The data harvesting program, first reported by The Washington Post Monday, collects address books from email and instant messaging service in an apparent attempt to map social circles across the globe. Online communication services frequently expose an individual’s contact list when that person signs onto their account, sends a message, or connects a remote device – such as a cell phone – to a computer.

An internal NSA PowerPoint presentation indicated that the NSA’s Special Source Operations collected 444,743 email lists from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail, and another 22,881 from other services. The documents note that those numbers show what the NSA collects in one day, meaning the intelligence agency could collect more than 250 million lists each year.

The NSA is capable of collecting approximately 500,000 so-called buddy lists from live-chat services and the “in-box” displays from web-based email services, according to the Post.

Two NSA sources told the Post the intelligence agency uses the data to identify international connections and then find smaller, more nefarious connections between suspected criminals. The collection relies on secret deals with foreign telecommunication companies, with NSA agents monitoring internet traffic outside the US.

The sources refused to estimate how many Americans are snared in the dragnet but did admit it could number in the tens of millions. An unnamed official was careful to mention the collection comes from “all over the world,” and “None of those are on US territory.”

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said the NSA “is focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets like terrorists, human traffickers and drug smugglers. We are not interested in personal information about ordinary Americans.”

While the earlier revelation that the NSA indiscriminately collected millions of American phone records ignited outrage, email address books could provide much more detail about a person’s life. Address books often include home and work addresses, as well as business and family information.

The potential for abuse could also be much higher, with intelligence agents able to look at a close diagram of someone’s life, including political and religious organizations. False impressions could also be created if someone neglects to delete entries belonging to friends they are no longer associated with.

Because the collection takes place overseas, the NSA does not require nor did it receive permission from Congress or the secret intelligence court that authorizes such collection. One US official said “the assumption is you’re not a US person” when the communication passes through “the overseas collection apparatus.”

Still, despite common past reports indicating otherwise, an official said the privacy of US citizens is safeguarded by “checks and balances built into our tools.”

The US companies involved in the data program deny that were consulted or informed about the NSA’s policy. This is possible, the Post noted, because address books are recorded “on the fly” when a user crosses an internet switch, not from servers at rest.

“We have neither knowledge nor participation in any mass collection of webmail addresses or chat lists by the government,” said a Google spokesman.

Microsoft and Facebook offered similar denials, with the Post speculating that Yahoo lists were intercepted more often because the email service automatically leaves connections between users unencrypted, although a company representative said that policy is expected to change in January 2014.

NSA documents prove that the intelligence agency collects so much information that its vast data facilities are nearly overwhelmed and the intake has been suddenly stopped by “emergency detasking” orders. While the agency has sought to delete information it deems no use for, at least three documents report on efforts to build an “across-the-board technology throttle for truly heinous data.”

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The plan to offer some of Italy’s state-owned real estate to private investors is part of an emergency decree aimed at keeping the country’s 2013 budget deficit within 3 percent threshold set by Brussels, the Corriere della Serra newspaper reports.

Apart from receiving direct revenue from the sell-offs, Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s government is hoping the castles and villas will be converted into hotels, restaurants and museums, creating much-needed jobs for the country’s struggling economy.

Greece, another European country under tough EU-imposed austerity rules, last year also enacted a similar sell-off, offering some if its islands, beaches and ski resorts to private buyers. Italy sold off several lighthouses on the island of Sardinia last year.

The properties chosen for the new sale will be marketed through a state-run fund. Among them is the Orsini Castle near Rome, which was built for Pope Nicholas III in the 1270s. It was used as a prison between the mid-19th century and 1989, and according to local superstition is believed to be haunted.

Another national treasure to be offered is Villa Mirabello near Milan, built in the 18th century by Cardinal Durini, the Grand Inquisitor of Malta.

In a Venice lagoon, investors can buy the Island of San Giacomo. A home for monks since the 11th century, it was converted into a military base in the 1800s, but was abandoned in 1961 and left to crumble into ruins.

The scheme makes business sense, Italy-based property expert Rupert Fawcett told the newspaper.

“The reality is that any government in Europe is looking to raise funds where they can,” he said. “The cost of running these properties can be huge and the sheer upkeep of them can be unmanageable.”

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Some 120,000 Swiss signatories have put their names to a petition demanding a monthly minimum wage of $2,800 (2,500 Swiss francs) for every single member of the working adult population. Enough names have been collected for a government vote.

Anything less than the proposed amount would be deemed illegal, even for people working in the lowest paid jobs. A typical fast-food worker in the US earns roughly $1,500 per month.

“It could be one of the landmark historical moments, like the abolition of slavery, or the civil rights movement – of course, those who don’t want it will find excuses, but those who do want it will find solutions,” Enno Schmidt, founder of the Basic Income Initiative, told RT.

A date for the vote itself is yet to be confirmed, however, it could take place before the end of this year, depending on the decision of the Swiss government. The “1:12 initiative” has gained support across the government’s social democrat bloc.

To mark the day, a truck full of 8 million five-cent coins was deposited on the square and spread out in front of the Swiss Parliament in Bern on Saturday.

The money to fund the measure, should it pass, would likely be supplied by the Swiss social insurance system. “If there’s anywhere that can finance this, it’s Switzerland. Right now we have the ball rolling – it’s down to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. It will then be up to lawmakers to determine exactly where the money will come from,” said Oswald Sigg, former Swiss Vice-Chancellor.

However, it has caused serious concerns about tax rises and pension loss.

“The older generation lived their whole lives in another system so it’s harder for them to actually realize what this means. They have fear, of course, for their pensions, and don’t instantly get that this is a replacement of an old system,” said Che Wagner one of the co-starters of the Basic Income Initiative.

As Switzerland has the 100,000 signature threshold, the country frequently votes on public measures. On November 24, the country will vote on another initiative to cap executive pay at the maximum of twelve times the lowest paid salary member.

One of Switzerland’s biggest CEOs has stated that if the measure passes, he would seriously contemplate moving his company out of the country. “I can’t believe that Switzerland would cause such great harm to its economy,” Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The Pentagon’s facility, located in Bluffdale, which lies south of Salt Lake City, is being built to house a gargantuan quantity of data harvested, presumably, by many of the NSA’s surveillance programs now made public by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Estimates of the facility’s capacity, which is classified, ranges from exabytes or zettabytes, reports the Wall Street Journal. An exabyte being equivalent to 100,000 times the size of printed material held by the Library of Congress, while a zettabyte is 1,000 times that amount.

A new report compiled through project documents and information provided to the WSJ by officials cite a number of electrical surges — called “arc fault failures” – which over the past 13 months have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, and delayed the facility from going active for a year.

According to one official, such arc fault failures can resemble “a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box”and can melt metal and destroy circuitry.

Speculation as to whether the NSA’s facility in Utah is already active has been rampant, and indications are that its equipment is being slowly brought online as it becomes available, rather than in one dramatic on-switch moment.

“We turn each machine on as it is installed, and the facility is ready for that installation to begin,” NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told the Salt Lake City Tribune in late September.

The $1.5 billion facility is estimated to be not only the NSA’s largest data center, but the largest in the world, with some 1 million square feet of space. Engineers have said the center will dwarf even Google’s largest data hub.

Special teams from the Army Corps of Engineers have been assigned to investigate the electrical issues at the Utah center. The most recent arc failure according to the WSJ seems to have occurred on September 25, causing $100,000 in damage. The first such reported failure is thought to have taken place on August 9 of last year.

So far the information available indicates that the reason for the technical failures remains in dispute. A statement issued by a consortium of private contractors currently working on site eluded to the sheer complexity of the data warehouse as the culprit.

“Problems were discovered with certain parts of the unique and highly complex electrical system. The causes of those problems have been determined and a permanent fix is being implemented,” said the firms.

According to various reports, including the latest by the WSJ, the Bluffdale site was chosen by the NSA owing to its affordable electricity. The data hub will consume some 65 megawatts of energy at a cost of $1 million per month.

Beyond its logistical hurdles, the NSA’s data hub will also open amidst heightened scrutiny. Lawmakers including Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who recently questioned whether the NSA has also been harvesting geo-location data, have expressed a need to lay out just how the NSA will justify the collection of an increasingly dramatic amount of data. 

“There is no question there is going to be increased scrutiny of these kinds of practices,” said Wyden,“because Americans understand this is a dangerous time, but the government, if it’s going to collect [this information], ought to have to say here’s how it contributes to security of the American people. They have not made that case.”

Only a week prior to Edward Snowden’s first batch of published leaks, the massive Utah center had been billed by the agency’s Deputy Director, John Inglis, as only one additional working part of the country’s national security apparatus.

“They shouldn’t be worried because, A, we’re Americans,” Inglis said. “We understand what the principles are that govern the nation; [and] B, we take an oath to the Constitution, and we take that very seriously.”

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

China, the US government’s largest foreign creditor, is “naturally concerned about developments in the US fiscal cliff”, as Reuters quoted Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao giving the Chinese government’s first public response to the Oct 17 US deadline for raising the debt ceiling.

China currently holds 22.85 percent of the US $16.7trln debt, which makes it the biggest US creditor.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew calculated the US would run out of money by October 17 and have less than $30 billion cash in hand if Congress fails to agree on its spending plans.

“We ask that the United States earnestly takes steps to resolve in a timely way before October 17 the political (issues) around the debt ceiling and prevent a US debt default to ensure safety of Chinese investment in the United States and the global economic recovery,” Zhu said.

In 2011 a similar budget deadlock cost the US its triple-A rating, with Standard & Poors downgrading the country to  AA+.

“We hope the United States fully understands the lessons of history,” Zhu said.

The debt ceiling debate of 2011 resolved with a last minute decision following tough warnings over the economic catastrophe from the looming default.

This time around alarm bells are ringing again, with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warning  that the budget brinkmanship was “playing with fire” and imploring the Congress to pass legislation to re-open the government as well as  increase the nation’s debt limit.

The lack of accord in the US Congress could cost the US a default – the first in history -  which would send the global economy into a financial crisis similar to 2008 or worse. The 2008 financial crisis plunged the country into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Raising the debt ceiling is vital for the US itself and the global economy, but Republican House Speaker John Boehner insists the increase of the maximum allowed borrowing limit should come with terms. Boehner vowed on Sunday that there was “no way” Republican lawmakers would agree to a measure to raise the debt ceiling unless it included conditions to rein in deficit spending.

“The votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit, and the President is risking default by not having a conversation with us,” Boehner said.

The shutdown has put hundreds of thousands of workers off the job, closed national parks and museums and stopped an array of government services.

The one bright spot in a Washington deadlock is a significant chunk of the furloughed federal workforce is headed back to work. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered nearly 350,000 back on the job, basing his decision on a Pentagon interpretation of a law called the Pay Our Military Act.

Those who remain at home or are working without paychecks are a step closer to getting back pay once the partial government shutdown ends. The Senate could act this week on the measure that passed the House unanimously on Saturday.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

When it emerged that the woman shot dead by police on Capitol Hill was a depressed single mother, questions surfaced as to why police fired a stream of bullets at an unarmed driver who had an eighteen month old baby in the back of her car.

New details surrounding the death of Miriam Carey are swiftly changing the story’s turn of events: originally, one in which she was accused of being armed and confronted by police heroics during a government shutdown, into one about over-zealous police gunning down an emotionally-troubled woman in front of her child.

The 34-year old dental hygienist from Connecticut had been hospitalized after suffering previous bouts of depression, which began after the birth of 18-month old Erica. “She had postpartum depression after having the baby,” the victim’s mother, Idella Carey, told ABC News. “A few months later, she got sick. She was depressed…she was hospitalized.” Carey [Idella] was under the impression that her daughter was taking the baby to a doctor’s appointment in Conneticut.

Her pregnancy with Erica had been unplanned, according to her former boss, Dr. Barry Weiss, who spoke to NBC Connecticut. Carey [Miriam] had seemed increasingly stressed after discovering the news, and around January 2012, she suffered a fall down a staircase bad enough to have to take two to three weeks off work. She was fired around a year ago, but said there was “nothing unusual about her leaving our office.”

One 59-year-old resident of the building where Carey lived said that she “seemed nice” but had been behaving unusually recently. “She would often speed her car in and out of the parking lot here, and that was something that really concerned me,” he said. “She was pleasant. She was very happy with her daughter, very proud of her daughter…I just never would have anticipated this in a million years,” said Carey’s next-door neighbor, Erin Jackson.

