WATCH: SIS fighters destroy ancient artifacts at Mosul museum

Islamic State militants ransacked Mosul’s central museum, destroying priceless artefacts that are thousands of years old, in the group’s latest rampage which threatens to upend millennia of coexistence in the Middle East.

The destruction of statues and artefacts that date from the Assyrian and Akkadian empires, revealed in a video published by Isis on Thursday, drew ire from the international community and condemnation by activists and minorities that have been attacked by the group.

“The birthplace of human civilisation … is being destroyed”, said Kino Gabriel, one of the leaders of the Syriac Military Council – a Christian militia – in a telephone interview with the Guardian from Hassakeh in north-eastern Syria. The destruction took place in Mosul, the Iraqi city that has been under the control of Isis since June when jihadi fighters advanced rapidly across the country’s north.
“In front of something like this, we are speechless,” said Gabriel. “Murder of people and destruction is not enough, so even our civilisation and the culture of our people is being destroyed.”
Isis destroys thousands of books and manuscripts in Mosul libraries
Read more

The five-minute video, which was released by the “press office of the province of Nineveh [the region around Mosul]”, begins with a Qur’anic verse on idol worship. An Isis representative then speaks to the camera, condemning Assyrians and Akkadians as polytheists, justifying the destruction of the artefacts and statues.

The man describes the prophet Muhammad’s destruction of idols in Mecca as an example.

“These statues and idols, these artifacts, if God has ordered its removal, they became worthless to us even if they are worth billions of dollars,” the man said.
Advertisement

Isis militants then smash the statues in the Mosul museum with hammers and push them to the ground, watching them break into tiny fragments. The footage also shows a man dressed in black at a nearby archaeological site, inside Mosul, drilling through and destroying a winged bull, an Assyrian protective deity, that dates back to the 7th century BC

“When you watch the footage, you feel visceral pain and outrage, like you do when you see human beings hurt,” said Mardean Isaac, an Assyrian writer and member of A Demand for Action, an organisation dedicated to protecting the rights of the Assyrians and other minorities in Syria and Iraq.

A caption says the artefacts did not exist in the time of the prophet, and were put on display by “devil worshippers”, a term the militant group has used in the past to describe members of the Yazidi minority.

A professor at the Archaeology College in Mosul confirmed to the Associated Press that the two sites depicted in the video are the city museum and Nirgal Gate, one of several gates to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire.

“I’m totally shocked,” Amir al-Jumaili told the AP “It’s a catastrophe. With the destruction of these artefacts, we can no longer be proud of Mosul’s civilisation.”

Isis took control of Mosul last summer in a lightning advance that led to the eviction of thousands of Christians and other minorities from their ancestral homelands in the Nineveh plains, amid reports of forced conversions.

“We cannot expect anything else from Daesh,” said Gabriel, using the Arabic acronym for Isis.

He said the international community must act to prevent the destruction and looting of the artifacts.

“The loss is the loss of the entire world,” he said.

Isaac said: “While the Islamic State is ethnically cleansing the contemporary Assyrian populations of Iraq and Syria, they are also conducting a simultaneous war on their ancient history and the right of future generations of all ethnicities and religions to the material memory of their ancestors.”

The destruction of the priceless treasures comes days after Isis kidnapped 220 Assyrian Christian villagers in north-eastern Syria.

It is the latest assault in a campaign against coexistence in the region, especially in Iraq, which has seen the displacement of many of its Chaldean Christians, who have lived there with many ethnic minorities since the religion’s dawn.

Isis has also attempted to starve and enslave members of the Yazidi minority in Iraq.

Irina Bokova, the director general of Unesco, the UN cultural agency, said she was deeply shocked at the footage showing the destruction and has asked the president of the UN security council to convene an emergency meeting “on the protection of Iraq’s cultural heritage as an integral element for the country’s security”.

Source: The Guardian

Read More

ISIS Executioner 'Jihadi John' Is Named as Mohammed Emwazi

LONDON — The identity of the masked executioner clutching a knife in ISIS beheading propaganda videos was revealed on Thursday.

