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Russia’s campaign to shape international opinion around its invasion of Ukraine has extended to recruiting and training a new cadre of online trolls that have been deployed to spread the Kremlin’s message on the comments section of top American websites.
Plans attached to emails leaked by a mysterious Russian hacker collective show IT managers reporting on a new ideological front against the West in the comments sections of Fox News,Huffington Post, The Blaze, Politico, and WorldNetDaily.
The bizarre hive of social media activity appears to be part of a two-pronged Kremlin campaign to claim control over the internet, launching a million-dollar army of trolls to mold American public opinion as it cracks down on internet freedom at home.
“Foreign media are currently actively forming a negative image of the Russian Federation in the eyes of the global community,” one of the project’s team members, Svetlana Boiko, wrote in a strategy document. “Additionally, the discussions formed by comments to those articles are also negative in tone.
“Like any brand formed by popular opinion, Russia has its supporters (‘brand advocates’) and its opponents. The main problem is that in the foreign internet community, the ratio of supporters and opponents of Russia is about 20/80 respectively.”
The documents show instructions provided to the commenters that detail the workload expected of them. On an average working day, the Russians are to post on news articles 50 times. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook accounts publishing at least three posts a day and discussing the news in groups at least twice a day. By the end of the first month, they are expected to have won 500 subscribers and get at least five posts on each item a day. On Twitter, the bloggers are expected to manage 10 accounts with up to 2,000 followers and tweet 50 times a day.
They are to post messages along themes called “American Dream” and “I Love Russia.” The archetypes for the accounts are called Handkerchief, Gay Turtle, The Ghost of Marius the Giraffe, Left Breast, Black Breast, and Ass, for reasons that are not immediately clear.
According to the documents, which are attached to several hundred emails sent to the project’s leader, Igor Osadchy, the effort was launched in April and is led by a firm called the Internet Research Agency. It’s based in a Saint Petersburg suburb, and the documents say it employs hundreds of people across Russia who promote Putin in comments on Russian blogs.
Osadchy told BuzzFeed he had never worked for the Internet Research Agency and that the extensive documents — including apparent budgeting for his $35,000 salary — were an “unsuccessful provocation.” He declined to comment on the content of the leaks. The Kremlin declined to comment. The Internet Research Agency has not commented on the leak.
Definitively proving the authenticity of the documents and their authors’ ties to the Kremlin is, by the nature of the subject, not easy. The project’s cost, scale, and awkward implementation have led many observers in Russia to doubt, however, that it could have come about in any other way.
“What, you think crazy Russians all learned English en masse and went off to comment on articles?” said Leonid Bershidsky, a media executive and Bloomberg View columnist. “If it looks like Kremlin shit, smells like Kremlin shit, and tastes like Kremlin shit too — then it’s Kremlin shit.”
Despite efforts to hire English teachers for the trolls, most of the comments are written in barely coherent English. “I think the whole world is realizing what will be with Ukraine, and only U.S. keep on fuck around because of their great plans are doomed to failure,” reads one post from an unnamed forum, used as an example in the leaked documents.
The trolls appear to have taken pains to learn the sites’ different commenting systems. A report on initial efforts to post comments discusses the types of profanity and abuse that are allowed on some sites, but not others. “Direct offense of Americans as a race are not published (‘Your nation is a nation of complete idiots’),” the author wrote of fringe conspiracy site WorldNetDaily, “nor are vulgar reactions to the political work of Barack Obama (‘Obama did shit his pants while talking about foreign affairs, how you can feel yourself psychologically comfortable with pants full of shit?’).” Another suggested creating “up to 100” fake accounts on the Huffington Post to master the site’s complicated commenting system.
WorldNetDaily told BuzzFeed it had no ability to monitor whether it had been besieged by an army of Russian trolls in recent weeks. The other outlets did not respond to BuzzFeed’s queries.
Some of the leaked documents also detail what appear to be extensive efforts led by hundreds of freelance bloggers to comment on Russian-language sites. The bloggers hail from cities throughout Russia; their managers give them ratings based on the efficiency and “authenticity,” as well as the number of domains they post from. Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s only independent investigative newspaper, infiltrated its “troll farm” of commenters on Russian blogs last September.