An anonymous law enforcement official later said that Carey harbored the delusional belief that President Barack Obama was communicating with her, according to AP.

At the moment, the public only knows what little it can glean from the available footage and witness accounts. They say she plowed into a security barrier and hit a Secret Service agent who tried to change her direction by waving.

After the police first opened fire on her, she floored the gas and drove off. But after a high-speed pursuit through Capitol Hill streets, she ran into Capitol Hill police officers, who surrounded her car after she slammed into a barrier. One witness reported one of the officers even sticking his weapon into the open window of Carey’s car.

She wheeled the car around and hit a police cruiser, while almost hitting several more officers, before driving off again. From that moment all that is known is that the officers shouted for her to stop as she moved away. Then shots were fired (multiple reports declare more than a dozen were heard in total) and Carey was killed in the vicinity of the Supreme Court. She received six bullets from police guns.

Investigators told the public that the pursuit may have been worse had it not been for the barriers near the White House.

“The perimeters worked… They did exactly what they were supposed to do,” said DC Police chief Cathy Lanier during a press conference following the shooting. The question that then arises is why any further action was required to immobilize Carey herself, when there was all the time in the world to prevent her car from moving?

Dr. Mark Mason believes the situation was entirely overkill on the part of the Capitol Police.

“Given the fact that we have an unarmed female – the police have come forward to say she was unarmed; there was an infant in the car; there was no gunfire of any kind that came from the car at any time – a lot of questions need to be asked,” Mason told RT.

“The police in Washington DC way-way overreacted. There are alternatives to respond to situations short of deadly force. A speeding car – there’s a variety of ways of stopping them,” he continued, mentioning the option of shooting out the tires.

The option of taking a suspect – even one considered a deadly terror suspect – into custody alive is a proven possibility, as was the case with one suspected Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He remains in prison at the moment, despite having been accused of perpetrating the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombings. He was captured alive by police.

Back in May, 27-year-old Ibrahim Todashev who had alleged links to the other Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzhokhar’s brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot six times during questioning by the FBI after apparently attacking one of the agents. He appeared to have been unarmed and there are still no further details of the situation. Tamerlan himself died in a stand-off with police in April.

However, the separate cases are incomparable. While the Boston Bombings killed three and injured over 260, there is no evidence that Carey had any intent to cause danger to another human being.

On Friday, a man from Ohio named Joseph Reel, pleaded guilty to crashing his Jeep near a white House Secret Service guard booth – an incident which happened in June. As the hearing unfolded, US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras cited Carey’s case, telling Reel he was “lucky to be alive,” according to AP.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The government shutdown may instil short-term volatility in the global financial market, but so far, the markets haven’t roared in reaction to the political deadlock in the world’s biggest economy.

US lawmakers failed to agree on their spending bill for the next fiscal year,  as well as  raising the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling, which sent the government into a shutdown effective 12:01am EST on Monday.

Investors haven’t been turned off, as they are more than certain the US will reach a decision on raising the debt ceiling before the October 17 deadline for running out of money.

During early US trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.10 percent, the S&P index, which has fallen seven of the past eight days, added 0.30 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite index gained 0.45 percent.

“The investor climate is still positive, and the US is still driving the global economy. Stability looks solid, we don’t expect any big volatility from this political dispute,” Vladimir Potapov, head of Moscow-based VTB Capital, told RT.

“We’ve seen this more than 20 times in the U.S, and remember, they still have time to resolve the default issue,”  said Potapov.

The US shutdown has had little effect on foreign markets. European stock markets were mostly higher on Tuesday, despite the shaky political news from America.

Equities could actually stand to gain following the shutdown, according to Bloomberg, who reported the S&P 500 has on average risen 11 percent the year after a government shutdown, higher than the average gain. The data is based on the 12 shutdowns that have occurred since 1976.

The S&P 500 has risen 11 percent on average in the 12 months following a government shutdown, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on the 12 instances since 1976. The S&P is already at a relative peak after it gained 3 percent when the Federal Reserve decided to continue its $85 billion-per-month bond buying program.

“The economy we have today can be described as an economy of sentiment, driven mostly by market expectation. All of the crisis are hand-made today,” Igor Nikolaev, director of the strategic analysis department at PKF, told RT.

The current investment sentiment is much more dependent on long-term economic factors, which are still very strong in the US. Investors have confirmed preference of developed markets to emerging markets.

“TV networks all over the world will talk about it. But the people who are buying and selling dollars will not pay too much attention,” said Jim Rogers, chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, adding it’s more of a political show than economic reality.

“They’re not on the brink of default because they can print as much money as they want. Yes, America’s the largest debtor-nation in the entire history of the world. Nobody’s ever been this deep in debt and it’s going higher and higher,”  he said.

Some analysts are more optimistic about the shutdown, hoping it will help speed along the decision to raise the debt ceiling.

Alec Phillips, a Goldman Sachs economist, said on Friday that a shutdown could “ease passage of a debt-limit increase” as Republicans will lose their influence in Congress as they are largely blamed for pushing the shutdown

Politicians, who are fighting to gain support in the budget battle, are telling a much more dramatic doomsday tale.

“We know it would have a profound destabilizing effect on the entire economy — on the world economy — because America is the bedrock of world investment,” President Obama said on Friday in a warning to Congress, adding Congress shouldn’t ‘fool’ with the world’s reserve currency and the foundation for capital markets.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Putin addressed a wide range of topics at the Valdai International Discussion Club on Thursday, where over 200 leading politicians, experts, and journalists gathered for a global dialogue about Russia.

Russia’s traditionalist heart

Putin highlighted traditionalism as the center for Russia’s national identity. 

“Without the values at the core of Christianity and other world religions, without moral norms that have been shaped over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity,” he stated.

The president criticized “Euro-Atlantic countries” where “any traditional identity, … including sexual identity, is rejected… There is a policy equating families with many children with same-sex families, belief in God with belief in Satan,” he said.

“Any minority’s right to be different must be respected, but the right of the majority must not be questioned,” Putin added.

Commenting on the law banning gay propaganda, Putin said that Russia and Europe have demographic problems.

“Europeans are dying out. Don’t you understand that? And same-sex marriages don’t produce children. Do you want to survive by drawing migrants? But society cannot adapt so many migrants. Your choice in many countries is the way it is: recognition of same-sex marriage, adoption, etc. But let us make our own choice the way we see it for our country,” Putin said.

The president added that some American states still have criminal liability for homosexuality.

“Why does everyone like to focus on Russia? You shouldn’t fuel tensions here; there is nothing terrible here,”he said.

President Putin also joked that his old friend Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian Prime Minister would not have faced trial if he was gay.

“Berlusconi faces trial for bedding women. If he was gay, no one would ever lay a finger on him,” he said with a smile.

On vodka, caviar and Russian-European relations

Having put in a word for Silvio Berlusconi, Putin jokingly ticked off Romano Prodi, who he earlier asked to comment on Ukraine’s choice between joining the Customs Union and signing an Association Agreement with the European Union.

“Do take note of what Romano has just said. He is not only an intellectual, an academic, a professor, but also a Eurocrat to the bone.”

Putin responded to Prodi’s remark that Europe and Russia “are now like vodka and caviar.”

“But vodka and caviar are both Russian-made goods. You see, those Europeans are fond of a peculiar way of sharing, which is that first we share what you have, and then it’s back to everybody for themselves,” the Russian president said.

As Prodi suggested substituting “vodka and caviar” with “whiskey and soda,” Putin replied by saying,“Actually, whiskey and soda is a lame, bizarre drink. Whiskey is something you should drink neat, otherwise it’s just a waste of a quality product.”

‘Russia deserves best government’

Putin believes that Russia should have the best leadership possible, but expressed doubts that the American government could set such an example.

“Russia definitely deserves the best kind of government possible. But is there such a thing as a perfect government in other countries, including the one you represent together with Senator McCain – that is a big and awkward question,” Putin said in response to Russian-American political expert Nikolay Zlobin’s query as to how he sees the relationship between power and society in Russia.

Putin recalled that it was twice in US history that a president was elected by the Electoral College without securing a plurality of the popular vote.

“This is an evident flaw in the election procedure, which lies at the heart of American Democracy itself. This goes to say that any system has its downsides. And it might be that your system is no less flawed than ours, if not more.”

Putin welcomes opposition

Russian President Vladimir Putin guardedly welcomed new political opposition leaders as he answered a question about political representation at the 10th annual meeting of the the Valdai Club, a Kremlin-backed international discussion forum in northwestern Russia. He referred to parties that currently do not even have a seat at the table and hinted at amnesty for protesters accused of clashing with police on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square.

“I expect bright leaders to emerge with us. The country needs them,” Putin said during the question-answer session lasting over three hours after giving a speech.

“Neo-Slavophiles and neo-Westernizers, statists and the so-called liberals – all of society needs to work together to shape common development goals, to get rid of the habit of only hearing like-minded people and … dismissing any other point of view.”

4th presidential term in the mix?

During the session, Putin also said that he is not excluding running for fourth term as president. During question-and-answer period, Putin asked French Prime Minister Francois Fillon whether the latter has plans to run for president.

Fillon agreed to answer only if Putin covers the same question.

Putin replied, “I don’t exclude [the possibility]”, to which Fillon followed up with “And I, too, don’t exclude [the possibility].”

Linking Europe and Asia 

The president also praised Eurasian integration at the meeting on Thursday, highlighting a planned Moscow-led political and economic bloc for the former Soviet republics to build links and capitalize.

“Eurasian integration is a chance for the post-Soviet space to become an independent center of global development, rather than the outskirts of Europe and Asia,” Putin said.

He described the planned Eurasian Economic Union as “a project aimed at keeping the identity of peoples populating the historical Eurasian space in the new century and the new world.”

The union is seen as a progression of the Moscow-led Customs Union involving Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, which was operational since January 1, 2012.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The US granted approval for a last-minute flight plan which allowed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to fly over Puerto Rico on his way to China. Venezuela’s FM earlier told media an aircraft carrying Maduro was denied a path over the commonwealth.

Washington told Caracas Thursday night that permission was granted even though the request had not been properly submitted, Reuters cites State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf as saying.

Maduro tweeted at around 10:30 pm local time (0300 GMT) Thursday that he had left Venezuela for Beijing.

Earlier in the day, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua told media the aircraft carrying Maduro to China was forced to find an alternate flight path. Jaua  denounced the act as “an act of aggression.”

“We have received the information from American officials that we have been denied travel over its airspace,” Jaua said, speaking to reporters during an official meeting with his South African counterpart.

“We denounce this as yet another aggression on the part of North American imperialism against the government of the Bolivarian Republic,” he added.

“No one can deny airspace to a plane carrying a president on an international state visit.”

There is “no valid argument” for denying travel through American airspace, Jaua said, adding that he expected the US to rectify the situation.

Harf said Venezuela did not follow proper steps in its flyover request, having given just one day’s notice instead of the mandatory three.

“Additionally, the plane in question was not a state aircraft, which is required for a diplomatic clearance,”she said in a statement.

“Although the request was not properly submitted, U.S. authorities worked with Venezuelan officials at the Venezuelan Embassy to resolve the issue. US authorities made an extraordinary effort to work with relevant authorities to grant overflight approval in a matter of hours,” Harf said.

President Maduro is due to arrive in Beijing this weekend for bilateral talks with the Chinese government. Jaua was adamant that the Venezuelan leader would reach his destination, regardless of any perceived interference.

The incident is the latest diplomatic spat to take place between the United States and Venezuela, who have clashed regularly since Maduro took office in April.

In July, the Venezuelan president announced that his government was halting attempts to improve relations with the US. The move was in response to comments made by the newly appointed US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, who told a Senate committee that her new role would include challenging the “crackdown on civil society” abroad, including in Venezuela.

Relations under former President Chavez had been acrimonious, as he had long held suspicions that the US had actively intervened on behalf of an attempted coup in 2002. Since his election in April, President Maduro has often made pointed criticisms at alleged US interference in Venezuelan affairs.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose own plane was grounded this summer allegedly due to suspicions by US authorities that the aircraft was transporting whistleblower Edward Snowden, said that ALBA bloc nations should consider a boycott of the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York as a response.