A U.S. intelligence official confirmed to NBC News that a Londoner named Mohammed Emwazi is the person known as "Jihadi John" in the ISIS videos depicting the murders of American and British citizens. The militant's identity was first reported by The Washington Post, which cited "friends and others with familiar with his case." The BBC also named the individual without citing sources.

Emwazi is a Briton born in Kuwait who is known to intelligence services, according to the BBC and the Washington Post.

The Washington Post reported that Emwazi grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming before traveling to Syria in 2012 and joining ISIS.
The White House would not confirm or deny the identity, saying in a statement that the government continues to investigate the murder of American citizens by ISIS and that it does not comment on ongoing investigations. The Metropolitan Police said it would not confirm the reports and British government officials also declined to comment.

"Jihadi John" appeared in the videos showing the execution of American hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff and Britons Alan Henning and David Haines.

He was given his nickname by the U.K. press because he was one of four Britons, dubbed the "Beatles" by their prisoners. He is also thought to have used the nom de guerre "Abu Saleh."

Previously, British and American officials have said they believed they had ascertained his identity but not named any individual.

Emwazi, who had strong links to Somalia according to U.K. security sources, appears to have become radicalized after he left university.

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, based at London's King's College, said it believed Emwazi's identity "to be accurate and correct."

A University of Westminster spokeswoman confirmed to NBC News that a student named Mohammed Emwazi left the college in 2009.

"If these allegations are true, we are shocked and sickened by the news," she said in a statement. "With other universities in London, we are working to implement the government's 'Prevent' strategy to tackle extremism."

U.K.-based human rights group CAGE said it had worked with Emwazi in 2010 after he complained of being arrested and questioned by agents from Britain's intelligence agency MI5 who accused him of links to Islamic extremism. Emwazi told CAGE he had been detained in Tanzania in 2009 while attempting a post-college safari vacation with friends, and that he felt he had been harassed unfairly by intelligence agencies upon his return to Britain, the human-rights group said in a statement Thursday.

CAGE also released an email Thursday allegedly from Emwazi in which he complained that British authorities were unfairly preventing him from traveling to Kuwait.

"I have been trying to find out the reason for my refused Visa issue from my home country Kuwait, and a way to solve the issue," the email from 2010 read. "So through my friends in Kuwait, it has been said to me that Kuwait has no problem with me entering, and the reason for my refusal is simply because the U.K. agents have told them to not let me in!"

He added: "Now I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person imprisoned and controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and my country, Kuwait."

CAGE research director Asim Qureshi said in the statement that Emwazi bore a "some striking similarities" to Jihadi John in the beheading videos but that there was "no way" he could conclusively identify him as the man behind the mask.

There was no answer at an address in west London where Emwazi was listed as living.

A British government spokeswoman told reporters: "We don't confirm or deny matters relating to intelligence. I am not going to get into the details of an ongoing police and security investigation."

Source: NBC News

Read More

Apple ordered to pay $533 million for patent infringement

(Reuters) - Apple Inc has been ordered to pay $532.9 million after a federal jury in Texas found that its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by patent licensing firm Smartflash LLC.

Though Smartflash had been asking for $852 million in damages, Tuesday night's verdict was still a blow to Apple.

The jury, which deliberated for eight hours, determined Apple had not only used Smartflash's patents without permission, but did so willfully.

Apple, which said it would appeal, said the outcome was another reason reform was needed in the patent system to curb litigation by companies that don't make products themselves. "We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system," Apple said in a statement.

Smartflash sued Apple in May 2013, alleging its iTunes software infringed its patents related to accessing and storing downloaded songs, videos and games.

"Smartflash is very happy with the jury's verdict, which recognizes Apple's longstanding willful infringement," Brad Caldwell, a lawyer for Smartflash, said in an email.

The trial was held in Tyler, which over the past decade has become a focus for patent litigation.

Smartflash's registered office is also in Tyler.

It was also in Tyler federal court that a jury in 2012 ordered Apple to pay $368 million to VirnetX Inc for patent infringement. A federal appeals court later threw out that damages figure, saying it was wrongly calculated.

Apple tried to avoid a trial by having the lawsuit thrown out. But U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who presided over the case, ruled earlier this month that Smartflash's technology was not too basic to deserve the patents.