Russia’s “troll army” is just one part of a massive propaganda campaign the Kremlin has unleashed since the Ukrainian crisis exploded in February. Russian state TV endlessly asserts that Kiev’s interim government is under the thumb of “fascists” and “neo-Nazis” intent on oppressing Russian-speaking Ukrainians and exerts a mesmerizing hold on many in the country’s southeast, where the channels are popular. Ukraine has responded by banning all Russian state channels, barring entry to most Russian journalists, and treats some of the more obviously pro-rebel Russian reporters as enemy combatants.
The trolling project’s finances are appropriately lavish for its considerable scale. A budget for April 2014, its first month, lists costs for 25 employees and expenses that together total over $75,000. The Internet Research Agency itself, founded last summer, now employs over 600 people and, if spending levels from December 2013 to April continue, is set to budget for over $10 million in 2014, according to the documents. Half of its budget is earmarked to be paid in cash.
Two Russian media reports partly based on other selections from the documents attest that the campaign is directly orchestrated by the Kremlin. Business newspaper Vedomosti, citing sources close to Putin’s presidential administration, said last week that the campaign was directly orchestrated by the government and included expatriate Russian bloggers in Germany, India, and Thailand. Novaya Gazeta claimed this week that the campaign is run by Evgeny Prigozhin, a restaurateur who catered Putin’s re-inauguration in 2012. Prigozhin has reportedly orchestrated several other elaborate Kremlin-funded campaigns against opposition members and the independent media. Emails from the hacked trove show an accountant for the Internet Research Agency approving numerous payments with an accountant from Prigozhin’s catering holding, Concord.
Several people who follow the Russian internet closely told BuzzFeed the Internet Research Energy is only one of several firms believed to be employing pro-Kremlin comment trolls. That has long been suspected based on the comments under articles about Russia on many other sites, such as Kremlin propaganda network RT’s wildly successful YouTube channel. The editor of The Guardian’s opinion page recently claimed that the site was the victim of an “orchestrated campaign.”
Russian-language social networks are awash with accounts that lack the signs of real users, such as pictures, regular posting, or personal statements. These “dead souls,” as Vasily Gatov, a prominent Russian media analyst who blogs at Postjournalist, calls them, often surface to attack opposition figures or journalists who write articles critical of Putin’s government.
The puerility of many of the comments recalls the pioneering trolling of now-defunct Kremlin youth group Nashi, whose leaders extensively discussed commenting on Russian opposition websites inemails leaked by hackers in 2012. Analysts say Timur Prokopenko, former head of rival pro-Putin youth group Young Guard, now runs internet projects in the presidential administration.
“These docs are written in the same style and keep the same quality level,” said Alexei Sidorenko, a Poland-based Russian developer and net freedom activist. “They’re sketchy, incomplete, done really fast, have tables, copy-pastes — it’s the standard of a regular student’s work from Russian university.”
The group that hacked the emails, which were shared with BuzzFeed last week and later uploaded online, is a new collective that calls itself the Anonymous International, apparently unrelated to the global Anonymous hacker movement. In the last few months, the group has shot to notoriety after posting internal Kremlin files such as plans for the Crimean independence referendum, the list of pro-Kremlin journalists whom Putin gave awards for their Crimea coverage, and the personal email of eastern Ukrainian rebel commander Igor Strelkov. None of the group’s leaks have been proven false.
In email correspondence with BuzzFeed, a representative of the group claimed they were “not hackers in the classical sense.”
“We are trying to change reality. Reality has indeed begun to change as a result of the appearance of our information in public,” wrote the representative, whose email account is named Shaltai Boltai, which is the Russian for tragic nursery rhyme hero Humpty Dumpty.
The leak from the Internet Research Agency is the first time specific comments under news articles can be directly traced to a Russian campaign.
Kremlin supporters’ increased activity online over the Ukraine crisis suggests Russia wants to encourage dissent in America at the same time as stifling it at home. The online offensive comes on the heels of a series of official laws and signals clearly suggesting Russia wants to tighten the screws on its vibrant independent web. In the last 30 days alone, Putin claimed the internet was and always had been a “CIA project” and then signed a law that imposes such cumbersome restrictions on blogs and social media as to make free speech impossible.
“There’s no paradox here. It’s two sides of the same coin,” Igor Ashmanov, a Russian internet entrepreneur known for his pro-government views, told BuzzFeed. “The Kremlin is weeding out the informational field and sowing it with cultured plants. You can see what will happen if they don’t clear it out from the gruesome example of Ukraine.”
