The European Union Times |
- At least 2 army helicopters “shot down” in Ukraine
- MERS virus reaches US, first case, CDC alarmed
- Both Russian & Ukrainian armies send thousands of troops to their borders
- Obama and Merkel threaten Russia with “devastating new sanctions”
- Canada joins preparations for WW3, sends jets & troops to Romania
- Heroin production hits record levels in Afghanistan
- NASA satellites reveal North Korea huge wildfires
- Media silent about Christian crucifixions in Syria
- US senators fear Russia may abandon NASA’s astronauts in space
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Posted: 03 May 2014 08:43 AM PDT
 Self-defense squads have reportedly taken down at least two Ukrainian army helicopters, with one pilot confirmed dead. Another pilot is being operated on, and the fate of the others is currently unknown. There was no evidence of any wreckage. The Ukrainian government claimed one of them was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. That hasn’t been verified yet, but U.S. sources are treating the report as “credible” and just as usual they ware highly likely to blame this event on Russia in the next following minutes or hours. However, conflicting reports about the pilots have emerged, with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry stating that two pilots were killed during the operation. The photo below reportedly shows one of the wounded helicopter pilots being taken to hospital:  Unconfirmed reports suggest the pilot is Captain Savuilov. Doctors said that he suffered a wound in his upper leg and a large blood vessel got injured. As the medics tried to tend to the wound, an outraged member of the self-defense forces spoke out emotionally about how the Ukrainian forces dumped their own serviceman. “His troops abandoned him. I thought they would take him away in another helicopter, but they just took his pistol from him and flew away,” a member of the self-defense forces in Slavyansk told RIA Novosti. The Ukrainian army helicopters carried out air strikes on Slavyansk, according to eyewitnesses. One of the residents told RIA Novosti that the strikes “were conducted in the open terrain near the checkpoints’ area.” This information has been confirmed by the self-defense forces who reported that the attack started out with “all the checkpoints massively targeted, with the use of helicopter support.” The squads sounded a special siren in the city to alert residents. The loss of the helicopters forced Kiev to halt the crackdown on the eastern city, which already saw at least three deaths since its launch in the early morning – two Ukrainian troops and one member of the self-defense forces. Source           |
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Posted: 03 May 2014 08:21 AM PDT
 Microscopic images of the Middle East Respiratory Virus (MERS)The patient is a healthcare worker who returned to the US from Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, on April 24. Along the way, the person passed through London and Chicago before taking a bus to Indiana. The patient first showed symptoms on April 27 and was hospitalized the next day, according to the CDC. The health agency refused to provide any additional information, declining to disclose gender, age, or location a more specific of the patient, according to NBC News. MERS, short for Middle East respiratory syndrome, is a recently identified illness tied to the MERS coronavirus. Symptoms of MERS include severe pneumonia and kidney failure, which is fatal in about one-third of observed cases. As its name suggests, it first emerged in 2012 in Saudi Arabia and has since appeared across the Middle East, Europe and Asia, with more than 100 reported deaths in Saudi Arabia alone. According to the World Health Organization, the exact means by which humans are infected is unknown, though camels are suspected as a primary source of the virus. Person-to-person infection is possible as well. No vaccine or cure exists yet for MERS, which has been compared to SARS, a similar disease that infected over 8,000 people and killed over 700 from 2002–2003, mostly in China. Thus far, patients have tended to be sick, elderly, or have compromised immune systems. Some individuals have contracted the virus and failed to show any symptoms at all. US officials had been bracing for the disease’s arrival for some time. The number of cases has increased in the spring, and global travel networks mean an infected individual can be just a plane ride away. Source      |
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Posted: 03 May 2014 08:16 AM PDT
 If Putin needed a pretext to finally drive across the Ukraine border, he got it following first the death of nearly 40 pro-Russian protesters in Odessa during a confrontation between pro-Russia and pro-Kiev forces, and then, what appears to be a storming in progress right now by the Ukraine national guard of yet another separatist-controlled city in east Ukraine: Kramatorsk. According to RT, Ukraine’s National Guard is storming the eastern town of Kramatorsk even as it has also resumed its special operation in Slavyansk, where two soldiers have been killed. “The assault is starting now,” a Kramatorsk self-defense activist has told RIA Novosti by phone. Another activist told the news agency that the National Guard opened fire on self-defense forces. Dozens have been killed or injured in Kramatorsk, a doctor told RIA Novosti. The medic added that the fighting has now stopped and all of those injured have been taken to hospitals in Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. At least two died on the way to the hospital, she said. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military’s special operation has resumed in the nearby town of Slavyansk. The headquarters of the people’s self-defense is under snipers’ fire, according to Itar-Tass. There are reports of injuries among protesters. Recall that Putin has made it very clear that all the Kremlin needs to green light an operation in Ukraine is a pretext of “self-defense” for the pro-Russian citizens currently there being attacked by the local military, something which if the tables were turned, would have been classified as a civil war by the impartial western media. So what does the theater of operations look like should Russia finally get involved? The Washington Post is publishing a new map that shows, using information from the Royal United Services Institute, recent troop movements in the region. The graphic illustrates how military exercises conducted by Russia have left a big build-up of troops on Ukraine’s border. It also shows Ukraine’s own military moves to its borders with Russia and Moldova’s Russian-dominated enclave, Transnistria. Source      |
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Posted: 03 May 2014 07:42 AM PDT
 US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called on Russia to de-escalate immediately the crisis in Ukraine or face the consequences of devastating new sanctions. “If in fact we see the disruptions and the destabilization continuing so severely that it impedes elections on May 25, we will not have a choice but to move forward with additional… severe sanctions,” Obama said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House on Friday. “If Russia continues on its current course, we have a range of tools at our disposal, including sanctions that would target certain sectors of the Russian economy,” Obama said. “Further sanctions will be unavoidable,” Merkel agreed, but neither she nor Obama specified precisely what was being considered. Russian President Vladimir Putin “needs to be dissuaded from his current course,” Obama stated. Earlier, the two leaders held a meeting for over an hour in the Oval Office, where Obama said most of their discussion centered on the worsening crisis in Ukraine. The United States has already imposed travel and asset bans on a number of Russian officials over the crisis in Ukraine. This week, the US and the European Union imposed new sanctions against government officials in Moscow and some businesses. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea declared independence from Ukraine on March 17 and formally applied to become part of Russia following a referendum a day earlier, in which nearly 97 percent of the participants voted in favor of the move. On March 21, Crimea officially became part of the Russian territory. On April 17, Russia, Ukraine, the US and the European Union agreed over steps to “de-escalate” the crisis in eastern Ukraine, where anti-Kiev protesters seized buildings in several towns and cities. But, Ukrainian authorities have ordered a military offensive against the protesters, claiming that Russian special forces are fueling unrest in the country. On Wednesday, Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov admitted that security forces are “helpless” to quell unrest in eastern regions of the country. “It is hard to accept but it’s the truth. The majority of law enforcers in the east are incapable of performing their duties,” Turchynov told a meeting of regional governors in Kiev. Source      |
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Posted: 03 May 2014 07:33 AM PDT
 Canadian Forces CF-18 fighter jetsIt is the biggest deployment of military aircraft to Romania from another NATO member since the Ukraine crisis broke out. “There is a lot of uncertainty about what we’re going to be doing over there,” Lieutenant-General Yvan Blondin said at a press conference with Defense Minister Rob Nicholson in Bagotville, where the CF-18 Hornets are based. Blondin mentioned that the troops were going to perhaps participate in routine training exercises – but he is still not sure what the mission will involve. “We’re not sure how long we’re going to be staying, but we’ll be staying until the government tells us it’s time to come back,” Blondin said. Six fighters have set off, accompanied by a C-17 cargo plane carrying spare parts, tools and mechanical equipment. The fighters first headed to Iceland before receiving further direction from Department of National Defense’s Central Command on where they will be stationed in Romania, which borders Ukraine. All in all, up to 250 Canadian military personnel are set to be deployed for the NATO mission. Almost two weeks ago, it was announced that 6 RCAF CF-18 fighter jets would join the NATO mission in response to the Ukraine crisis. “We are sending out a message to Russia and we are reassuring our allies that we are taking steps and making a point consistent with what NATO has been saying, the actions so far are unacceptable by Russia and we are sending out a very clear message,” Defense Minister Rob Nicholson told CBC News. Just a couple of days ago, UK and France deployed eight fighter jets to Lithuania and Poland to strengthen NATO air defenses. Polish and British air