Apple had asked the jury to find Smartflash's patents invalid because previously patented inventions covered the same technology.

Smartflash's suit said that around 2000, the co-inventor of its patents, Patrick Racz, had met with executives of what is now European SIM card maker Gemalto SA, including Augustin Farrugia, who is now a senior director at Apple.

Smartflash has also filed patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp and Google Inc.

The case is Smartflash LLC, et al v. Apple, Inc, et al, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, No. 13-cv-447.

Source: Reuters

Read More

FBI offers $3 million reward for alleged russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev

The U.S. State Department and FBI on Tuesday announced a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Russian national Evgeniy Bogachev, the highest bounty U.S. authorities have ever offered in a cyber case. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also issued a "Wanted" poster for Bogachev, who is charged in the United States with running a computer attack network called GameOver Zeus that allegedly stole more than $100 million from online bank accounts.
Bogachev has been charged by federal authorities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering in connection with his alleged role as administrator of GameOver Zeus. He also faces federal bank fraud conspiracy charges in Omaha, Nebraska related to his alleged involvement in an earlier variant of Zeus malware known as "Jabber Zeus." The Justice Department announced in June that authorities had shut down the servers the cybercriminals used to control infected machines. Bureau officials said they believed Bogachev was still in Russia.

"This was a worldwide infection, but it also had law enforcement worldwide working to combat it and bring to justice the criminal organization behind it,"Joseph Demarest, head of the FBI's cyber crime division, said in a statement. The agency is aware of 60 different cyber threat groups linked to nation-states, Demarest said. He did not identify which countries were believed to be behind these groups.

Source: NBC News

Read More

ISIS abducts at least 150 Christians in Syria

(Reuters) - Islamic State militants have abducted at least 150 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria they had raided, Christian Syrian activists said on Tuesday.

A Syrian Christian group representing several NGO's inside and outside the country said it had verified at least 150 people missing, including women and elderly, who had been kidnapped by the militants.

"We have verified at least 150 people who have been adducted from sources on the ground," Bassam Ishak, President of the Syriac National Council of Syria, whose family itself is from Hasaka, told Reuters from Amman.

Earlier the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 90 were abducted when the militants carried out dawn raids on rural villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority west of Hasaka, a city mainly held by the Kurds.

Syrian Kurdish militia launched two offensives against the militants in northeast Syria on Sunday, helped by U.S.-led air strikes and Iraqi peshmerga.
This part of Syria borders territory controlled by Islamic State in Iraq, where it committed atrocities last year against the Yazidi religious minority.

Islamic State did not confirm the kidnappings. Supporters posted photos online of the group's fighters in camouflage attire looking at maps and firing machine guns. The website said the photos were from Tel Tamr, a town near where the Observatory said the abductions occurred.

Many Assyrian Christians have emigrated in the nearly four-year-long conflict in which more than 200,000 have people have been killed. Before the arrival of Kurds and Arab nomadic tribes at the end of the 19th century, Christians formed the majority in Syria's Jazeera area, which includes Hasaka.

Sunday's offensive by Kurdish YPG militia reached within five km (3 miles) of Tel Hamis, an Islamic State-controlled town southeast of Qamishli, the Observatory said.

At least 14 IS fighters died in the offensive, in which Assyrians fought alongside Kurds, it added. Eight civilians were also killed in heavy shelling by the Kurdish side, which seized several Arab villages from Islamic State control.

Last year, Islamic State fighters abducted several Assyrians in retaliation for some of them fighting alongside the YPG. Most were released after long negotiations.

RELIEVING PRESSURE

Military experts said militants were trying to open a new front to relieve pressure on Islamic State after several losses since being driven from the Syrian town of Kobani near the border with Turkey.

"Islamic State are losing in several areas so they want to wage an attack on a new area," said retired Jordanian general Fayez Dwiri.

Since driving IS from Kobani, Kurdish forces, backed by other Syrian armed groups, have pursued the group's fighters as far as their provincial stronghold of Raqqa.

A resident of Hasaka, jointly held by the Syrian government and the Kurds, said hundreds of families had arrived in recent days from surrounding Christian villages and Arab Bedouins were arriving from areas along the border.