Gatov, who is the former head of Russia’s state newswire’s media analytics laboratory, told BuzzFeed the documents were part of long-term Kremlin plans to swamp the internet with comments. “Armies of bots were ready to participate in media wars, and the question was only how to think their work through,” he said. “Someone sold the thought that Western media, which specifically have to align their interests with their audience, won’t be able to ignore saturated pro-Russian campaigns and will have to change the tone of their Russia coverage to placate their angry readers.”
Pro-Russian accounts have been increasingly visible on social networks since Ukraine’s political crisis hit fever pitch in late February. One campaign, “Polite People,” promoted the invasion of Crimea with pictures of Russian troops posing alongside girls, the elderly, and cats. Russia’s famously internet-shy Foreign Ministry began to viciously mock the State Department’s digital diplomacy efforts. “Joking’s over,” its Facebook page read on April 1.
Other accounts make clear attempts to influence Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the country’s restive southeast. Western officials believe many of the Twitter accounts are operated by Russian secret services. One was removed after calling for and celebrating violent attacks on a bank owned by a virulently anti-Putin Ukrainian oligarch.
“This is similar to media dynamics we observed in the Syrian civil war,” said Matt Kodama, an analyst at the web intelligence firm Recorded Future. “Russian news channels broke stories that seemed tailored-made to reinforce pro-Assad narratives, and then Syrian social media authors pushed them.”
Other documents discuss the issues the Russian commenters run into when arguing with the regular audience on the American news sites, particularly the conservative ones. “Upon examining the tone of the comments on major articles on The Blaze that directly or indirectly cover Russia, we can take note of its negative direction,” the author wrote. “It is notable that the audience of the Blaze responds to the article ‘Hear Alan Grayson Actually Defend Russia’s Invasion of Crimea as a Good Thing,’ which generally gives a positive assessment of Russian actions in Ukraine, extremely negatively.”
But praise can be as problematic as scorn. “While studying America’s main media, comments that were pro-Russian in content were noticed,” the author wrote. “After detailed study of the discussions they contained, it becomes obvious: the audience interprets those comments extremely negatively. Moreover, users of internet resources assume that the comments in questions were either written for ideological reasons, or paid for.”
The documents align with the Kremlin’s new attention to the internet. Putin, who swiftly monopolized control over television after coming to power in 1999 and marginalized dissent to a few low-circulation newspapers, largely left the “Runet” alone during his first two terms in power, allowing it to flourish as a parallel world free of censorship and skewed toward the educated urban middle class. Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s protégé who was president from 2008–12, made a show of embracing social media, but it never sat well with officials and Putin supporters. The gulf between Medvedev’s transparency drive and Russia’s Byzantine bureaucracy’s reluctance to change only highlighted his impotence, earning him the nickname “Microblogger” for his small stature.
“In the best case they looked funny, in the worst, their actions exposed their real motives,” said Katya Romanovskaya, co-author of KermlinRussia, a popular parody account mocking Medvedev’s clumsy efforts. “Twitter is an environment where you can instantly connect with your audience, answer direct questions, and give explanations — which Russian officials are completely incapable of. It goes against their bureaucratic and corrupt nature.”
The current internet crackdown comes after protests by middle-class Muscovites against Putin’s return to the presidency in early 2012, which were largely organized on Facebook and Twitter. All but a few officials have since abandoned the medium and many did so en masse last fall, raising suspicions they did so on Kremlin orders.
“Putin was never very fond of the internet even in the early 2000s,” said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who specializes in security services and cyber issues. “When he was forced to think about the internet during the protests, he became very suspicious, especially about social networks. He thinks there’s a plot, a Western conspiracy against him. He believes there is a very dangerous thing for him and he needs to put this thing under control.”
Last month, the deputy head of the Kremlin’s telecommunications watchdog said Twitter was a U.S. government tool and threatened to block it “in a few minutes” if the service did not block sites on Moscow’s request. Though the official received a reprimand (as well as a tongue-lashing on Facebook from Medvedev), the statement was widely seen as a trial balloon for expanding censorship. Twitter complied with a Russian request for the first time the following Monday and took down a Ukrainian nationalist account.
A new law that comes into effect in August also forces bloggers with more than 3,000 followers to register with the government. The move entails significant and cumbersome restrictions for bloggers, who previously wrote free of Russia’s complicated media law bureaucracy, while denying them anonymity and opening them up to political pressure.