“We cannot accept that the US carries on with politics of intimidation and the prohibition of flights by presidents,” said Morales, adding that the latest incident “demonstrates the country’s predisposition to humiliate other governments” and commit crimes against other nations.

Dispute over visas ahead of UN summit

The Venezuelan President also spoke of attempts by the US to set  “conditions” on a visa issued to General Wilmer  Barrientos, one of Maduro’s ministers who is slated to attend  meetings during the UN General Assembly next week.

“They want to put conditions, if we decide to go to New  York…They don’t want to give a visa to my  minister,” said Maduro. “Do we want to go as  tourists? We’re going to the United Nations. You’re obligated to  give visas to all the delegation.”

Appearing via the television network TeleSUR on Thursday, Maduro  indicated that he had directed his foreign minister, Elías Jaua,  and Venezuela’s Ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, to  “activate all mechanisms” in reference to the visa  dispute.

“US, you are not the UN’s owner. The UN will have to move out  of New York,” remarked Maduro.

He warned that if he has to take “measures” against the government of the US, he would be prepared to take “the most drastic measures necessary” to ensure Venezuelan sovereignty.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida became the first American university to offer postgraduate education in drone warfare this autumn, opening a program that promises students job security right after school – when many of their friends could be moving back in with their parents.

Drones are most often in the headlines for eliminating suspected terrorists in Yemen and regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and more controversially for inadvertently killing civilians in those countries. But the technology has also become increasingly popular with police patrolling international borders, environmentalists studying oceanic regions, and meteorologists observing hurricane patterns.

Students who complete the six-month training program at Embry-Riddle will graduate with a master’s degree and job prospects offering a starting salary of US$150,000 a year.

“We’re trying to prepare our students so they’re ready to operate at the highest levels,” Dan Maccharella, department chair of aeronautical sciences at Embry-Riddle, told AP. “It’s going to take off like a rocket. We had students go through the program as fast as they could to get out there.”

Other schools, while not offering a master’s program, do offer drone training classes. Drone pilots can earn anywhere between $50,000 and $120,000 a year, said Jeb Bailey, who trained at Northwestern Michigan College. He told The Daily that for a student who is approaching graduation and swimming in college loans, the job often comes down to simple math.

“The idea of going to Afghanistan and paying off all my loans – that’s very attractive,” Bailey said. “In an airlines career path you don’t expect to make a whole lot until you’ve been in the industry 20 years.”

A spokesman for Unmanned Applications Institute International, an aerial technology advocacy group, said the “pilotless aircraft industry” is expected to create more than 23,000 American jobs over the next 15 years.

Congress and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have yet to approve laws that would allow private drones to fly freely over American soil – but if and when they do, drones proponents say the job market will explode.

“I didn’t get into flying airplanes to do this, but I fell into it because it was lucrative,” John Bounds, a 2006 graduate of Embry-Riddle who now serves as a flight instructor, told AP. “The salary this experience offered was competitive with what I could make as a pilot with 15 years of experience.”

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The US could move ahead with plans to intervene in Syria in spite of Damascus’s pledge to hand over its chemical weapons to international observers, Syria expert Manuel Ochsenreiter told RT.

RT: You listened to what both Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry had to say. What are your thoughts? Did their words inspire confidence in you?

MO: We witnessed maybe the most interesting times in terms of diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. For journalists covering the Syrian conflict it is like a diplomatic rollercoaster. I think we have heard so many contradicting messages, especially from the US government during the last two weeks and a half that somehow on the one side it is surprising that they reached an agreement with Russia and on the other side it is not so surprising anymore, because the US government has lost a lot of credibility not just internationally but among their own citizens, so they had to agree. If we look at today’s message from John Kerry, it’s clear that he has done a U-turn with regard to his position.

RT: Secretary Kerry went out of his way to stress the high level of cooperation between Russia and the US. Why did it take two years, though, to get here?

MO: If we look at the Syria war, and we use in media the term civil war, but it’s not a civil war, it’s a proxy war. We see that especially the US government is involved in this conflict. They are desperately trying to give reinforcement to the rebels. But we see after two and a half years of violence that there is a complete failure. The so-called armed opposition, including a large number of Jihadist extremists, haven’t managed to gain any ground in Syria. What we see now from the American side now is related to that failure of the last two and a half years. But we shouldn’t forget that this new agreement opens a new diplomatic scenario. If we listen to the words of john Kerry carefully, he was saying: “Inspect any and all sites in Syria.” So we see that there is now a scenario opening that the Americans might claim in the near future that the Syrian government is not cooperating. So I think the military option is not off the table.

RT: This deal, judging from what’s been said so far, depends on both the regime’s and the rebels’ cooperation. So far the latter have refused to cooperate, but we can’t forget the thousands of internationally recognized terrorists in Syria. Isn’t it in their power to sink this idea entirely?

MO: While both foreign ministers were giving this press conference, in Syria tens of thousands of terrorists – a large number of them from abroad – are fighting and killing civilians and committing horrible war crimes. So reaching a practical agreement is really an important issue. We also should not forget the meaning of the chemical weapons for Syria, for the Syrian state and people. We talk about this chemical weapons stockpile in terms of an offensive weapon. But for the Syrian government the chemical weapons are like a protective armor which helps protect the independence and sovereignty of Syria. I think this is an aspect that should be considered in these discussions.

RT: Secretary Kerry admitted that rebel groups may have gained control of certain chemical weapons stores. What do you make of that admission, the timing of it?

MO: I think he had to admit it. The US position that only the Syrian government possesses chemical weapons and the Syrian government only uses these weapons in the conflict. However there is no evidence at all of this, although the US government claims this. There is no credibility in these claims. I think the congressmen of the US know this, the population knows this, and so it would be a bizarre point of view if John Kerry insisted that the rebels don’t have chemical weapons.

RT: Won’t this admission in the future only complicate any US efforts to secure UN backing for military action without an investigation?

MO: We should listen very carefully to US politicians and to what mainstream media is writing about this. We see the position that the mere existence of a chemical weapons stockpile might be reason enough to intervene, so I don’t think this will change much when it comes to military intervention. We shouldn’t forget that the West is prepared. The US has said already they will not respect any UN decision. We should not forget this.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The official, Kazuhiko Yamashita, was asked his opinion of comments by Abe regarding the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Buenos Aries last Saturday.

“I think the current situation is that it is not under control,” Yamashita said at a hearing in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture, on Friday before further apologizing for the leaks.

In reaction to Yamashita’s comments, Democratic Party of Japan Secretary-General Akihiro Ohata told reporters the prime minister should fully explain what led him to his pronouncement last week.

Following Yamashita’s comments, however, TEPCO released a statement clarifying Abe’s position.

“It is our understanding that the Prime Minister intended his statement ‘the situation is under control’ to mean that the impact of radioactive materials is limited to the area within the port of the power station, and that the densities of radioactive materials on the surrounding waters are far below the referential densities and have not been on continuous upward trends. According to this understanding, we share the same views.”

TEPCO moved to downplay Yamashita’s comments.

“Today, the media have reported that a TEPCO employee mentioned his view regarding the contaminated water issue that ‘the situation is not under control,’” the company said in a statement.

The statement continued that after examining land and sea radioactive density, the contaminated water was only affecting the inner area of the harbor, while no radioactive cesium had been detected in many spots checked beyond the port.

The statement continued that “the TEPCO employee” was fully aware of the situation and had “intended to mention” that contaminated water had in fact leaked into the inner port area, and that water had leaked from the storage tanks.

“In case we have such troubles, we will take appropriate measures so that there is no negative impact to the outer sea,” the statement continued.

Abe, in a bid to reassure the IOC before Tokyo was picked as host of the 2020 Games, said that the radioactive water has been “completely blocked” within a 0.3-square-kilometer area in the harbor of the Fukushima No. 1 plant. He continued that Japan would never allow contaminated water to threaten the capital.

Compounding Fukushima’s growing troubles, steam was seen rising from a puddle perched atop the reactor on Friday.

The appearance of the vapor, which TEPCO believes is emanating from an accumulation of rain water, has been arising intermittently since July. Scientists remain unsure why the steam continues to appear.

‘Much worse than Three Mile Island’

Meanwhile, a former US nuclear regular said that cleaning up Fukushima was a bigger challenge than efforts to tackle the Three Mile Island disaster and the issue of radioactive water leaks was a minor part of the overall task, AP reports.

Lake Barrett, who was appointed as an outside adviser for the decommissioning process by TEPCO,  had led the Three Mile Island accident cleanup for nearly a decade as part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

He said that the meltdowns in three of the reactors, massive radiation leaks and the volume of contaminated water at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant made the cleanup process far more complicated.

“In comparison to Three Mile Island, Fukushima is much more challenging, much more complex a job,”Barrett told a Tokyo news conference on Friday.

The 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, involved one reactor. The radioactivity was solely contained in one building, where 8,000 tons of contaminated water was trapped.

Barrett argues work should commence to pump groundwater from the plant before it reaches wrecked reactors – a move that has been resisted by local opposition.

“They should start pumping as soon as practical,” said Barrett, adding that groundwater would have to be released into the ocean along with water that had been treated to remove most radiation – by a system designed by Toshiba Corp, Reuters reports.

“I believe in a matter of a few months … early next year … water will be cleaned up and be ready to be discharged,” he continued.

Although Barrett admitted he would feed his grandchildren fish caught off the Fukushima coast if the clean-up proceeds as planned, he understood that TEPCO had lost credibility and was thus unable to reassure the public.

“When Tepco says: ‘Trust me, this water is safe,’ that’s not enough,” he said.

Barrett’s arrival followed an admission last month that TEPCO needed international help to contain the radioactive fallout after efforts to deal with it internally were unsuccessful.

TEPCO on Thursday was further forced to acknowledge that samples of underground water taken near a tank where a major leak occurred last month showed high levels of radioactive tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

Tritium, which has a half-life of a little over 12 years, is less harmful to humans than cesium and strontium.

The plant operator said tritium levels in water taken from a well close to a number of storage tanks holding irradiated water rose to 97,000 becquerels per liter on Wednesday, up from 64,000 becquerels/liter measured at the same location a day earlier, Reuters reports.

More than two and a half years since the 2011 disaster, which was sparked by a massive earthquake and tsunami, TEPCO is struggling to pump out, treat and store massive amounts of contaminated water that is increasing at a rate of 400 metric tons a day.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Syria’s chemical arms handover will only work if the US and its allies renounce the use of force against Damascus.

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“Of course, all of this will only mean anything if the United States and other nations supporting it tell us that they’re giving up their plan to use force against Syria. You can’t really ask Syria, or any other country, to disarm unilaterally while military action against it is being contemplated,” President Putin said on Tuesday.

President Putin said that the matter of bringing Syria’s chemical weapons under international control has long been a subject of discussion by experts and politicians.

Putin confirmed that he and President Barack Obama had “indeed discussed” such a possibility on the sidelines of the G20 summit in St. Petersburg last week. It was agreed, Putin said, “to instruct Secretary of State [John Kerry] and Foreign Minister [Sergey Lavrov]to work together and see if they can achieve some progress in this regard.”

President Putin’s comments came shortly after the Syrian government said it would agree to place its chemical weapons arsenal under international control.

On Tuesday, Britain, France and the US said they would table a resolution on Syrian chemical weapons to the UN Security Council later in the day.

An emergency closed-door meeting at the Security Council is scheduled to take place at 4:00pm EST (20:00 GMT), the UN press office said.

“If this is a serious proposal, then we should act accordingly and I think a UN Security Council resolution is a good idea,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said.

However, the US and France said they would not rule out any possible reaction to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Interfax cited the Elysee Palace as saying in a statement.

According to the news agency, “the presidents of France and the US reiterated that they would prefer a diplomatic solution, but they have also expressed willingness to retain any other options to neutralize the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal.” 

Russia’s Foreign Ministry will propose a draft statement by the chairman of the UN Security Council, supporting the initiative to transfer Syria’s chemical weapons to international control.

The issue was discussed during a phone conversation between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius.

“[Lavrov] said that Russia, on its part, is submitting a draft statement for the UN Security Council’s chairman, welcoming the… initiative and calling on the UN Secretary General, the general director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and all the interested parties to make efforts to facilitate the implementation of this proposal,” the ministry’s statement said.