"Families are coming to Hasaka seeking safety," said Abdul Rahman al-Numai, a textile trader said by telephone.

Source: Reuters

Read More

WATCH: 'Power Rangers' gets super dark in this short-film remake

This isn't the Power Rangers you grew up with.

A short film starring Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff  and Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek shows the Power Rangers as adults—seriously disturbed after being made to fight at a young age.

The originally no-holds-barred NSFW version of the video was posted on Vimeo, though it could no longer be automatically accessed from there as of Wednesday. However, a partially censored—but still unsettlingly violent—version is still up on YouTube:




With Sackhoff as Kimberly/Pink Ranger and Van Der Beek as Rocky/Red Ranger, the short film also includes Russ Bain as Tommy/Green Ranger, Will Yun Lee as General Klank, and Gichi Gamba as Zack/Black Ranger.


Darkly violent

So just how dark is the movie? Consequence of Sound said this is one film with "the word 'violent' extremely emphasized."

"This hard R-rated take on the kid’s action show is full of bloody deaths and adult language that makes the clip extremely NSFW and NSFSMT (not safe for Saturday morning TV)," it said.

Producer Joseph Kahn, in an interview with HitFix, said the trick he wanted to do "was to make that dark and gritty version that everybody keeps talking about, but really do it. Really see if I could totally accomplish it with essentially a really incredible incredibly silly property."

"When I was a child I had two favorite TV shows the X-Men animated series and Power Rangers. I eventually came to the realization that high school kids weaponized to fight an intergalactic threat would turn those kids into some seriously disturbed adults," said producer Adi Shankar.

Saban takedown

In the hours since POWER/RANGERS was released, Khan said the original NSFW video was taken down due to pressure from Saban Entertainment—the owners of the original Power Rangers franchise.

Saban Entertainment has not yet released an official response as of posting time.

Source: GMA News

Read More

More mystery craters appear in Siberia

Image credit: Vasily Bogoyavlensky via The Siberian Times

(NEWSER) – More mysterious craters have been spotted in Siberia, and researchers are starting to sound more than a little alarmed about the phenomenon. Vasily Bogoyavlensky, deputy director of Russia's Oil and Gas Research Institute, says at least seven suspicious craters have now been spotted—five of them in a region known as the "end of the world"—and a satellite image shows one of them has at least 20 water-filled "baby craters" around it. "I would compare this with mushrooms: When you find one mushroom, be sure there are [a] few more around. I suppose there could be 20 to 30 craters more," he tells the Siberian Times. He's calling for urgent research "to prevent possible disasters" that could affect cities and oil industry infrastructure in the region.

Bogoyavlensky and other experts believe gas emissions, possibly linked to climate change, are causing the holes to appear and suspect there are many more to be found, reports NBC News. "The processes that are causing them to form likely occur over a wide area of the continuous permafrost in this part of Siberia," the chief of the US Geological Survey's Gas Hydrates Project tells the Huffington Post. She hasn't researched the holes firsthand, but she agrees they demand further study "to determine the processes that cause their formation, how they evolve with time, and whether it is possible to predict where new ones will occur." Bogoyavlensky plans an upcoming expedition to the craters (only one of them has been studied in depth thus far) and intends to install seismic stations in the region.

Source: USA Today

Read More

CT scans reveal preserved body inside ancient buddhist statue

Photo credit: M. Elsevier Stokmans/German-Mummy-Project Mannheim. CT scans reveal this statue contains a mummy

A nearly 1,000-year-old statue has left China for the first time and the Meander Medical Center in the Netherlands thought they'd run it through a CT scanner, as you do. They confirmed that the statue holds the mummified remains of a man, while also finding some intriguing insights into the mummification process.
To inexpert eyes, the statue looks like it is of the Buddha, but it lacks most of the distinctive features that artists use to identify Gautama Buddha. Researchers believe the body inside is that of Buddhist master Liuquan, a practitioner of the Chinese Meditation School who lived around 1100 AD.

Credit: Jan van Esch/Meander Medical Center. Not the ideal posture for CT scans.