“The internet has become the main threat — a sphere that isn’t controlled by the Kremlin,” said Pavel Chikov, a member of Russia’s presidential human rights council. “That’s why they’re going after it. Its very existence as we know it is being undermined by these measures.”
Read the whole story
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Russia's Media Machine Looks Westby noreply@rferl.org (Glenn Kates)
It's May 2 in Odesa and a doctor is trying desperately to rescue pro-Russian protesters -- more than 40 of whom will die -- trapped in the Ukrainian city's labor-union building.
"As a doctor I rushed to give help to the one who could be rescued, but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals," he writes on Facebook, using a slur repeated relentlessly by Russian public figures and media to describe Ukraine's new rulers following the February ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych. "One of them pushed me rudely, promising that soon I and other Jews of Odesa are going to meet the same fate."
A gripping account, but a fake one. The Odesa "doctor" did not exist. The person who posted the story had used a photo of a dentist based 2,000 kilometers away in Russia's Karachai-Cherkessia Republic and the page soon disappeared.
No matter; the post had spread widely online and made its way into mainstream Western media with an opinion piece by journalist John Pilger in "The Guardian."
2014 was the year Kremlin-backed media went global. In Russia, state television painted a picture of a vengeful and immoral West encroaching dangerously on Russia's "historic" sphere of influence, while Moscow expanded foreign-language outlets like RT and created a new information agency to prompt what some have called a new "information war."
It is not clear if the Odesa doctor was an organic Internet fabrication or the result of the work of agrowing number of Russian-paid "Internet trolls." But for Russian state news outlets, which appear at ease repeating Internet rumor or creating their own, it may be a distinction without a difference.
'Propaganda Is Now Journalism'
In 2014, a regular viewer of one of Russia's three main state television channels may have learned that Ukrainian soldiers crucified a 3-year-old boy in a public square in the eastern city of Slovyansk; or that Nazi-style concentration camps were being built to hold Russian-speakers in Ukraine's east; or that top Ukrainian officials were conspiring with Satanist lamb torturers.
They're fabrications, but some 50 percent of Russians -- among an estimated 94 percent who get their news from TV -- say they trust state television more than any other source, according to a poll released by the independent Levada Center earlier this year (the next most reliable source was friends, family, and neighbors, at 20 percent).
And Andrei Kondrashov, a host on the state-run Rossia TV channel, expressed a note of pride to RFE/RL's Russian Service when explaining state media's role in the merging of journalism and state messaging. "I wouldn't draw a strict line between these two notions, because in an age when we have two systems, two civilizations standing against each other, no one distinguishes one from the other because they merge into one," Kondrashov, said. "Now any propaganda in the media is essentially journalism."
The state-run narrative has long dominated at home but as Russia and the West face their worst crisis since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moscow has shown increased interest in messaging to the West as well.
In November, Dmitry Kiselyov, the country's propagandist in chief who earlier this year warned on a popular weekly program that Russia is the only nation in the world that could turn the United States into "radioactive dust," launched the Sputnik news agency, which he says will broadcast in 34 countries in 30 languages by the end of 2015.
At the same time, the budget for RT, the pro-Kremlin international television news channel formerly known as Russia Today, is to rise to 15.38 billion rubles (some $280 million) next year.
The outlets do not aim "to convince or persuade, but to keep the viewer hooked and distracted, passive and paranoid, rather than agitated to action," say Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss, in "The Menace Of Unreality," a report for the Princeton, New Jersey-based Institute of Modern Russia, released in November.
Winning Hearts And Minds?
Still, some wonder if the Kremlin's efforts abroad are actually effective.
"For the people who say it's a real danger, I wonder if they're being somewhat alarmist" says Kevin Rothrock, the project editor for RuNet Echo, a site that tracks the Russian Internet. "When it comes to really quantifying the strength or influence of this kind of propaganda no one's ever done this for me in a convincing way."
Although RT boasts that its broadcasts are available on over 630 million TV sets around the world, there is little data on actual viewership.
But Pomerantsev and Weiss point to coverage of the July Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 disaster as an example of how Moscow's strategy can work.
There is strong evidence that pro-Russian separatists were in possession of a BUK missile launcher thought to have been used to shoot down the plane, killing all 298 passengers and crew. But led in the West by RT, Russian news agencies have worked to sow doubt by broadcasting a string of easily debunked theories tying the disaster to the West and Ukraine.
The effort appears aimed not at convincing casual news viewers that one side or another is responsible for the downing of the plane, but at implanting the idea that it is still an open question.