At the same time, Syria said it was ready to completely give up chemical weapons and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention.

“We are ready to show sites with chemical arsenals to Russia’s representatives, as well as representatives of other states and the UN,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV.

Despite voicing “some serious skepticism,” Western countries supported Russia’s proposal, stressing the importance of Assad fulfilling the agreement and surrendering the weapons stockpiles.

Britain said it would like Russia and Syria to show that the proposal to President Bashar Assad is“serious and genuine.”

In Washington, the White House echoed the UK statement, saying it wanted to verify that Syria was serious in its intentions.

Earlier, the French government said that the handover of Syria’s chemical weapons to international control should be closely scrutinized. France said it would table a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling on Syria to give up its stockpiles of chemical arms, threatening “extremely serious”consequences if Syria violates its conditions.

Obama’s administration, which last week was firmly insisting on military intervention following the Aug.21 chemical weapons attack, has now changed its position.

In response to Russia’s proposal, Obama said he was willing to “absolutely” put on pause a military strike on Syria if Assad accepts the offer.

The US Senate was initially scheduled to vote on whether to authorize “limited military actions,” but a Senate Democratic leadership aide said it was now not known if the Senate would vote this week on Syria.

“We want to give the president a chance to make his case,” the aide said, adding that following President Obama’s speech Tuesday night, Senate leaders would review the situation.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

“We are calling on the Syrian authorities not only agree on putting chemical weapons storages under international control, but also for its further destruction and then joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,”Lavrov said. “We have passed our offer to [Syrian Foreign Minister] Walid al-Muallem and hope to receive a fast and positive answer,” he added.

It is unclear if Syria will support the offer, but if it helps to avoid a military strike, Russia is immediately prepared to work with Damascus, Lavrov said.

The Foreign Minister’s statement comes shortly after US Secretary of State John Kerry’s comment that the Syrian President “could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community” to avoid a military strike on the country.

“Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week – turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting [of it[, but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done,” Kerry said.

Following Kerry’s statement, a US State Department spokeswoman clarified that “Secretary Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons”.

“His [Kerry’s[ point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That’s why the world faces this moment,” the spokeswoman said.

The Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said that Damascus was ready for “full cooperation with Russia to remove any pretext for aggression.”

The Russian and Syrian Foreign Ministers met in Moscow on Monday.

As part of their meeting, Lavrov and al-Muallem urged for opposition and the government to unite their efforts in expelling terrorists from Syria. The two agreed that a political settlement is still possible.

Sergey Lavrov said that more and more states share Russia’s belief that military action in Syria will only inflame terrorism.

Russia and Syria urged the US to focus on convening a peace conference to end a more than two-year long crisis, rather than launching military strikes.

With Obama seeking Congress’ support for military action to respond to an alleged chemical attack near Damascus, al-Muallem said “the diplomatic channels to resolve this issue have not been exhausted”.

“We ask about the motivation of the US to launch a strike against us”, he said.

Lavrov has reiterated Moscow’s full support for calls by the UN Security Council to bring chemical experts back to Syria to complete their mission.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The potential of a US strike against Syria in response to an August 21 chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb gained steam on Wednesday, when a resolution backing the use of force against President Bashar Assad’s government cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a 10-7 vote.

President Obama has decided to put off military action until at least September 9, when the seemingly recalcitrant US House of Representatives reconvenes to vote on the measure.

Following the August 21 Ghouta Attack, which killed anywhere between 355 to 1,729 people, the diplomatic scramble to launch or stave off a military strike on Syria was mirrored by the movement of naval forces in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Syria.

The deployment of US and allied naval warships in the region has been matched by the deployment of Russian naval warships in the region.

While the Western vessels have in many cases been deployed in the event a military strike against Syria gets a green light, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s naval presence is needed to protect national security interests and is not a threat to any nation.

Below is a brief summary of the naval hardware currently amassed off Syria’s shores.

USA

The US Navy has five Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers off the coast of Syria, which its top admiral says is “fully ready” for a wide range of possible actions.

The USS Ramage, USS Mahan, USS Gravely and USS Barry are each armed with dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 nautical miles (1,151 miles) and are used for precise targeting.

The ships are also equipped with surface-to-air missiles capable of defending the vessels from air attacks.

On August 29, the USS Stout was sent to relieve the USS Mahan, but a defense official told AFP that both ships might remain in the area for the time being.

Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday that the US ships are prepared for what he called a “vast spectrum of operations,”including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets in Syria, as was done in Libya in 2011, and protecting themselves in the event of retaliation, AP reports.

In addition to the destroyers, the United States may well have one of its four guided missile submarines off the coast of Syria. At one time these subs were equipped with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. Nowadays, they are capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

It was also announced on Monday that the US had deployed the USS San Antonio, an amphibious transport ship, to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The USS San Antonio, with several helicopters and hundreds of Marines on board, is “on station in the Eastern Mediterranean” but “has received no specific tasking,” a defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The deployment of the USS Antonio comes despite promises from President Obama that no amphibious landing is on the agenda, as the US has ostensibly ruled out any “boots on the ground.”

While the wording of the draft resolution set to be put before the House does not permit a ground invasion, the wording of the text could potentially allow troops to carry out non-offensive operations within Syria, including securing chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities.

On Monday, it was also announced the USS Nimitz super carrier had moved into the Red Sea, though it had not been given orders to be part of the planning for a limited US military strike on Syria, US officials told ABC News.

The other ships in the strike group are the cruiser USS Princeton and the destroyers USS William P. Lawrence, USS Stockdale and USS Shoup.

The official said the carrier strike group has not been assigned a mission, but was shifted in the event its resources are needed to “maximize available options.”

The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and strike group is also in the northern Arabian Sea.

Russia

Russia, Syria’s longtime ally and primary arms supplier, has its only overseas naval base located in the Syrian port of Tartus, which has reportedly been used to support Russia’s growing number of naval patrols on the Mediterranean. However, Russia insists recent efforts to bolster its naval presence in the region are not in response to Western threats of a military strike.

Reported movements of many Russian ships in the region are coming from anonymous Russian defense ministry sources and have not been confirmed. RT contacted the Russian Navy to ask for confirmation of the reported ship movements, though no comment was forthcoming.

On Friday, for example, the large landing ship, Nikolai Filchenkov, was reportedly dispatched from the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol for the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, from where it is eventually expected to reach the Syrian coast, a source told Interfax News Agency.

“The ship will make call in Novorossiisk, where it will take on board special cargo and set off for the designated area of its combat duty in the eastern Mediterranean,” the source said.

RIA news agency quoted an unnamed senior naval source as saying on Friday that the frigate, Smetlivy, would leave for the Mediterranean on September 12-14, and the corvette Shtil and missile boat Ivanovets would approach Syria at the end of the month.

The Russian destroyer Nastoichivy, which is the flagship of the Baltic fleet, is also expected to join the group in the region.

Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov, who was unable to comment on specific reports, said on Thursday the Russian navy currently had a “pretty strong group” there.

“The Russian navy does not intend to take part directly or indirectly in a possible regional conflict,” he told the state Rossiya 24 broadcaster.

“Our navy vessels are a guarantee of stability, guarantee of peace, an attempt to hold back other forces ready to start military action in the region.”

Also reportedly in place in the eastern Mediterranean are the frigate Neustrashimy, as well as the landing ships Alexander Shabalin, the Admiral Nevelsky and the Peresvet.

They are expected to be joined by the guided-missile cruiser Moskva.

The Moskva, set to arrive in a little over a week’s time, will take over operations from a naval unit in the region.

“The plans of the naval unit under the command of Rear Admiral Valery Kulikov had to be changed a little. Instead of visiting a Cape Verde port, the cruiser Moskva is heading to the Strait of Gibraltar. In about ten days, it will enter the eastern Mediterranean, where it will replace the destroyer Admiral Panteleyev as the flagship of the operative junction of the Russian Navy,” a source told Interfax on Wednesday.

Panteleyev incidentally, only arrived in the east Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday after leaving the Far-Eastern port city of Vladivostok on March 19 to join the Russian standing naval force as its flagship.

The SSV-201 reconnaissance ship, Priazovye, is also reportedly on its way to join the group in the Eastern Mediterranean. Accompanied by the two landing ships, Minsk and Novocherkassk, the intelligence ship passed through the ‘Istanbul Strait’ on Thursday, which helps form the boundary between Europe and Asia.

FRANCE

On August 31, French military officials confirmed the frigate Chevalier Paul, which specializes in anti-missile capabilities, and the transport ship, Dixmude, were in the Mediterranean. French officials denied they are in the region to participate in military action against Syria, but were rather taking part in training and operation preparations.

Despite their presence in the region, France currently has no ship-based missiles, so any offensive action would come from the air in the form of long-range Scalp missiles, similar to those the nation used in Kosovo in 1999 and in Libya in 2011, Time reports.

Italy

Two Italian warships set sail for Lebanon on Wednesday in a bid to protect 1,100 Italian soldiers in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Syria’s southeastern neighbor, Agence France Presse reported.

The Italian ANSA news agency reported that a frigate and a torpedo destroyer boat departed from Italy’s southeastern coast on Wednesday and would provide additional protection to the soldiers in the event the Syrian conflict further deteriorates.

UK

As of August 29, the Royal Navy’s Response Force Task Group was deployed in the Mediterranean as part of long-planned exercise Cougar 13. The force includes helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious, type-23 frigates HMS Westminster and HMS Montrose, amphibious warship HMS Bulwark and six Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships. The Trafalgar-class nuclear submarine HMS Tireless was also believed to be in the area at the time, after it was detected in Gibraltar.

On the same day that British media started touting Britain’s “arsenal of military might” which would be available in the event of intervention, British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a vote endorsing military action against Syria by 13 votes. In light of the shocking parliamentary defeat, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK would only be able to offer the US “diplomatic support.”

The UK’s Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne, confirmed that the UK would not seek a further vote on action in Syria.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

There was no 50/50 split of opinion on the notion of a military strike against the Syrian President Bashar Assad, Putin stressed refuting earlier assumptions.

Only Turkey, Canada, Saudi Arabia and France joined the US push for intervention, he said, adding that the UK Prime Minister’s position was not supported by his citizens.

Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Italy were among the major world’s economies clearly opposed to military intervention.

President Putin said the G20 nations spent the “entire” Thursday evening discussing the Syrian crisis, which was followed by Putin’s bilateral meeting with UK Prime Minister David Cameron that lasted till 3am Moscow time.

Russia “will help Syria” in the event of a military strike, Putin stressed as he responded to a reporter’s question at the summit.

“Will we help Syria? We will. And we are already helping, we send arms, we cooperate in the economics sphere, we hope to expand our cooperation in the humanitarian sphere, which includes sending humanitarian aid to support those people – the civilians – who have found themselves in a very dire situation in this country,” Putin said. 

Putin said he sat down with US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G20 summit and talked for about half an hour in “a friendly atmosphere”.

Although the Russian and the American leaders maintained different positions regarding the Syrian issue, Putin said they “hear” and understand each other.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry will continue discussing the situation in Syria “in the short run,” Putin said.

Meanwhile, President Obama reiterated in his summit speech that the US government believes Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces were behind the chemical weapons use.

Obama pledged to make a good case on the issue for both the international community and the American people, saying many nations are already “comfortable” with the US’ opinion.

While admitting “a number of countries” at the summit stressed any military action plan should go through the UN Security Council, Obama said the US is in a different “camp” that questioned the UNSC effectiveness.

“Given the Security Council’s paralysis on this issue, if we are serious about upholding a ban on chemical weapons use, then an international response is required and that will not come through the Security Council action,” Obama said.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

“If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic,” Aleksandr Lukashevich said in a Wednesday statement.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to complete a risk evaluation as the US continues to seek support for military action. It asked the agency to “react swiftly”and carry out “an analysis of the risks linked to possible American strikes on the MNSR and other facilities in Syria.”

Lukashevich stated that the region could be at risk of “contamination by highly enriched uranium and it would no longer be possible to account for nuclear material, its safety and control.” He added that such material could fall into the wrong hands.

The IAEA said that it is aware of the statement, but it is waiting for a formal request asking the agency to complete a risk evaluation. “We will consider the questions raised if we receive such a request,” Reuters quoted an IAEA spokesperson as saying.