Besides the use of the scanner, the hospital had gastrointestinal specialist Dr. Raynald Vermeijden take samples of material from the thoracic and abdominal cavities. In places where organs once were, the team found paper scraps printed with yet to be deciphered ancient Chinese characters. It is unclear what role the paper played in the mummification process.

The statue was studied after being displayed at the Drents Museum as part of an exhibition of mummies revealing the similarities and differences in mummification processes from around the world. It is currently on display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Not only is this the first time this particular statue has left China, but it is also the only Chinese Buddhist mummy available for scientific research in the West, the Center claims.

Credit: Jan van Esch/Meander Medical Center. No need to look so anxious - he's been dead for 1,000 years.

There is speculation that Liuquan engaged in the practice of self-mummification, a gruesome process where monks from certain traditions prepare themselves to not decay after death through a combination of diet and consumption of poisonous herbs and embalming fluid. This has yet to be confirmed, however.

Credit: Jan van Esch/Meander Medical Center. Exploring ancient corpses does not always involve the best view.

Source: IFL Science

Read More

WATCH: Traffic comes to a halt as it starts raining money in Dubai

Motorists driving through Dubai could not believe their eyes when it started raining money in the middle of the UAE city.

Thousands of 500 UAE Dirham notes - worth around £88 - flew through the oil-rich city on a busy afternoon earlier this month, and officials have yet to give an explanation as to why, or reveal a source of the cash.

Drivers abandoned their cars in order to get their hands on the notes blowing down the road, and were filmed holding handfuls of notes.
It is estimated that notes valued between two and three million Dirham were loose - meaning up to £500,000 was blowing in the wind.

The notes were carried by strong winds through the Jumeirah area of Dubai for several minutes, but locals have got no idea where it came from.

One surprised local described how his wife pulled over her car to film motorists dodging cash collectors on a busy stretch of highway in the city.

He said: 'It was a very windy day. She was stuck in the traffic. She saw all this money.

'It was just raining money. It was 500 AED notes which is worth quite a lot. It was a lot of money.

'A lot of people were getting out of there care to grab this month.

'It doesn't happen every day. Everyone was amazing this was happening.'

The baffling incident happened at around 3pm on February 11 and locals have no explanation.

Police later arrived at the area and ushered people away, local media reports.

Source: Daily Mail

Read More

Chilean's round-the-world record cycling quest ends in death on Thai highway

Guillermo, from Chile, had set off on his world recording breaking bike trip in 2010 with the target of cycling 250,000Km over 5 years.

Juan Francisco Guillermo, who was trying to cycle 250,000km in five years, was killed after being hit by truck in north-east Thailand, police said

A Chilean cyclist’s attempt to set a record for biking around the world has ended with his death in a road accident in northeast Thailand, police said on Sunday.

Juan Francisco Guillermo, 47, was hit by a pickup truck and immediately killed Saturday on a highway in Nakhon Ratchasima province.


According to police and accounts on social media, Guillermo was attempting to set a Guinness world record by cycling 250,000km (155,350 miles) on five continents in five years. His journey started in November 2010 and was scheduled to end in November this year.

Guillermo’s wife was on another bicycle with their two-year-old son and suffered a slight sprain in the accident, said police Col Torsak Thammingmongkol. It was not clear how long they had accompanied Guillermo in his round-the-world cycling odyssey.

The driver of the pickup truck was arrested on a charge of causing death by dangerous driving and released on bail, said Torsak. The offense carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

“It was an accident caused by the driver’s recklessness. The road was straight and the cyclist was in his own lane,” the officer said.

The death comes as Thailand’s government is trying hard to promote bicycling for commuting, sport and tourism.

In February 2013, a British couple on a similar round-the-world quest was killed in a road accident in eastern Thailand.

Source: The Guardian

Read More

ISIS overtakes Iraq's largest Christian city

Many of the Iraqi Christians who fled the violence have arrived in the Kurdish city of Erbil

Iraq's largest Christian town has been overrun by the same militant Islamists who have gained a foothold in parts of eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq.

The latest advance by ISIS (or the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) has caused thousands of Christians in the city to flee, just as other minority groups targeted by ISIS have done, as well as Shiite Muslims.