Several small-scale efforts have sprung up since March, when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, to push back against Moscow's efforts.
Yevhen Fedchenko, the director of Kyiv's Mohyla School of Journalism, founded <a href="http://Stopfake.org" rel="nofollow">Stopfake.org</a>, a website in English, Russian, and Ukrainian created to "refute distorted information and propaganda about events in Ukraine." He says sites like his should not work to "compete with the Russian propaganda machine," but to thoroughly report the news in as many places as possible.
Pomerantsev and Weiss call for a larger, coordinated strategy that would include a "disinformation charter" and "counter-disinformation editors" to push back against what they call the Kremlin's "weaponization of information."
"We're facing a challenge here that has not really been faced before," Weiss said on RFE/RL's Power Vertical podcast. "And I'm sorry to say that the Putin regime and its surrogates are incredibly adept at playing this game."
Read the whole story
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Russia is drafting a framework agreement that would govern supplies of weapons to Afghanistan.
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Russian Moves Provide New Mission for NATOby webdesk@voanews.com (Al Pessin)
Russia’s more aggressive military posture in Europe during the past year has pushed NATO to take new steps to strengthen its defenses, providing it, analysts say, with a much-needed new mission. The change in NATO-Russia relations grew out of protests in Ukraine that led to the ouster of the country’s pro-Russian president. Russia sent operatives and troops into Ukraine’s Crimea region and forcibly annexed it. Then Russia backed separatists in two eastern Ukraine regions,...
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KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday he would meet with French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia's Vladimir Putin on Jan. 15.
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Soldiers guarding key Royal residences in London have been withdrawn from their high-profile posts amid fears they could be targeted in terror attacks. Report by Claire Mewse.
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Mayor's 1st Year: Liberal Victories, NYPD Crisis
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Nippy, isn’t it? But don’t panic,
the Russians know a thing or two about coping in winter. Here are
some top tips
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S.-led coalition launched 18 air strikes against Islamic State on Monday, including 12 in Syria and six in Iraq, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement.
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Russia's Supreme Court has ruled that the Islamic State (IS) militant group and Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, are terrorist groups and banned them in Russia.
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Martin Scorsese’s black comedy about an unscrupulous businessman comes out ahead of Frozen and Gravity on chart of illegally downloaded films
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The deaths of two unarmed African-American men at the hands of white police officers earlier this year ignited racial tensions and led to demonstration across the United States, calling for an end to police brutality and racial profiling. As VOA's Chris Simkins reports, the cases in 2014 launched a drive to change a number of law enforcement practices.
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Obama: I will use veto pen and defend gains in healthcare and environment by Dan Roberts in Washington
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Barack Obama pledged to spend 2014 wielding his pen to write executive orders circumventing Congress; now he has warned that 2015 will require him to “pull out his veto pen”, to prevent Congress from overriding his wishes.
In an uncompromising interview released on Monday, the president said he expected that the Republican takeover of the Senate would cause him to spend much of his last two years in office blocking attempts to unpick his domestic reforms.
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Clinton, Obama Most Admired, Gallup Finds
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President says US sanctions left Russian economy exposed to plunging oil price
A Russian court says it will issue its verdict in a fraud case against opposition politician Aleksei Navalny on December 30, bringing the date forward from January 15.
Diocese: Bishop responsible in fatal hit-and-run
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The Italian Navy releases video of helicopter rescue crews slowly airlifting passengers from the upper deck of the Norman Atlantic ferry. Report by Claire Mewse.
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Under the pact, the sharing of classified information will be limited to North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs.
Russia's Economy Begins Shrinkingby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
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 Wall Street Journal |
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President Petro Poroshenko has signed a law abandoning Ukraine's neutral "non-bloc" status, and said Ukrainians will decide whether the country should seek NATO membership once it meets the standards of the Western military alliance.
2014 presented U.S. President Barack Obama with some of his biggest foreign policy challenges, including Ukraine, Islamic State militants, draw down of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Ebola outbreak, and his announcement of the normalization of ties with longtime foe Cuba. VOA White House correspondent Luis Ramirez takes a look at how the year helped shape a foreign policy legacy that has sometimes been described as unclear, complex and conflicted.