The agency said in a report to member states last week that Syria had declared there was a “small amount of nuclear material” at the MNSR, a type of research reactor usually fuelled by highly enriched uranium.

Although this type of a reactor would not contain a lot of nuclear material, it would be enough to cause “a serious local radiation hazard” if the reactor was hit, nuclear expert Mark Hibbs from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Reuters.

The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted on Wednesday to approve President Obama’s plan to strike Syria in retaliation against the alleged use of chemical weapons by President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Should Congress move to approve the president’s request, the US could soon initiate a limited strike on Syria.

On the other hand, Moscow needs convincing proof – not rumors – from UN experts that chemical weapons were used in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with AP and Channel 1 on Tuesday.

“We believe that at the very least we should wait for the results of the UN inspection commission in Syria,”Putin said. He added that so far there is no information regarding exactly which chemical agent was used in the attack in the Damascus suburb, or who was behind it.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

RT’s LIVE UPDATES on Syrian ‘chemical weapons’ crisis

A statement released by the ministry on Wednesday particularly drew attention to the “massive stove-piping of various information aimed at placing the responsibility for the alleged chemical weapons use in Syria on Damascus, even though the results of the UN investigation have not yet been revealed.”

By such means “the way is being paved for military action” against Damascus, the ministry pointed out.

But the samples taken at the site of the March 19 attack and analyzed by Russian experts indicate that a projectile carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin was most likely fired at Khan al-Assal by the rebels, the ministry statement suggests, outlining the 100-page report handed over to the UN by Russia.

The key points of the report have been given as follows:

• the shell used in the incident “does not belong to the standard ammunition of the Syrian army and was crudely according to type and parameters of the rocket-propelled unguided missiles manufactured in the north of Syria by the so-called Bashair al-Nasr brigade”;

• RDX, which is also known as hexogen or cyclonite, was used as the bursting charge for the shell, and it is “not used in standard chemical munitions”;

• soil and shell samples contain “the non-industrially synthesized nerve agent sarin and diisopropylfluorophosphate,” which was “used by Western states for producing chemical weapons during World War II.”

The findings of the report are “extremely specific,” as they mostly consist of scientific and technical data from probes’ analysis, the ministry stressed, adding that this data can “substantially aid” the UN investigation of the incident.

While focusing on the Khan al-Assal attack on March 19, in which at least 26 civilians and Syrian army soldiers were killed, and 86 more were injured, the Russian Foreign Ministry also criticized the “flawed selective approach” of certain states in reporting the recent incidents of alleged chemical weapons use in August.

The hype around the alleged attack on the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta showed “apparent attempts to cast a veil over the incidents of gas poisoning of Syrian army soldiers on August 22, 24 and 25,” the ministry said, adding that all the respective evidence was handed to the UN by Syria.

The condition of the soldiers who, according to Damascus, suffered poisoning after discovering tanks with traces of sarin, has been examined and documented by the UN inspectors, the ministry pointed out, adding that “any objective investigation of the August 21 incident in eastern Ghouta is impossible without the consideration of all these facts.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said the UN investigators are set to return to Syria to investigate several other cases of alleged chemical weapons use, including the March 19 incident in Khan al-Assal.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The Washington Post revealed the so-called “black budget” on Thursday and reports that $52.6 billion was set aside for operations in fiscal year 2013.

Among the biggest priorities for the intelligence community, the Post reported, are “offensive cyber operations” and research devoted to decoding encrypted communications.

The Post’s Barton Gellman, Greg Miller and Julie Tate wrote Thursday that Mr. Snowden, the 30-year-old former Booz Allen Hamilton staffer who started leaking classified national security documents earlier this year, provided the paper with the never-before published summary of this year’s budget.

But although the Post reported that the document is 178 pages in length, they have at the same time elected to only make available one-tenth of the content, citing “concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods” brought up by US officials who were notified ahead of publication.

FY 2013 Congressional Budget Justification, provided by Washington Post 

“Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that the Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online,” the paper wrote in the article that accompanies the 17-page selection. The document is labeled “top secret” and warns that it is only to be accessed by US citizens with the proper security clearance.

Shrouded in secrecy, the amount that Uncle Sam sets aside for sensitive operations each year is not allowed to be published for eyes outside of the intelligence community and only for a portion of those briefed on its operations. The latest Snowden leak reveals that at $52.6 billion, the government is actually handing out 2.3 percent fewer than it did in fiscal year 2012 and, additionally, sequestration has caused the agencies to shed 1,241 positions, or around one percent of its workforce. Despite these setbacks, though, the budget, described by the Post as “a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny,” includes billions of dollars towards operations that may not be funded if debated in the press.

In comparison, the Department of Homeland Security was allocated $55.4 billion in FY2013. The black budget comes in at a figure larger than the sums received by the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce and NASA this year combined.

Yet despite the hefty cost of operating the secret operations amid sequestration, excerpts from the summary leaked by Snowden show that the US still has significant setbacks keeping it from achieving its intelligence goals.

For one, the disclosure in and of itself demonstrates the intelligence community’s inability to prevent sensitive information from being leaked.

In FY2013, the budget summary says the government invested in ramping-up its counterintelligence operations at a time when budget cuts led to reductions in the community’s workforce, operations, long-term investments, infrastructure and information technology sectors.

“To further safeguard our classified networks, we continue to strengthen insider threat detection capabilities across the community,” the document reads.

As the Post reported, however, the implementation of any insider threat program came too late to catch Snowden, who began mining for documents while employed as a contractor for Dell Inc in May 2012. Snowden began work at Dell in 2009 and it is not immediately clear what security clearance he had before or during the time he started scouring networks for documents, but the Post article claims “a major counterintelligence initiative” budgeted for FY2012 saw its own resources slashed after an “all-hands, emergency response” was ordered to deal with the disclosures then being published by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

The Post cites an excerpt from this year’s budget where it’s noted that programs are being implemented to “mitigate insider threats by trusted insiders who seek to exploit their authorized access to sensitive information to harm US interests.” Although Snowden’s disclosures — including this one — demonstrate that the $3.64 billion set aside to “integrate counterintelligence” in FY2013 could have likely benefited the intelligence community had it come sooner.

According to one graph included in the document, roughly 39 percent of this year’s black budget was set aside for providing strategic intelligence and warning, with around one-third going towards combating violent extremism. Counter weapons proliferation received 13 percent of total funding, and enhancing cybersecurity and integrating counterintelligence were allotted 8 and 7 percent, respectively.

More broadly speaking, Central Intelligence Agency programs were awarded 28 percent of the total $52.6 billion — or around $14.7 billion, with the Consolidated Cryptologic Program receiving the second most funding with roughly $11 billion. The Post reports that that program includes the National Security Agency on the division of the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines that involves conducting surveillance and breaking and decrypting codes.

“We are bolstering our support for clandestine SIGINT [signals intelligence] capabilities to collect against high priority targets, including foreign leadership targets,” DNI Clapper says in the summary. “Also, we are investing in groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit Internet traffic.”

Approached by the Post for comment before Thursday’s publication, Clapper said, “The United States has made a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community since the terror attacks of 9/11, a time which includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, and asymmetric threats in such areas as cyber-warfare.”

“Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats,” he added.

Through previous disclosures attributed to Snowden, though, the American public has learned that the NSA programs launched to collect foreign intelligence has allowed the federal government to sweep up personal and private information pertaining to Americans who are guaranteed constitution protection from such surveillance.

At the same time, the targeting of foreign persons of interest has apparently suffered significant losses as of late with regards to the intelligence community’s aspirations. The document claims that counterintelligence initiatives are being ramped up against “key targets” including China, Russia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Cuba, but the Post reported that five “critical” gaps currently exist keeping the US from collecting as much as it would like on North Korea.

“Analysts know virtually nothing about the intentions of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un,” the Post reported, adding that those critical gaps have given America the inability to properly assess the nuclear and missile programs masterminded from Pyongyang.

Elsewhere, though, the reporters say that other parts of the budget suggest North Korea is anything but an active target.

“A section on North Korea indicates that the United States has all but surrounded the nuclear-armed country with surveillance platforms,” the paper reported. “There are distant ground sensors to monitor seismic activity and scan the country for signs that might point to construction of new nuclear sites. US agencies seek to capture photos, air samples and infrared imagery ‘around the clock.’”

And for those nations of upmost interest, the intelligence community is investing heavily on “offensive cyber operations” launched by the CIA and NSA to hack foreign competitors, steal data and sabotage servers. The Post neglected to publish any excerpts from the summary detailing to what degree the intelligence community has been engaging in these strategic hacks, saying only that recently launched efforts are more “aggressive” than before. As RT has reported extensively in the past, the US government has been accused of being the biggest hackers on the planet at a time when, domestically, so-called cybercriminals are prosecuted at an alarming rate for comparably less harsh crimes.

Last week, RT reported that hacker and political activist Jeremy Hammond of Chicago, Illinois will soon be sentenced for his admitted role in aiding with malicious campaigns targeting the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association, computer servers used by various New York State police chiefs and a company that provides munitions used to gas protesters in Egypt, among others. According to a letter written by Hammond from a New York City jail cell, the US government used a confidential informant within the hacktivist groups Anonymous and LulzSec “to facilitate the hacking of targets of the government’s choosing – including numerous websites belonging to foreign governments.”

“Why was the United States using us to infiltrate the private networks of foreign governments? What are they doing with the information we stole? And will anyone in our government ever be held accountable for these crimes?” Hammond asked.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

US Government “getting ready for civil war”; the experimental vaccines in your dinner; and that virus on your computer – the army now linked to systematic black ops against ordinary citizens.

Seek truth from facts with Trends Journal publisher Gerry Celente, editor of Storyleak Anthony Gucciardi, and author of Questioning the War on Terror Dr. Kevin Barrett.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Watch The Full Interview Here

Paul, who conducted an “Ask Me Anything” session Thursday on the social news site Reddit, is perhaps best known as the perennial presidential hopeful who has advocated for a deregulated free market economy and drastic cuts in US foreign aid. He recently launched the Ron Paul Channel, an online news network that will air three 30-minute shows each week.

Paul has made headlines over the past 24 hours for asserting that Manning – who, as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, leaked 700,000 diplomatic cables, combat video, and battlefield reports in 2010 – should be freed immediately instead of serving the 35 year sentence handed down by a military court Wednesday.

Manning, in a statement made public 24 hours after the sentence, announced that he identifies as a woman and would prefer to be referred to as ‘Chelsea.’ The 25-year-old has returned to Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas, where military officials say they will not adhere to his gender identity request.

“Most military personnel who are caught committing war crimes never receive any penalties,” Paul said in the Reddit question-and-answer session. “I think he should be released now, [and] that he has done us a great service by letting the people know the truth.”

Speaking to Larry King, he compared Manning and Edward Snowden – the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed widespread domestic and foreign surveillance programs – to Daniel Ellsberg, who disclosed that the US government had systematically lied about the true cause of the Vietnam War.

“I think highly of them. I think of them like Daniel Ellsberg, who they tried to put away for a long time and they tried The New York Times for releasing the truth of how the Vietnam War started and how we were lied into that war,” he said. “The people now telling us the truth about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan should be seen more as heroes. A guy like Snowden knows exactly what he was up to and he knows the danger of it. I sincerely believe, although I’ve never met him, that he believed he was doing a service to the people by doing this. We shouldn’t be calling people like this traitors.”

Julian Assange, the founder of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks who has supported Paul’s position of opening the conversation up for a more beneficial political dialogue, was also discussed in the interview.

“I want as much government transparency as possible and think WikiLeaks has worked very hard to make sure no one has been hurt, and there’s no evidence anyone has, but if our government is doing something wrong and they’re hiding it from us I think there is a moral obligation of those who know it and can reveal that to us to let us know,” Paul told King.

Paul admitted that national lawmakers’ private disputes have always been of little relevance when the true matter at hand should be how to govern the nation and how to best administer affairs overseas. 

“I’ve never been too interested in politics in spite of the fact that I spent so many years there,” he said. “I don’t pay a lot of attention to it. I’m more interested, as I always have been, in monetary policy, foreign policy, and I don’t think we get very far with the partisan bickering.”