force contingents began patrolling the space over the Baltic States on Wednesday. The patrol is set to last for four months, reports ITAR-TASS. The contingent has around 100 military men, including technicians, doctors, support group, communications and other specialists. It followed hot war rhetoric a week ago by US Secretary of State John Kerry. “If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act,” Kerry said. On Monday, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu called on his Pentagon counterpart Chuck Hagel to help cool the rhetoric over Ukraine. “The Russian minister assessed the growth of the US and NATO forces’ activities in Eastern Europe as unprecedented. He also underlined the fact that those actions are accompanied by provocative statements by NATO’s Secretary General about the need to withhold Russia,” the statement from the Defense Ministry said. Source      |
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Posted: 02 May 2014 03:57 PM PDT
 America’s war on drugs is failing in Afghanistan, with opium production at record levels, despite spending $7.5 billion to tackle the problem. Over 200 thousand hectares is used to grow opium, an increase of 36 percent, according to a US report. The report, which was commissioned by SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction makes grim reading, with opium poppy cultivation increasing by over a third, while the country now has about 1.3 million heroin users. This is a ten-fold increase compared to 2005, when around 130,000 people were using the drug. Afghanistan is responsible for about three-quarters of the world’s heroin production, with much of it being cultivated in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south of the country. However, the US has concentrated most of its efforts in the east of Afghanistan, which has relatively little poppy production, as it is safer than working in the south. Attempts to limit production and seize heroin have not been helped due to a downscaling of operations by the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). In 2013, coalition forces managed to seize 41,000 kilograms of opium out of the 5.5 million kilograms produced in Afghanistan. “Drug labs, storage sites, and major trafficking networks are concentrated in rural areas that are increasingly off-limits to Afghan forces due the ISAF drawdown and declining security in these areas,” the report found. Since NATO began its ‘War on Terror’ in 2001, heroin production in Afghanistan has increased 40-fold, according to the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service. “Afghan heroin has killed more than 1 million people worldwide since ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began, and over $1 trillion has been invested in transnational organized crime from drug sales,” Viktor Ivanov said earlier at a conference on the Afghan drug problem in 2013.  Viktor Ivanov’s presentation to UN’s 56th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna Viktor Ivanov’s presentation to UN’s 56th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna Viktor Ivanov’s presentation to UN’s 56th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in ViennaIn 2013, the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics reported that just 7,300 hectares of poppy fields had been destroyed, which was only three percent of the total opium fields in the country. The US has spent $7.5 billion since 2002 trying to combat the problem of opium production. However, despite these vast sums very little impact has been made on the amount of heroin appearing on the world market. Source      |
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Posted: 02 May 2014 03:40 PM PDT
 This photograph taken by a NASA satellite clearly shows plumes of smoke wafting over over the east and southeast of Kim Jong-Un’s state.The pictures show large plumes of smoke over the east and southeast of Kim Jong-un’s state. Some of the fires are apparently in farm areas and it is possible that the fires may have been set deliberately by farmers to aid in the fertilisation of the soil. Others are in forests which means that they could be wildfires such as those that at times plague southern California and Australia or they could have been started by damaged power cables. ‘Collectively, the fires were producing enough smoke to send plumes of haze drifting east over the Sea of Japan,’ NASA said on its website. The pictures come a month after North Korea launched its own space agency NADA and has ‘borrowed’ the logo from its American counterpart. The images were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, earlier this week. Source      |
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Posted: 02 May 2014 03:01 PM PDT