Analysts Say Ukraine's Challenges Are Also Russia'sby webdesk@voanews.com (Daniel Schearf)
Ukraine's pro-European revolution succeeded this year in replacing its Russia-leaning president with leaders favoring European integration. But the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea, and support for pro-Russia rebels in east Ukraine has many worried the country will remain unstable or conditions will deteriorate into all-out war. Political analysts say the Kremlin's actions are a threat to both countries. VOA's Daniel Schearf reports from Kyiv.
 New York Daily News |
Maryland's Episcopal bishop guilty for fatal hit-and-run
New York Daily News The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland announced that the newly ordained Bishop, Heather Elizabeth Cook, was the driver responsible for a hit-and-run that killed a bicyclist Sunday afternoon in Baltimore. The Right Reverend Eugene Taylor Sutton identified ... 1st female Episcopal bishop of Maryland responsible in fatal hit-and-runFox News Diocese: Bishop responsible in fatal hit-and-runThe Seattle Times Diocese: Bishop responsible in fatal hit-runKOIN.com all 22 news articles » |
 Daily Mail |
Obama on GOP Congress: I'll probably need my veto pen
USA TODAY President Obama has vetoed only two bills during his time in the White House, but that number is expected to rise in 2015. Preparing to deal with a Republican-run Senate as well as another GOP House, Obama told NPR News that "I haven't used the veto ... Obama Threatens GOP From HawaiiTheBlaze.com |
Obama threatens to wield veto pen to counter GOP-led CongressFox News
The Week Magazine -McClatchy Washington Bureau-Washington Post (blog)
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Published on May 13, 2014
FBI Director James Comey expressed thanks to law enforcement officers in the U.S. and around the world in a video message released on the first day of the annual Police Week gathering in Washington, D.C.
Published on Dec 29, 2014
Robert Anderson, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, talks about initiative to hire cyber experts.
Published on Dec 29, 2014
Newly released video shows a Turkish cargo ship sinking after colliding with another merchant vessel Sunday. (Dec. 29)
Published on Dec 29, 2014
Two police officers were shot at while on patrol in Los Angeles, but no one was injured. CNN's Sara Sidner reports.
Published on Dec 29, 2014
2014 presented U.S. President Barack Obama with some of his biggest foreign policy challenges, including Ukraine, Islamic State militants, draw down of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Ebola outbreak, and his announcement of the normalization of ties with longtime foe Cuba. VOA White House correspondent Luis Ramirez takes a look at how the year helped shape a foreign policy legacy that has sometimes been described as unclear, complex and conflicted.
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2014 presented U.S. President Barack Obama with some of his biggest foreign policy challenges, including Ukraine, Islamic State militants, draw down of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Ebola...
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ADEN (Reuters) - A senior Yemeni intelligence officer was shot dead on Monday by militants suspected to be linked to al-Qaeda, while an army general escaped a separate ambush in eastern Yemen, security sources said.
Russia to build world first DNA databank of all living thingsby The European Union Times
Not quite the Biblical Noah’s Ark, but possibly the next best thing. Moscow State University has secured Russia’s largest-ever scientific grant to collect the DNA of every living and extinct creature for the world’s first database of its kind.
“I call the project ‘Noah’s Ark.’ It will involve the creation of a depository, a databank for the storing of every living thing on Earth, including not only living, but disappearing and extinct organisms. This is the challenge we have set for ourselves,” MSU rector Viktor Sadivnichy told journalists.
The gigantic ‘ark’, set to be completed by 2018, will be 430 sq km in size, built at one of the university’s central campuses.
“It will enable us to cryogenically freeze and store various cellular materials, which can then reproduce. It will also contain information systems. Not everything needs to be kept in a petri dish,” Sadivnichy added.
The university’s press office has confirmed that the resulting database will contain collected biomaterials from all of MSU’s branches, including the Botanical Garden, the Anthropological Museum, the Zoological Museum and others. All of the university’s departments will be involved in research and collation of materials. The program, which has received a record injection of 1 billion rubles (US$194 million), will promote participation by the university’s younger generation of scientists.
Sadovnichy also said that the bank will have a link-up to other such facilities at home, perhaps even abroad.
“If it’s realized, this will be a leap in Russian history as the first nation to create an actual Noah’s Ark of sorts,” the rector said.
Russia is of course not the first to attempt something of this general scale – the quest to preserve biological life forms is one everyone should be engaged in. Britain has done just that with its Frozen Ark project, its venture into preserving all endangered life forms, also the first of its kind. They say it’s “the animal equivalent of the ‘Millennium Seed Bank’,” a project that encompasses all of the world’s seeds.