Especially egregious has been the number of politicians who claim to have major philosophical differences while agreeing on topics that apply to the public interest, he said. That problem was never more evident than when Republican Justin Amash proposed legislation that would have defunded the surveillance apparatus Snowden recently revealed.

“I don’t see it as one party versus the other. I see both parties as very closely aligned and the independent-minded people being separate from them,” Paul continued. “If you look at that Amash vote, having to do with the NSA and whether or not we should rein them in a little bit, leadership on both sides were very much in favor of spying. Yet there was a large number of people responding to Republicans and Democrats in opposition to this…I think some of us just see things differently.”

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

A shocked crowd of holiday-makers at a beach near Russia’s western city of Kaliningrad had to make way for a landing craft carrier which unexpectedly slid onto the shore on its air cushion. The video of the incident, taken by one of the beach-goers, was posted online on Tuesday. It features the amphibious landing craft “Zubr” (“Bison”), sailing on its air cushion, raising huge waves and a making loud noise as it approached a crowded beach in Mechnikovo, Kaliningrad region and eventually slid onto the shore packed with people. No one was hurt in the incident, following which marines descended from the vessel and cordoned it off. Russia’s Ministry of Defense explained the ship was out for a regular drill and said the beach actually belonged to the military.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Fukushima operator TEPCO wants to extract 400 tons worth of spent fuel rods stored in a pool at the plant’s damaged Reactor No. 4. The removal would have to be done manually from the top store of the damaged building in the radiation-contaminated environment.

In the worst-case scenario, a mishandled rod may go critical, resulting in an above-ground meltdown releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it, said Consolo, who is the founder and host of Nuked Radio. But leaving the things as they are is not an option, because statistical risk of a similarly bad outcome increases every day, she said.

RT: How serious is the fuel rod situation compared to the danger of contaminated water build-up which we already know about?

Christina Consolo: Although fuel rod removal happens on a daily basis at the 430+ nuclear sites around the world, it is a very delicate procedure even under the best of circumstances. What makes fuel removal at Fukushima so dangerous and complex is that it will be attempted on a fuel pool whose integrity has been severely compromised. However, it must be attempted as Reactor 4 has the most significant problems structurally, and this pool is on the top floor of the building.

There are numerous other reasons that this will be a dangerous undertaking.

- The racks inside the pool that contain this fuel were damaged by the explosion in the early days of the accident.

- Zirconium cladding which encased the rods burned when water levels dropped, but to what extent the rods have been damaged is not known, and probably won’t be until removal is attempted.

- Saltwater cooling has caused corrosion of the pool walls, and probably the fuel rods and racks.

- The building is sinking.

- The cranes that normally lift the fuel were destroyed.

- Computer-guided removal will not be possible; everything will have to be done manually.

- TEPCO cannot attempt this process without humans, which will manage this enormous task while being bombarded with radiation during the extraction and casking.

- The process of removing each rod will have to be repeated over 1,300 times without incident.

- Moving damaged nuclear fuel under such complex conditions could result in a criticality if the rods come into close proximity to one another, which would then set off a chain reaction that cannot be stopped.

What could potentially happen is the contents of the pool could burn and/or explode, and the entire structure sustain further damage or collapse. This chain reaction process could be self-sustaining and go on for a long time. This is the apocalyptic scenario in a nutshell.

The water build-up is an extraordinarily difficult problem in and of itself, and as anyone with a leaky basement knows, water always ‘finds a way.’

‘Trivial in light of other problems at Fukushima, water situation could culminate in the chain reaction scenario’

At Fukushima, they are dealing with massive amounts of groundwater that flow through the property, and the endless pouring that must be kept up 24/7/365 to keep things from getting worse. Recently there appears to be subsidence issues and liquefaction under the plant.

TEPCO has decided to pump the water out of these buildings. However, pumping water out of the buildings is only going to increase the flow rate and create more of these ground issues around the reactors. An enormous undertaking – but one that needs to be considered for long-term preservation of the integrity of the site – is channelling the water away, like a drain tile installed around the perimeter of a house with a leaky basement, but on an epic scale.

Without this effort, the soils will further deteriorate, structural shift will occur, and subsequently the contents of the pools will shift too.

Any water that flows into those buildings also becomes highly radioactive, as it is likely coming into contact with melted fuel.

Without knowing the extent of the current liquefaction and its location, the location of the melted fuel, how long TEPCO has been pumping out water, or when the next earthquake will hit, it is impossible to predict how soon this could occur from the water problem/subsidence issue alone. But undoubtedly, pumping water out of the buildings is just encouraging the flow, and this water problem needs to be remedied and redirected as soon as possible.

RT: Given all the complications that could arise with extracting the fuel rods, which are the most serious, in your opinion?

CC: The most serious complication would be anything that leads to a nuclear chain reaction. And as outlined above, there are many different ways this could occur. In a fuel pool containing damaged rods and racks, it could potentially start up on its own at anytime. TEPCO has been incredibly lucky that this hasn’t happened so far.

‘One of the worst, but most important jobs anyone has ever had to do’

My second biggest concern would be the physical and mental fitness of the workers that will be in such close proximity to exposed fuel during this extraction process. They will be the ones guiding this operation, and will need to be in the highest state of alertness to have any chance at all of executing this plan manually and successfully. Many of their senses, most importantly eyesight, will be hindered by the apparatus that will need to be worn during their exposure, to prevent immediate death from lifting compromised fuel rods out of the pool and placing them in casks, or in the common spent fuel pool located a short distance away.

Think for a moment what that might be like through the eyes of one of these workers; it will be hot, uncomfortable, your senses shielded, and you would be filled with anxiety. You are standing on a building that is close to collapse. Even with the strongest protection possible, workers will have to be removed and replaced often. So you don’t have the benefit of doing such a critical task and knowing and trusting your comrades, as they will frequently have to be replaced when their radiation dose limits are reached. If they exhibit physical or mental signs of radiation exposure, they will have be replaced more often.

It will be one of the worst, but most important jobs anyone has ever had to do. And even if executed flawlessly, there are still many things that could go wrong.

RT: How do the potential consequences of failure to ensure safe extraction compare to other disasters of the sort – like Chernobyl, or the 2011 Fukushima meltdown?

CC: There really is no comparison. This will be an incredibly risky operation, in the presence of an enormous amount of nuclear material in close proximity. And as we have seen in the past, one seemingly innocuous failure at the site often translates into a series of cascading failures.

‘The site has been propped up with duct tape and a kick-stand for over two years’ 

Many of their ‘fixes’ are only temporary, as there are so many issues to address, and cost always seems to be an enormous factor in what gets implemented and what doesn’t.

As a comparison: Chernobyl was one reactor, in a rural area, a quarter of the size of one of the reactors at Fukushima. There was no ‘spent fuel pool’ to worry about. Chernobyl was treated in-situ…meaning everything was pretty much left where it was while the effort to contain it was made (and very expeditiously I might add) not only above ground, but below ground.

At Fukushima, we have six top-floor pools all loaded with fuel that eventually will have to be removed, the most important being Reactor 4, although Reactor 3 is in pretty bad shape too. Spent fuel pools were never intended for long-term storage, they were only to assist short-term movement of fuel. Using them as a long-term storage pool is a huge mistake that has become an ‘acceptable’ practice and repeated at every reactor site worldwide.

We have three 100-ton melted fuel blobs underground, but where exactly they are located, no one knows. Whatever ‘barriers’ TEPCO has put in place so far have failed. Efforts to decontaminate radioactive water have failed. Robots have failed. Camera equipment and temperature gauges…failed. Decontamination of surrounding cities has failed.

‘If and when the corium reaches the Tokyo aquifer, serious and expedient discussions will have to take place about evacuating 40 million people’

We have endless releases into the Pacific Ocean that will be ongoing for not only our lifetimes, but our children’s’ lifetimes. We have 40 million people living in the Tokyo area nearby. We have continued releases from the underground corium that reminds us it is there occasionally with steam events and huge increases in radiation levels. Across the Pacific, we have at least two peer-reviewed scientific studies so far that have already provided evidence of increased mortality in North America, and thyroid problems in infants on the west coast states from our initial exposures.

We have increasing contamination of the food chain, through bioaccumulation and biomagnification. And a newly stated concern is the proximity of melted fuel in relation to the Tokyo aquifer that extends under the plant. If and when the corium reaches the Tokyo aquifer, serious and expedient discussions will have to take place about evacuating 40 million people from the greater metropolitan area. As impossible as this sounds, you cannot live in an area which does not have access to safe water.

The operation to begin removing fuel from such a severely damaged pool has never been attempted before. The rods are unwieldy and very heavy, each one weighing two-thirds of a ton. But it has to be done, unless there is some way to encase the entire building in concrete with the pool as it is. I don’t know of anyone discussing that option, but it would seem much ‘safer’ than what they are about to attempt…but not without its own set of risks.

And all this collateral damage will continue for decades, if not centuries, even if things stay exactly the way they are now. But that is unlikely, as bad things happen like natural disasters and deterioration with time…earthquakes, subsidence, and corrosion, to name a few. Every day that goes by, the statistical risk increases for this apocalyptic scenario. No one can say or know how this will play out, except that millions of people will probably die even if things stay exactly as they are, and billions could die if things get any worse.

RT: Are the fuel rods in danger of falling victim to other factors, while the extraction process is ongoing? After all, it’s expected to take years before all 1,300+ rods are pulled out.

CC: Unfortunately yes, the fuel rods are in danger every day they remain in the pool. The more variables you add to this equation, and the more time that passes, the more risk you are exposed to. Each reactor and spent fuel pool has its own set of problems, and critical failure with any of them could ultimately have the end result of an above-ground, self-sustaining nuclear reaction. It will not be known if extraction of all the fuel will even be possible, as some of it may be severely damaged, until the attempt is made to remove it.

RT: Finally, what is the worst case scenario? What level of contamination are we looking at and how dire would the consequences be for the long-term health of the region?

CC: Extremely dire. This is a terrible answer to have to give, but the worst case scenario could play out in death to billions of people. A true apocalypse. Since we have been discussing Reactor 4, I’ll stick to that problem in particular, but also understand that a weather event, power outage, earthquake, tsunami, cooling system failure, or explosion and fire in any way, shape, or form, at any location on the Fukushima site, could cascade into an event of that magnitude as well.

‘Once the integrity of the pool is compromised that will lead to more criticalities’

At any time, following any of these possible events, or even all by itself, nuclear fuel in reactor 4′s pool could become critical, mostly because it will heat up the pool to a point where water will burn off and the zirconium cladding will catch fire when it is exposed to air. This already happened at least once in this pool that we are aware of. It almost happened again recently after a rodent took out an electrical line and cooling was stopped for days.

Once the integrity of the pool is compromised that will likely lead to more criticalities, which then can spread to other fuel. The heat from this reaction would weaken the structure further, which could then collapse and the contents of the pool end up in a pile of rubble on the ground. This would release an enormous amount of radioactivity, which Arnie Gundersen has referred to as a “Gamma Shine Event” without precedence, and Dr. Christopher Busby has deemed an “Open-air super reactor spectacular.”

This would preclude anyone from not only being at Reactor 4, but at Reactors 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, the associated pools for each, and the common spent fuel pool. Humans could no longer monitor and continue cooling operations at any of the reactors and pools, thus putting the entire site at risk for a massive radioactive release.

‘At least the northern half of Japan would be uninhabitable, and some researchers have argued that it already is’

Mathematically, it is almost impossible to quantify in terms of resulting contamination, and a separate math problem would need to be performed for every nuclear element contained within the fuel, and whether or not that fuel exploded, burned, fissioned, melted, or was doused with water to try to cool it off and poured into the ocean afterward.

Some researchers have even ventured to say that other nuke plants on the east coast of Honshu may need to be evacuated if levels get too high, which will lead to subsequent failures/fires and explosions at these plants as well. Just how profound the effect will be on down-winders in North America, or the entire northern hemisphere for that matter, will literally depend on where the wind blows and where the rain falls, the duration and extent of a nuclear fire or chain-reaction event, and whether or not that reaction becomes self-sustaining. At least the northern half of Japan would be uninhabitable, and some researchers have argued that it already is.

This is already happening to the nuclear fuel in the ground under the plant, but now it would be happening above ground as well. There is no example historically to draw from on a scale of this magnitude. Everything is theory. But anyone who says this can’t happen is not being truthful, because nobody really knows how bad things could get.

