo Credit: The Guardian Russian authorities are moving to expand surveillance of the Internet by requiring service providers to store all traffic temporarily and make it available to the top domestic intelligence agency.
Under an order drafted by the Communications Ministry, providers would have to install equipment that would record and save all Internet traffic for at least 12 hours and grant the security services exclusive access to the data.
President Vladimir Putin has tightened his grip over Russia since his election to a third term in March 2012 amid a wave of opposition protests, and security is being stepped up further before the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The draft order, made public on Monday, is likely to deepen concerns over tighter surveillance of the Internet, where debate is much freer than in Russia’s conventional media and which security officials have said should be better controlled.
Russia drew global attention concerning a similar spying program in the United States and Britain after granting former U.S. intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden temporary asylum.
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