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Briton Nick Channing-Williams tells Sky News that being stuck on a burning ship amid stormy seas was 'absolutely terrifying'.
 www.worldbulletin.net |
Russia Brings Forward Verdict in Case of Putin Opponent Navalny
Businessweek A Russian court will hand down a verdict in the case against opposition leader Alexey Navalny tomorrow, moving the date forward by two weeks after his supporters began preparing protests for next month if he's convicted. A Moscow district court will start ... Moscow court rushes verdict to Putin's chief foeDaily Mail Sentence on Navalny brothers to be passed on Dec 30 instead of Jan 15 — lawyerITAR-TASS Faced With Protests, Russia Speeds Up Verdict Against Top Opposition LeaderBuzzFeed News The Star Online -The Moscow Times -Kyiv Post all 16 news articles » |
Florida sex offender who won $3m in scratch-off lottery sued by two victims by Jessica Glenza in New York
- Pleaded guilty to attempted sexual battery of two boys, 6 and 11, in 2002
- Victims ask court to freeze assets of abuser, who now lives in West Virginia
A Florida sex offender who won $3m in the lottery is being sued by two men he was convicted of abusing as boys.
Timothy Poole, 43, took a $2.2m lump sum payout in early December, after he bought a $20 scratch-off lottery ticket in Mount Dora, Florida, about 30 miles north of Orlando. The state lottery published Poole’s picture with an oversized $3m check, but removed it when it was widely publicized that Poole was a sex offender.
Continue reading...Russia Brings Forward Verdict in Trial of Putin Critic Navalnyby By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
The abrupt date change raised the possibility that Aleksei A. Navalny, who rose to prominence as an anti-corruption activist, would be handed a lengthy prison term just before New Year’s Eve.
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 NBCNews.com |
Virgin Atlantic Flight Bound for Las Vegas Makes 'Non-Standard Landing' at ...
NBCNews.com LONDON — A Virgin Atlantic passenger jet bound for Las Vegas suffered a fault with its landing gear and was forced to turn back for a "non-standard landing" in London on Monday, officials said. The Boeing 747 landed at Gatwick Airport and was immediately ... Virgin Atlantic plane lands safely at UK airport after faultReuters |
Plane lands safely at London Gatwick after technical faultCNN
Irish Times-Al Jazeera America
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 U.S. News & World Report |
13-Year Afghan War Reaches 'Responsible Conclusion'
U.S. News & World Report The longest war in American history was formally brought to a close Sunday, marking a new chapter for Afghanistan's domestic security. Gen. John Campbell, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, cases the ISAF flag during a ceremony ... and more » |
Over the past week, political figures in Kyrgyzstan have given very different estimates for the number of Kyrgyz citizens fighting with militant groups in Syria, ranging from 225 to over 500.
 OregonLive.com |
Winston Churchill a Muslim? Newly discovered letter reveals his family feared he ...
OregonLive.com Barack Obama has struggled throughout his presidency with misconceptions about his relationship with Islam. It turns out that Sir Winston Churchill, Great Britain's leader during World War II, had the same problem early in his long, distinguished political ... Winston Churchill Almost Converted to IslamThe Cubic Lane Winston Churchill wanted to become Muslim, claims letter by sister-in-lawThe Indian Express |
Sputnik International-Cambridge News-i24news
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Yes, that's right. Last week, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner "adopted" a boy as her godson to prevent him from turning into a werewolf. She tweeted images of a small ceremony conducted with the family of Yair Tawil, the seventh child of an Argentine Jewish family, during which the Tawils met with the president and lit candles on a menorah.Read full article >>
Authors have to accept that a published book takes on a life of its own, even if it means being sent alternative endings by readers
Part of becoming an adult involves accepting that we have no control over what other people think about us. It is an especially difficult lesson to learn for artists, who are hawking a larger portion of themselves in the marketplace than, say, a fishmonger or a mechanic. When the intent of a poet or sculptor is misunderstood by an audience, it may seem to the injured party that something in themselves is being mangled also.
That would explain the chagrin with which the writer Annie Proulx has responded to reactions to her short story Brokeback Mountain, about the secret 20-year love affair between Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, two men who meet while herding sheep in 1960s Wyoming. Misreadings have only multiplied, she says, since the release in 2005 of Ang Lee’s film adaptation, with its most ardent fans sending her more hopeful endings and suggestions for perceived improvements.
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