The most disturbing part of all of this is that Fukushima has been this dangerous, and precarious, since the second week of March 2011. The ante will definitely be upped once the fuel removal starts.

‘The mainstream media, world governments, nuclear agencies, health organizations, weather reporters, and the health care industry has completely ignored three ongoing triple meltdowns that have never been contained’

An obvious attempt to downplay this disaster and its consequences have been repeated over and over again from ‘experts’ in the nuclear industry that also have a vested interest in their industry remaining intact. And, there has been a lot of misleading information released by TEPCO, which an hour or two of reading by a diligent reporter would have uncovered, in particular the definition of ‘cold shutdown.’

Over 300 mainstream news outlets worldwide ran the erroneous ‘cold shutdown’ story repeatedly, which couldn’t be further from the truth…[it was] yet another lie that was spun by TEPCO to placate the public, and perpetuated endlessly by the media and nuclear lobby.

Unfortunately, TEPCO waited until a severe emergency arose to finally report how bad things really are with this latest groundwater issue…if we are even being told the truth. Historically, everything TEPCO says always turns out to be much worse than they initially admit.

‘Unfortunately there is no one better qualified to deal with this than the Russians, despite their own shortcomings’

I think the best chance of success is…that experts around the world drop everything they are doing to work on this problem, and have Russia either lead the containment effort or consult with them closely. They have the most experience, they have decades of data. They took their accident seriously and made a Herculean effort to contain it.

Of course we also know the Chernobyl accident was wrought with deception and lies as well, and some of that continues to this day, especially in terms of the ongoing health effects of children in the region, and monstrous birth defects. Unfortunately there is no one better qualified to deal with this than the Russians, despite their own shortcomings. Gorbachev tried to make up for his part in the cover-up of Chernobyl by opening orphanages throughout the region to deal with the affected children.

But as far as Fukushima goes, the only thing that matters now is if world leaders and experts join forces to help fix this situation. Regardless of what agendas they are trying to protect or hide, how much it will cost, the effect on Japan or the world’s economy, or what political chains this will yank.

The nuclear industry needs to come clean. If this leads to every reactor in the world being shut down, so be it. If the world governments truly care about their people and this planet, this is what needs to be done.

Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku stated in an interview a few weeks after the initial accident that “TEPCO is literally hanging on by their fingernails.” They still are, and always have been. The Japanese have proven time and time again they are not capable of handling this disaster. Now we are entrusting them to execute the most dangerous fuel removal in history.

We are extremely lucky that this apocalyptic scenario hasn’t happened yet, considering the state of Reactor 4. But for many, it is already too late. The initial explosions and spent fuel pool fires may have already sealed the fate of millions of people. Time will tell. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not being honest, because there is just no way to know.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Follow RT’s LIVE UPDATES on the Fukushima leak emergency

The operation, to remove 400 tons of highly irradiated spent fuel beneath the plant’s damaged Reactor No. 4, could set off a catastrophe greater than any we have ever seen, independent experts warn. An operation of this scale, says plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company, has never been attempted before, and is wrought with danger.

An uncontrolled leak of nuclear fuel could cause more radiation than the March 2011 disaster or the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, say consultants Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt. “Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date,” the scientists say in their World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013.

The operation has been tried before – but only with the aid of computers. This time it will be a painstaking manual process.

Here’s what needs to be done: more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies, packing radiation 14,000 times the equivalent of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, need to carefully be removed from their cooling pool.

Arnie Gunderson, a veteran US nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, told Reuters that “they are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods,” especially given their close proximity to each other, which risks breakage and the release of radiation.

Gundersen told Reuters of an incredibly dangerous “criticality” that would result if a chain reaction takes place at any point, if the rods break or even so much as collide with each other in the wrong way. The resulting radiation is too great for the cooling pool to absorb – it simply has not been designed to do so.

“The problem with a fuel pool criticality is that you can’t stop it. There are no control rods to control it,”Gundsersen said. “The spent fuel pool cooling system is designed only to remove decay heat, not heat from an ongoing nuclear reaction.” 

The base of the pool where the fuel assemblies are situated is 18 meters above the ground. The pool itself is 10 by 12 meters, and the rods are seven meters under the surface of the water. One problem with that pool is it has been exposed to air in the 2011 catastrophe, when its roof was blown off by the explosion.

The operation is urgent – because even a minor earthquake could trigger an uncontrolled fuel leak.

A general view of the cover installation for the spent fuel removed from the cooling pool is pictured at the No.4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (Reuters / Noboru Hashimoto / Pool)

The removal process is due to begin in November, with TEPCO predicting it will take approximately a year. Although TEPCO is confident the operation will be a success, some experts are more skeptical. TEPCO is currently failing to contain radioactive water seepage in another part of the facility. 

Two empty fuel rods were removed as part of a test operation some time ago, but “to jump to the conclusion that it is going to work just fine for the rest of them is quite a leap of logic,” Reuters quoted Gundersen, of Fairewinds Energy Education as saying.

A giant steel frame currently towers over Unit 4, soon to be tasked with the extraction of the fuel assemblies. Each fuel rod weighs at around 300 kilograms and is 4.5 meters long. They also contain plutonium, one of the most radioactive substances known to man. The radiation builds up during the later stages of a core’s operation.

Toshio Kimura, a former TEPCO technician, told Reuters that the operation would normally be assisted by computers, but that luxury is gone. “Previously it was a computer-controlled process that memorized the exact locations of the rods down to the millimeter and now they don’t have that. It has to be done manually so there is a high risk that they will drop and break one of the fuel rods,” he said.

He is also expecting many issues for TEPCO ahead, as the process is estimated to take years. The scientists’ task is not made easier by the fact that the building is also prone to corrosion from salt water.

Removing the fuel rods is just one part of the cleanup operation, itself expected to take around four decades – according to the IAEA – during which any number of other problems could arise. 

The fuel rod scare comes as TEPCO is currently failing to contain radioactive water seepage in another part of the facility – itself a growing issue with no concrete solution, apart from building a special underground wall. But with water quantity building up at an alarming rate, the most likely version of events is that the radioactive water will simply have to be released into the Pacific at some point. According to TEPCO, there are still “no perfect solutions.”

“If you build a wall, of course the water is going to accumulate there. And there is no other way for the water to go but up or sideways and eventually lead to the ocean,” Masashi Goto, a nuclear engineer who has worked at several TEPCO plants, told Reuters. “So now, the question is how long do we have?”

This situation is not made easier by the fact that Japan is a seismically active island. Earthquakes keep striking at random, and even a small tremor could set in motion a catastrophic chain of events.

A worker walks in front of water tanks at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (Reuters / Noboru Hashimoto / Pool)

Costs soaring – no end in sight

Clean-up costs at the nuclear plant are projected to be in the billions of dollars, as the facility’s operator has failed to meet its targets, leading to increased public distrust and forcing the government to step in.

In the two years since the March 2011 meltdown, the costs of the cleanup project could be spiraling out of control financially. If the clean-up is not carried out, it could cause incalculable problems for Japan’s economy, particularly in agriculture.

The Institute for Industrial Sciences at the University of Tokyo has recently estimated that the levels of radiation along the country’s coastline are way above the government target.

“We have detected over 20 spots around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with levels of radiation five to 10 times higher than the surrounding areas, with diameters ranging from tens to hundreds of meters,” the institute said.

TEPCO had been left to its own devices two years ago to deal with the clean-up and the compensation payments to people in the contaminated region. Now, with recent news of over 300 tons of contaminated water being leaked into the Pacific for more than two years, the Japanese government has decided to step in.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the government ordered Fukushima plant operator TEPCO to bear the entire costs of the clean-up, but also told it to get back to profitability as soon as possible through cost-cutting, so that it could pay off its debts. The clean-up will weigh very heavily on Japan’s energy consumption, however, on top of the already stringent energy austerity measures.

But TEPCO has insisted it will not be able to handle the clean-up bill, which is now projected at more than $10 billion. The company has already spent $3 billion and will require a major injection of $10 billion by March 2014, it says.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

Icelandic Pirate Party, which is represented in the parliament, has proposed a bill on granting NSA leaker Edward Snowden citizenship of the island nation.

Iceland’s political Pirate Party managed to win three seats in the Parliament, the Althing, becoming the first piratic party in the world to make it to a national legislative body.

The draft law proposed by Pirate Party suggests that Snowden should immediately be granted the citizenship.

The proposal received limited support in Parliament on Thursday, the last day before summer recess, with only six members of minority parties in favor out of parliament’s 63 members.

It is unlikely though that the bill will be considered any time soon because of the summer break.

“We wanted to do this earlier but citizenship is an extremely delicate issue when it’s granted by parliament instead of granted through ordinary legal processes,” Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, Pirate Party’s MP wrote on his page on Facebook.

However, he said, on Wednesday the party received confirmation that former CIA employee Snowden had requested asylum in Iceland, but “he would undoubtedly be extradited from Iceland unless he were a citizen of Iceland.”

The Pirate Party “saw no other way” rather than to try and grant the NSA leaker citizenship the same way the parliament of Iceland granted it to Bobby Fischer some years ago, Gunnarsson explained. The American chess grandmaster got Icelandic citizenship in 2005, after he had been on the run from the US for over a decade for violating economic sanctions in a match he played against Boris Spassky in the former Yugoslavia in 1992.

On Monday, an application in Snowden’s name was faxed to the Icelandic Embassy in Moscow, his current location, and was then forwarded to the Icelandic Foreign Ministry, Iceland Review reported. Earlier, the country’s Foreign Minister Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir underlined that Snowden’s application would be processed the same way as all other applications for political asylum in Iceland.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP from the Pirate Party, observed that the process might take a while and there are no guarantees that Snowden would not be extradited while waiting for the decision. In her view, Snowden’s case should be considered in a special order, since he faces a possible death sentence in the US and “it is illegal to extradite a person who faces the death sentence from Iceland,” she wrote on her page in Twitlonger.

“It is important to note that Iceland has a terrible track record when it comes to granting political asylum to people seeking shelter, as it is hardly ever granted and thus a too dangerous path to be recommended for Snowden,” Jonsdottir wrote.

A former Icelandic presidential candidate, Asthor Magnusson has also stepped in for the American whistleblower. Magnusson, a businessman and photographer, is collecting signatures from Icelanders to help him receive the citizenship in the Nordic republic, reported News of Iceland website on Thursday.

“I appeal to the oldest parliament in the world, the Althing in Iceland to grant a citizenship to Edward Joseph Snowden and issue him with travel documents for safe passage to Reykjavik,” he said in his appeal, which will be sent to the parliament. “As matters have developed, I think that Icelanders should say ‘This is enough’: We support open society and human rights. It’s a basic human right to grant this man asylum in Iceland,” the statement reads.

Edward Snowden is wanted in the US on charges of espionage after he leaked NSA secret surveillance programs. He first fled his homeland for Hong Kong and since June 23 the whistleblower has been stuck in the transit zone of the Moscow Sheremetyevo airport, trying to find a country to grant him asylum. So far, no one has opened their doors to the American, who is seen by many as “a true hero.”

What makes things even more complicated, Snowden’s passport was revoked by the US and an Ecuadorean travel documents he used to travel to Russia was declared invalid by Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

Reprinted with permission from Russia Today.

The Swiss government has agreed to meet US demands and disclose bank client names in a bid to resolve the long-standing tax-evasion dispute between the two countries, Switzerland’s Finance Minister said on Wednesday.

“This is both a good and a practical solution,” Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told reporters after a cabinet meeting approved the draft accord.

The deal, which has to be approved by the parliament, will see Swiss banks turning over key information to US authorities.

“We hope that it will enable this chapter to be closed,” she said, saying that it was nonetheless up to individual banks to decide if they wanted to cooperate with US authorities.

Swiss banks have earned a reputation of keeping personal information of account holders secret. The tradition of banking secrecy helped build the country’s $2 trillion financial industry.

On Tuesday, the Swiss government ordered its third largest private bank, Julius Baer, to hand over data on US clients. Confidential information is due to be passed on to US tax authorities under the terms of an existing double taxation treaty between the two countries. Julius Baer replied it would provide the necessary data, though it didn’t reveal how many clients were involved.