The French government confirmed that the Iraqi city of Qaraqosh has fallen into the hands of the militant al Qaeda offshoot.

"France is highly concerned about the latest progress of ISIS in the North of Iraq and by the taking of Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city of Iraq, and the horrible acts of violence that are committed," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement.

France called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the threat in Iraq.

The exodus from Qaraqosh was already under way, as the city and its surroundings have been the target of ISIS attacks for weeks.

When ISIS took over Mosul, many residents from there had fled to Qaraqosh. In Mosul, ISIS issued an ultimatum to Christians living there: Convert to Islam, pay a fine or face "death by the sword."

Three other nearby villages were also attacked overnight and Thursday, local police officials told CNN. Two of the villages -- Bartella and Tall Kayf -- are predominately Christian. Hundreds of Christian families fled to the north, police said.

The third village is Hamadaniya.

Kurdish forces were involved in heavy clashes protecting the area from ISIS.

ISIS seeks to create an Islamic caliphate that stretches from Syria to Iraq. The group has aggressively targeted Iraqi minority religious groups.

Nickolay Mladenov, the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general for Iraq, last month condemned the persecution of Christians, Shia Muslims and Yazidis, as well as the Shabak and Turkmen ethnic minorities.

The Pentagon is considering conducting emergency air drops to the thousands of stranded Yazidis in northern Iraq, a U.S. Defense official told CNN Thursday.

A spokesman for Pope Francis, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said on Thursday that the pontiff is deeply concerned about the reports coming from northern Iraq.

"Christian communities are particularly affected: a people fleeing from their villages because of the violence that rages in these days, wreaking havoc on the entire region," Lombardi said in a statement.

Lombardi quoted a prayer the Pope offered last month, expressing to the persecuted that "I know how much you suffer, I know that you are deprived of everything."

Most Iraqi Christians are Chaldeans, who are Roman Catholic communicants.

Source: CNN

Read More

WATCH: New ISIS video shows Kurdish soldiers paraded in cages

Watch video at the bottom of the article.

Islamic State (ISIS) militants released new footage Saturday that allegedly shows 21 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters being paraded through crowded streets in the embattled Iraqi province of Kirkuk.

The beginning of the footage shows several men in cages being interviewed by an Islamic State militant holding a microphone with the group's insignia, before cutting to clips of several trucks with cages in the back being driven through cheering crowds. It is unclear where in the Kirkuk province this footage may have been taken or when it was recorded.

ISIS and the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have been locked in a series of tense battles for control of the province since January.
  The scene shown in the video echoes of an earlier execution the group carried out on Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh who was burned alive by ISIS militants while locked in a cage.

Images showing ISIS fighters parading Peshmerga fighters around a crowded street had also circulated earlier in February, so it is unclear when this newly released video was taken. Other video taken from the crowd shows similar scenes.

The footage may have been taken in the town of Hawija, located southwest of the city of Kirkuk, based on information from local Kurdish media and distinctive landmarks seen in the new video.

On Feb. 19, another ISIS-affiliated account posted a video claiming to show a raid against Peshmerga positions in Kirkuk.

Kirkuk, located along the border of Kurdish northern Iraq and the rest of the country, is home to Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and all have competing claims to the area.

Kurdish forces claimed control of the city just days after the Islamic State group seized northern Iraqi cities including Mosul and Tikrit.

Holding onto Kirkuk has not been easy. Last month, ISIS fighters — aided by what the Kurds say was a Sunni sleeper cell in the city — stormed an abandoned Kirkuk hotel, and then staged a surprise attack on a Peshmerga outpost, killing a top commander and several of his troops.





   

Read More

Russian bombers intercepted near British airspace

RAF Typhoon fighter jets were scrambled on Wednesday after two long-range TU-95 “Bear” bombers were detected flying over the English Channel.

The incident was last night described as “yet another in a series of deliberately provocative” measures by President Vladimir Putin which confirmed that Nato’s status had moved firmly from “rival to adversary”.