 Could you imagine the uproar in the mainstream media that we would see if a member of a politically favored class of people was crucified for who or what they are? There would be front page headlines for weeks. But because members of a politically favored class (Muslims) are doing it to members of a non-politically favored class (Christians), it is not newsworthy at all according to the media. In many instances, Christians are being crucified by jihadists that are actually being assisted and funded by the governments of the United States and Saudi Arabia. Yes, our tax dollars are being used to help arm and supply radical jihadists that are beheading and crucifying Christians. And yet none of the big media organizations considers this to be news. How sick and twisted do you have to be to crucify a little child for being a Christian? Of course you never heard about this from the mainstream media, but that is exactly what happened in Syria recently… Sister Raghida, former head of a Christian school in Damascus explained the horrific event. “Islam or death” was the choice given to many Christians in Syria on Tuesday during the height of the conflict in Syria. She said many Syrian Christians have been affected by the atrocities taking place in the Christian population of the Middle Eastern country, an area once known for the harmonious coexistence of Muslims and Christians. According to Sister Raghida, the Muslims came to the two youths and said, “So you want to die as a teacher in whom you trust? Please choose: either to renounce (faith) or you will be crucified!” The boys both refused to renounce faith in Jesus Christ and were martyred because of it. One of them was crucified in front of his father, who was then killed. The nun went on to tell the radio station that the Jihadists entered the city of Maaloula and started killing men, women, and children. According to her report, they killed and played football with the heads of those murdered. Sister Raghida also said the killers took pregnant women and pulled out the babies from their wombs and hung them from a tree by their umbilical cords. This kind of brutality is absolutely unprecedented! Who has ever heard of such a thing being done to pregnant women and children? You would think that crimes of this magnitude would be front page news all over the globe. But instead, there is mostly just silence. About the only mainstream news outlet in the U.S. that will even touch this stuff is Fox News. And even they don’t give it front page treatment. Usually you have to really dig to find a brief story about the slaughter of Christians that we are seeing all over the planet. The following is an excerpt from a Fox News story about another incident of crucifixion that just happened recently… Al Qaeda-backed jihadists are hanging the bodies of executed enemies on crosses crucifixion-style in a town in Northern Syria, according to a Syrian opposition group. The executions reportedly took place Tuesday in Raqqa, where the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, an Al Qaeda-linked network, has taken over the city, according to Abu Ibrahim Alrquaoui, who identifies himself as a founder of a group called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. As I mentioned above, the jihadists that are doing this have the support of Saudi Arabia and the United States. The Obama administration and the Saudia are desperate to overthrow the Syrian government, and Obama seems to have no problem allying us with some of the most despicable jihadists on the entire planet in order to make that happen. The brutality against Christians by U.S.-backed fighters has been going on for month after month with very little notice by the outside world. Just check out what has been going on in one little village in the middle of the war zone… For a major part of the past year, it was occupied by Islamist Syrian rebels associated with al-Qaida who took advantage of its commanding position over Maaloula to help keep their grip on this Christian village. During the occupation of the village by the Saudi- and U.S.-supported rebels, strict Shariah law was enforced. Those Christians not able to flee were treated as slaves. Several Christian men were beheaded, and many of the women were forced into “temporary” marriages with multiple Islamic fighters. And of course Syria is far from the only place where we see this kind of brutality on a consistent basis. For example, Christians are regularly slaughtered by radical jihadists in Nigeria. The following is just one recent example… While many of us were enjoying our Friday evenings, a massacre was taking place in Nigeria that left between 100 and 150 Christians dead and around 200 homes burned to the ground. At around 10pm Nigeria time last night while villagers were asleep, more than 40 Fulani herdsmen attacked the Ungwan Gata, Me-Sankwai and Tekum villages in Manchok (Kaura Local Government), which is located in Southern Kaduna, Nigeria. Southern Kaduna is a predominantly Christian. These jihadi attackers first set fire to homes and when the Christians attempted to escape their homes, they were shot dead or butchered with machetes. The ones who could not escape their homes burned to death. No one attacked was spared, including women and children. A pastor, his wife, and their children, of one of the villages, were said to be among the butchered. Have you heard about that incident before now? Probably not. You see, the truth is that the elite control the “matrix” known as the mainstream media, and they don’t consider such stories to be important. You probably haven’t heard about the young Christian woman that was dragged out of her car and beaten to death by a Muslim mob in Egypt either. Fortunately, there are some non-mainstream outlets that are covering this… Eyewitnesses have given a harrowing account of the murder in Cairo of a young Coptic Christian woman, hauled out of her car and beaten and stabbed to death by a Muslim mob, apparently targeted because of a cross hanging from her rear-view mirror. And to say that she was “beaten to death” doesn’t really capture the