At the end of April 2013, Julius Baer Group’s assets under management amounted to 220 billion Swiss francs ($207.7 million). The 16 per cent increase from the end of 2012 was in many ways thanks to its acquisition of Bank of America Corp.’s (BAC) Merrill Lynch wealth-management business outside of the US. Total client assets grew by 12 per cent to 309 billion Swiss francs.

Over a dozen Swiss banks are said to be under the US investigation, according to Reuters, with the authorities searching for funds hidden in bank accounts of giants like Switzerland’s second largest-bank Credit Suisse. The US Attorney’s Office has been reportedly investigating Credit Suisse AG over mortgage-backed securities sold by the bank. In November, the bank settled the case without admitting wrongdoing and it agreed to a $120-million settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over civil charges stemming from the bank’s sale of risky mortgage bonds to investors before the crisis.

In January Switzerland’s oldest private bank, Wegelin & Co, said it would close down for good after over 250 years of service, following its guilty plea to charges of helping prosperous Americans hide more than $1.2 billion from the Internal Revenue Service through secret accounts.

A managing partner at the bank, Otto Bruderer, confirmed in court that “from about 2002 through about 2010, Wegelin agreed with certain US taxpayers to evade the US tax obligations of these US taxpayer clients, who filed false tax returns with the IRS.”

While it was unclear whether the bank was required to expose the names of the American clients who held secret Swiss bank accounts, “what is clear is that the Justice Department is aggressively pursuing foreign banks who [sic] have helped Americans commit overseas tax evasion,” a former federal prosecutor involved in other Swiss bank investigations, Jeffrey Neiman, told Reuters.

The US authorities’ biggest success so far came in 2009 when Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, agreed to give away some 4,450 client names and paid a $780 million settlement after admitting to selling tax-evasion services to Americans.

The 1998 QE2 asteroid has the physical mass to potentially deliver life on Earth a knockout punch, being 2.7km in length. It is to buzz our planet on May 31, aweing the stargazing community.

Officially known as Asteroid 1998 QE2, the ‘minor planet’, as astronomers refer to these space objects, is about nine times the length of its name-sharing ocean liner, Queen Elizabeth 2.

The incoming space object is not named in honor of Queen Elizabeth II, however, nor the 12-deck QE2 luxury liner. It’s simply the designation assigned by the US Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, based on an alphanumeric code for naming newly-discovered asteroids.

Aside from the asteroid’s hulking mass, another thing that intrigues astronomers about QE2 is that nobody can say with any certainty where it came from.

One clue to its origins, however, is that its surface is said to be covered with a sticky, black residue, suggesting that it may be the remains of a comet that came in close proximity to the sun, Amy Mainzer, a researcher at Jet Propulsion Laboratory at La Cañada Flintridge, California, told the Los Angeles Times.

Another explanation is that QE2, discovered on August 19, 1998 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was originally part of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, she said.

QE2’s nearest approach happens on May 31 at 20:59 GMT, bringing the huge space rock to within 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km) of Earth – about 15 times the distance to the Moon. While this may seem a great distance, in astronomical terms it is a mere stone’s throw away.

Mainzer emphasized the significance of the asteroid, drawing parallels with a past celestial event that had devastating consequences for the entire planet.

“This is a really big asteroid, similar in size to the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and it’s getting very close to us,” she told the Times.

“Fortunately we’ve been tracking its orbit very carefully so we know with great certainty it won’t hit us. We don’t need to panic, but we do need to pay attention, she added.

Since the threat of a doomsday scenario seems unlikely, astronomers will be given an opportunity to study the physical characteristics of asteroids, as well as their history.

“Whenever an asteroid approaches this closely, it provides an important scientific opportunity to study it in detail to understand its size, shape, rotation, surface features, and what they can tell us about its origin,” radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the Goldstone radar observations from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Observers will take advantage of radar technology to measure the asteroid’s distance and velocity to improve the calculation of its orbit and compute its motion farther into the future than we could otherwise, he added.

The next arrival of Asteroid 1998 QE2 following its near-miss on May 31 will not occur again for another two centuries.

Rocky history

For millions of years, Earth has been occasionally pounded by space objects both large and small. Russia, due to its sprawling landmass, has played an unwitting host to many of these celestial bodies.

In 1908, a comet explosion over a largely uninhabited area of Siberia flattened some 80 million trees. The so-called Tunguska Event is recognized as the largest impact event on or near Earth in recorded history: The explosion was about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

More recently, on February 15 this year, a meteor exploded in the sky over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The shock waves from the explosion shattered windows and damaged buildings, injuring more than 1,500 people, mostly from flying glass and other debris.

Following the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which is the largest known space object to have entered Earth’s atmosphere since the Tunguska Event, NASA chief Charles Bolden gave advice on how to handle an asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth “if it’s coming in three weeks”: Pray.

While NASA is tracking about 95 per cent of the largest objects flying near Earth, only about 10 per cent of an estimated 10,000 asteroids with a diameter of 50 meters (165 feet) or more have been identified.

Meanwhile, mankind continues the search for ways to counter future space objects deemed dangerous.

Just days after the Russian meteor struck, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a joint mission between Europe and the US that aims to strike an asteroid with a spacecraft.

The Joint European/US Asteroid impact and Deflection Assessment mission (AIDA) is preparing to intercept the asteroid Didymos in 2022, when it is about 6.5 million miles (11 million km) from Earth.

Didymos, which poses no immediate threat to Earth, is actually a binary system, in which an 800-meter-wide asteroid and a smaller 150-meter space rock orbit each other.

The AIDA mission – designed to test the theory that governments can protect the planet from a space object on a collision course with the planet – will target the smaller asteroid with a rocket at about 14,000 mph (22,539 kph) in an effort to knock the object off course.

Granite formed on dry land has been discovered beneath the ocean off the coast of Brazil. Scientists suggest that it might be part of a sunken continent which disappeared millions of years ago and already branded it ‘Brazilian Atlantis’.

A Japanese-manned submersible discovered a large mass of granite and a large amount of quartz sand 900 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, according to the announcement made by The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and the Geology Service of Brazil (CPRM).

These materials, normally found on dry land, suggest that a continent once existed in the region and then sank.

“It is unusual because it is granite rock,” CPRM geology director Roberto Ventura Santos as quoted byThe Telegraph. “And you don’t find granite on the seabed. It is more usual to find it on the mainland.”

The granite was discovered in a seabed that was estimated to have disappeared under the ocean waters tens of millions of years ago.

“South America and Africa used to be a huge, unified continent. The area in question may have been left in water as the continent was separated in line with the movements of plates,” said Shinichi Kawakami, a professor at Gifu University, Japan Times reports.

The material was reportedly found more than 8,000 feet beneath the sea in a region known as the Rio Grande Elevation.

“This is the region that has been least explored worldwide,” added Kawakami. “So, we believe it is very important to research it.”

“From an analysis, we began to see that the area could be a piece of the continent that disappeared into the sea millions of years ago,” Santos said as quoted by AFP.

“This could be Brazil’s Atlantis. We are almost certain, but we need to strengthen this hypothesis.”

The fabled island was first mentioned by Greek philosopher Plato in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. According to Plato, Atlantis was situated in front of the Pillars of Hercules, the phrase that was applied in Antiquity to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The civilization of Atlantis conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa approximately 9600 BC. But the continent is believed to have sunk during a catastrophic natural disaster.

Scientists plan to drill for more samples later this year, as further conformation is needed. Experts still remain cautious about jumping to conclusions.

“We speak of Atlantis more in terms of symbolism,” Santos noted. “Obviously, we don’t expect to find a lost city in the middle of the Atlantic.”

Though the researchers are still hopeful that the discovery may clarify many questions.

“If it is the case that we find a continent in the middle of the ocean, it will be a very big discovery that could have various implications in relation to the extension of the continental shelf,” Santos said.

A Sacramento court has ruled for the return of a baby who had been forcefully taken from his parents by police and child protective services without a warrant on April 24, according to a Russian consulate spokesperson’s statement.

The five-month-old child had been temporarily taken from his family after his parents – a Californian couple – were involved in an argument with doctors over the course of his treatment following a medical check-up they took him to after he began exhibiting signs of flu.

Sammy Nikolaev has been in protective custody since April 24, when the police and Child Protective Services (CPS) had forced their way into the Nikolaevs’ California apartment after the family took the child from the hospital without proper discharge.

The CPS claimed the boy had suffered “severe neglect” at the hands of his parents.

“After five hours of deliberation and analysis of factual information presented by both sides, the judge decided to dismiss all charges against the parents”, the Russian Consul in San Francisco, Evgeny Avdoshin, told RIA Novosti.

“In line with the verdict, the baby will remain with his parents”, he added.

Avdoshin also said that the US court has fully respected the rights of Aleksandr Nikolaev – a Russian citizen – as a parent and that everything was according to proper procedure.

Yet just a few days ago, a completely different picture of distrust and accusations was being painted.

“I was pushed against the building, smacked down,” Alex said.

“I said, ‘Am I being placed under arrest?’ He smacked me to the ground and yelled out ‘I think I got the keys to the house!’” Alex later told reporters,

“It doesn’t seem like parents have any rights whatsoever.” During the commotion in the driveway Anna had set up a camera pointing at the door. At least four police officers, who did not have a warrant, are shown on film barging into the home followed by CPS workers demanding Sammy.

“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me, okay?” one policeman can be heard telling Anna.

The family’s lawyer, Joe Weinberger, had also expressed his disbelief at how anyone could barge into a home and take a child into custody over neglect once a doctor ruled that the child was not in any danger whatsoever.

However, he also admitted that the parents had not taken the proper care when, firstly, removing Sammy from the hospital without following procedure, and secondly, neglecting to tell the doctor that another professional had declared there was no threat to the child’s wellbeing.

The initial news had quickly gained widespread media coverage and public attention in both Russia and the United States.

New polling numbers suggest that United States citizens are on average more afraid of their own government then the threat of another terrorist attack.

Even after a pair of bombings in Boston two weeks ago injured hundreds, more Americans say they are unwilling to sacrifice constitutional liberties for security than those who are.

A handful of polls conducted in the days after the Boston Marathon bombings show that US citizens are responding much differently than in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed roughly 3,000 people. Not only are Americans more opposed now to giving up personal freedoms for the sake of security than they were after 9/11, but other statistics show that distrust against the federal government continues to climb.

Just one day after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing, pollsters with Fox News asked a sample of Americans, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?” Forty-three percent of the respondents said they would, while 45 percent said no. Comparatively, 71 percent of Americans asked a similar question in October 2001 said they’d be willing to give up personal freedoms, while only 20 percent opposed at the time.

In the dozen years since 9/11, frequent polling conducted by Fox has suggests that the majority of Americans have all the while said they’d give up their freedoms for the sake of security. Only with the latest inquiry though are those answers reversed: the last time a majority of Americans opposed giving up privacy for security was May 2001.

“Whether or not the government overreacted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (and, given the information available at the time, reasonable people can disagree), Americans then broadly supported a vigorous domestic counterterrorism policy,” Alan Rozenshtein writes for Lawfare Blog. “This time around, a rights-restrictive approach might not garner the same public support – if indeed that’s the road the government intends to go down.”

Indeed, a number of cities across the country have already asked for more surveillance cameras and other tactics that could be used to allegedly prevent acts of terror in the wake of the Boston bombing, but lawmakers in Washington have yet to impose the sort of restrictions on constitutional liberties that came in the aftermath of 9/11 – named the PATROIT Act and the establishment of the US Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration.

A separate poll conducted by the Washington Post just three days after the Boston Marathon bombing reveals that nearly half of those surveyed say that the government will go too far in trying to prevent future acts of terrorism. The Post asked a random national sample of 588 adults, “Which worries you more: that the government (will not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights), or that it (will go too far in compromising constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism)?” Days after the Boston bombing, 41 percent of respondents said the government will not go far enough, compared to 48 percent saying they’ll go too far. When similar questions were asked in 2006 and 2010, 44 percent and 27 percent said the government will go too far, respectively, signaling that for the first time in years Americans are overly concerned about a misuse of power on the part of Washington.

That isn’t to say that the Boston attack is necessarily inspiring Americans to question authority, though. Two months before Tsarnaev brothers allegedly detonated a pair of explosives near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, 53 percent of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center said the federal government is threatening their personal rights and freedoms. In November 2011, that statistic was only 30 percent.