Sources within the Ministry of Defence last night revealed that one of the two long-range bombers was carrying at least one air-dropped “seek and find"d nuclear warhead-carrtying missile, designed to seek and destroy a Vanguard submarine.
Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon were alerted after cockpit conservations confirming the bomber’s nuclear payload were intercepted by a Norwegian military listening post, and shared with the Ministry of Defence.

The missile was not armed, and the aircraft's crew would have required a direct order from President Putin before making it live.

The other bomber was said to have been acting in the role of “mothership”, overseeing the military exercise.

One senior RAF source said:  “We downloaded conversations from the crew of one plane who used a special word which meant the would-be attack was a training exercise.

"They know that we can pick up their transmissions and it would only be of concern if the often used release weapon order was changed.

"We also knew from another source that one of the aircraft was carrying a nuclear weapon long before it came anywhere near UK airspace.”

The Russian bomber was intercepted just outside of British airspace

On Friday Russia’s ambassador in London, Alexander Yakovenko, was summoned to account for the incident, which some experts suggest was deliberately timed to coincide with the launch of the official inquiry into the murder of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.

The former KGB agent, who fled to Britain to become one of the Kremlin's most vocal critics, died from radiation poisoning in 2006 after drinking tea laced with polonium.

Last week’s security scare was branded an “escalation” of Russian aggression because Russian bombers do not usually fly so far south of Scotland, and happened a month after Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Britain was concerned about the "extremely aggressive probing" of its airspace by Russia.

More than 100 Russian aircraft were intercepted over the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean by Nato allies last year, three times more than during 2013. Eight of those flights were over Britain.

During the Cold War it was common practice for Soviet military aircraft to carry nuclear weapons, though the practise ended following the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, it was recently resumed by Moscow.

Experts said the latest manoeuvres showed Russia was “upping its game”.

“This continual and increasing probing of Nato airspace by these nuclear bombers and fighter aircraft, tankers and electronic aircraft by Russian is a pattern of increased pressure by Russia designed to remind the West and Nato that they remain a large nuclear power, and a serious military power with reach,” said Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute, last night.

"Russia now clearly perceives Nato not as a potential threat, but as an adversary.

“But this intimidation belies a misunderstanding of the way the West works. As far as our military is concerned, it is helpful for Putin to be stepping up these actions. It serves to remind the public at a time where defence budgets are under pressure that this threat is still real, active and is not going away.”

Air Cmdre Andrew Lambert, of the UK National Defence Association and formerly a leading air power strategist, said: “Putin is making the point that he has nuclear weapons and will carry them wherever he wants and Nato just has to take it.

“We have reduced the number of or Typhoon squadrons to the bare minimum. They have the Quick Reaction Alert commitments, Nato’s Baltic effort, and of course, the Falklands. So we are stretched three ways. We have too few air defence aircraft bearing in mind the commitments we now have.

“When the next round of defend cuts are discussed, it must be realised that we must have enough F-35s so that the our Typhoons can concentrate on their primary role – the air defence of this country.”

Source: Express

Read More

It's official: Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao to fight on May 2

The fight is on as Pacquiao and Mayweather will fight May 2. (Getty Images)

After weeks of speculation, it's finally done. Floyd Mayweather confirmed what had been rumored, that and he will fight Manny Pacquiao. The two will fight on May 2 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas with a reported purse of over $100 million.


Mayweather made the fight official by posting the contract on the shots app.

Pacquiao is happy the two will finally square off.

"I am very happy that Mayweather and I can give the fans the fight they have wanted for so many years," said Pacquiao, who signed the contract for the bout Thursday, according to Yahoo Sports. "They have waited long enough and they deserve it. It is an honor to be part of this historic event. I dedicate this fight to all the fans who willed this fight to happen and, as always, to bring glory to the Philippines and my fellow Filipinos around the world."

Full details have not been announced, but there is expected to be a 60-40 revenue split with Mayweather earning at least $120 million and Pacquiao making $80 million.
Mayweather, 37, has a career record of 47-0 with 26 knockouts and last fought Marcos Maidana in September of 2013. Meanwhile, Pacquiao, 36, is 57-5-2 in his career with 38 wins by knockout. The southpaw's last fight came in November against Chris Algieri.

"I promised the fans we would get this done and we did," Mayweather said.

Source: CBS Sports

Read More