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China willing to facilitate military cooperation with Russia: senior military officer
MOSCOW, Aug 07, 2011 (Xinhua via COMTEX) — Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, stressed here on Sunday that China is willing to further promote military cooperation with neighboring Russia.
Chen, who visited Russian military units from Friday to Sunday, said that China’s army would like to work with the Russian forces to further advance their military ties, exchange their beneficial experience on building forces, and share with each other the achievements of military reforms.
China wants to step up its cooperation with Russia to mutually promote the army building in both countries, said Chen.
During his stay, Chen has visited several Russian units, including the Read more…
Central Banks Continue Buying Gold To Diversify Portfolios
Gold purchases by South Korea and Thailand this summer continue a trend in which central banks are net purchasers of the metal as they look to diversify their foreign-exchange reserves.
“So far in 2011, central banks in the emerging markets have already bought more than double the gold they bought in all of 2010, and we’ve got almost five months to go for the rest of the year,” said Jeff Clark, senior precious-metals analyst with Casey Research.
This buying has occurred despite historically high prices. “So apparently, central banks don’t regard the gold price as too high,” Clark said.
For the year to date, net purchases by the world’s central banks are 203.5 metric tons, which already is a 168% increase from 76 tons for all of 2010, said Natalie Dempster, director, government affairs, with the World Gold Council.
Most of the data is gleamed international financial statistics released by the International Monetary Fund at the beginning of each month. Additionally, some central banks—such as Read more…
Near Record Arctic Ice Melt Opens Up Shipping Lanes
Icebreaker-free shipping through the Northern Sea Route can now proceed following a near-record rate of Arctic ice melt, Russia’s environmental agency announced on Wednesday.
The Federal Hydrometeorological and Environmental Monitoring Service said that an expansive area of the Northern Sea Route has allowed for the opening of shipping lanes fit for cargo traffic between Europe and Asia.
A Belgium-owned tanker ship has already successfully transported oil condensate through the Bering Strait to a port in China.
The Northern Sea Route, sometimes referred to as the Northeast Passage, is a shipping lane officially defined by Russian legislation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean specifically running along the Russian Arctic coast from Murmansk on the Barents Sea, along Siberia, to the Bering Strait and Far East. The entire route lies in Arctic waters and parts are free of ice for only two months per year.
However, a 56% decline in ice extent in many areas has now left enabled marine shipping to continue through to the middle of autumn.
Bloomberg reported last month that Russia plans to revive a Read more…
Vladimir Putin: U.S. global economy ‘parasite’
The U.S. spends beyond its means and “lives like a parasite off the global economy,” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday, 1 August 2011.U.S. President Barack Obama said earlier in the day he had reached a deal with Republican and Democratic leaders to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by at least $2.1 trillion and avoid a default.
The proposed legislation is expected to be put to a vote in Congress later on Monday.
Speaking at a Russian political youth camp, Putin said the U.S. exists to build up its debt by relying on credit.
“It lives beyond its means, taxing the global economy with its problems and living like a parasite off the global economy and the monopoly of the dollar,” he said.
At the same time, the Russian head of government admitted that in the present day situation the United States took a “balanced” decision as a possible default would also have affected the global economy, which would have been “no good at all,” he concluded.
Rare, Powerful Tornado Hits Russian City
Credit: RussiaToday/YouTube.
A rare tornado touched down in Russia last night (July 31), according to news reports.
The tornado hit Blagoveshchensk, a city of about 200,000 in eastern Russia near the China border.
The twister lasted 13 minutes and caused a reported 80 million rubles ($2.9 million) in damage.
Tornadoes have touched down in every continent except Antarctica. They can occur wherever cold, dry air hits moist, warm air high in the atmosphere. Most of the Earth’s tornadoes occur in the hotbed known as Tornado Alley, but the United Kingdom reports the most tornadoes by land area, given its Read more…
Russia wildfires cover above 21,500 hectares
The emergencies ministry officials have said that some 3,000 hectares of land has been covered by wildfires since Wednesday, making the total area of burning land more than 21,500 hectares, AFP reported on Thursday.
According to environmental campaigners, with the large number of wildfires producing tons of smoke this year, Russians should expect the return of the noxious smog which enveloped Moscow last summer, making the environmental disaster even more horrifying, but no Read more…
Classified report: Russia tied to blast at U.S. embassy
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chamber’s Republican whip, said he sent a classified letter in June to the House and Senate intelligence committees asking them to investigate the incident and report back to members. (Associated Press)
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a classified report late last year that Russia’s military intelligence was responsible for a bomb blast that occurred at an exterior wall of the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September.
The highly classified report about the Sept. 22 incident was described to The Washington Times by two U.S. officials who have read it. They said the report supports the findings of the Georgian Interior Ministry, which traced the bombing to a Russian military intelligence officer.
The Times reported last week that Shota Utiashvili, director of information and analysis for the Georgian Interior Ministry, said the embassy blast and others in his country were the work of a Russian military intelligence officer named Maj. Yevgeny Borisov.
“It is written without hedges, and it confirms the Read more…
Missile system aimed at Russia? ‘US can’t guarantee it’s not’
Chinese EMP Weapons Program Confirmed by Intelligence Agencies; Designed to Attack US Carrier Fleets, Taiwan
Mac Slavo
Reports from organizations like the Center for Security Policy have confirmed that Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP, weapons could potentially wipe out the entire infrastructure of the United States in a matter of seconds, the consequences of which may be the death of 9 out of 10 Americans within a period of one year after the blast. Many Senators, Congressman, and terrorism experts have said that EMP is the single biggest security threat the United States faces from foreign powers and terrorist organizations. Research by EMPact America indicates that a properly deployed EM pulse weapon, or weapons, has the capability of wiping out and disabling the power grid across the lower 48 states.
The threat is serious, and it just got a whole lot worse.
According to a declassified report obtained by The Washington Times the Chinese have been building and testing EMP weapons in an effort to offset their Read more…
2011: Headed for Record Arctic Melt?
July 11, 2011: Arctic sea ice, seen by satellite. Credit: NASA.
This year could be well on its way toward earning a dubious spot in the record books.
Arctic sea ice has melted away with astonishing speed in the first half of July, at an average rate of about 46,000 square miles (120,000 square kilometers) per day, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo.
That’s equivalent to an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania melting into the sea every 24 hours.
“That’s relatively fast,” said Julienne Stroeve, a research scientist at the NSIDC.
Already, sea ice extent — how far ice extends across the ocean — this year is below the extent for the same time in 2007, a year which, in September, saw the lowest sea ice coverage ever recorded.
As of July 17 this year, sea ice covered 2.92 million square miles (7.56 million square kilometers) of the frigid Arctic Ocean. That may sound like a lot, but it’s 865,000 square miles (2.24 million square kilometers) below the 1979 to 2000 average.
However, Stroeve said, much of what Read more…
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