full horror of what happened to her… Protestors climbed onto her car, collapsing the roof, then hauled her from the vehicle, beating and mauling her – to the extent, he said, that portions of her scalp were torn off. She was stabbed multiple times, her throat was slit and when she was dead, the mob torched her car. This is evil to the highest degree. But even in the midst of the slowest news year in ages, the mainstream media still won’t touch this stuff. There is an extreme hesitance in the western world to report anything that will put Muslims in a bad light or put Christians in a good light. Meanwhile, as Christians are being slaughtered by Muslims all over the globe, the western world is doing all that it can to shut down criticism of Islam. For instance, the leader of a political party in the UK could be facing up to two years in prison for the “hate crime” of quoting Winston Churchill… Political party leader Paul Weston was arrested by police and faces up to two years in jail for criticizing the religion of Islam during a public speech in the United Kingdom. Weston’s “racially aggravated” hate crime consisted of him quoting Winston Churchill. Weston’s arrest reveals the chilling implementation of thought crime in Britain and how political correctness is being used as a weapon with which to destroy the edifice of freedom of speech across the western world. The following is what appears to be the quote that got Weston in trouble… “The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.” And in the U.S., great efforts are being made to make Muslims as comfortable as possible in our schools. Even as Christian prayers are being banned, entire prayer rooms are being set aside for Muslim students in schools all over the country. In addition, many school systems are now giving students days off during major Muslim holidays. In fact, this will soon be happening in New York City… New York City is moving to close school for two Muslim holidays and the Lunar New Year — but Mayor de Blasio isn’t so sure about the Hindu festival Diwali. Appearing on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” on Monday, the mayor said he hadn’t taken a position on whether Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated in India and other South Asian countries, should be a day off from school. But he said he’d move forward with closing schools for Lunar New Year and for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, Muslim holy days. But that is nothing compared to what happened at one high school in Colorado. As students recited the Pledge of Allegiance, the words “under God” were replaced with “under Allah”… The principal at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, is facing a hailstorm of criticism from some very angry parents and residents. The school recites the Pledge of Allegiance weekly, on Mondays. Last Monday, a member of their “Cultural Arms Club” led the student body in an Arabic version of the pledge, replacing the words “under God” with “under Allah.” Principal Tom Lopez denies any attempt to push an Islamic agenda, saying, “These students love this country. They were not being un-American in trying to do this. They believed they were accentuating the meaning of the words as spoken regularly in English.” In the U.S., people are bending over backwards to make the Muslim minority feel more comfortable. But in Muslim countries, Christians are being beaten to death, beheaded and crucified and very few people in the western world even want to talk about it. Has our society become so “politically correct” that we cannot even denounce great evil when it is happening right in front of our eyes? Source      |
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Posted: 02 May 2014 02:55 PM PDT
 The crew members of Expedition 40/41 pose in front of a Soyuz spacecraft simulator in Star City, Russia.Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee told NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Thursday that they were worried about the space agency’s dependency on Russia. Bolden tried to reassure lawmakers that the deteriorating relations with Russia have not harmed Americans’ ability to get astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011, NASA has been entirely reliant on Russia to transport its astronauts to and from orbit, hitching rides on Russian craft to the tune of about $70 million per seat. “We hope that things work out. If Russia were to cut ties with the US, what are our options?” asked Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the committee’s ranking Republican. Bolden said that “the relationship between Roscosmos and NASA is solid,” referring to Russia’s space agency, but noted that, “today, we are dependent on the Russians.” “If something were to happen that caused us to have to evacuate the [space station], the plan, the contingency plan, is we have two vehicles that are there, two Soyuz spacecraft. We would get the crews into the Soyuz spacecraft and we would come home,” he added. “That is the escape right now. That is the emergency return vehicle. It is the nominal return vehicle. It is the only vehicle we have,” Bolden told the senators. The Senate hearing came a day after the US Court of Federal Claims issued an injunction prohibiting United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, from buying Russian-made rocket engines used to send US Air Force satellites into space. Source     |
