President Vladimir Putin meeting with Russian ambassadors at the Foreign Ministry mansion, July 1, 2014. (RIA Novosti / Aleksey Nikolskyi)

Russia Today - Jul 1, 2014 – http://tinyurl.com/lkgvgy9

Russia’s president has blamed the turmoil in Ukraine on the country’s newly-elected leader Petro Poroshenko. Vladimir Putin also criticized the West for its intention to turn the planet into a “global barracks.”

Russia’s president has laid the blame for the ongoing turmoil between Kiev and south-eastern regions squarely at the feet of Petro Poroshenko, after the Ukrainian leader terminated the ceasefire.

He has stressed that Russia and European partners could not convince Poroshenko to not take the path of violence, which can’t lead to peace.

“Unfortunately, President Poroshenko has made the decision to resume military actions, and we – meaning myself and my colleagues in Europe – could not convince him that the way to reliable, firm and long-term peace can’t lie through war,” Putin said. “So far, Petro Poroshenko had no direct relation to orders to take military action. Now he has taken on this responsibility in full. Not only military, but also political, more importantly.”

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko walks at the military camp near the town of Svyatogorsk in Eastern Ukraine, June 20, 2014 (Reuters / Stringer)

On Monday, the leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine held a phone call in which Putin stressed the need to prolong the ceasefire and the creation of “a reliable mechanism for monitoring compliance with it and the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] should play an active role.”

Russia offered that checkpoints on the Russian side should be monitored by representatives of the Ukrainian Border service as well as OSCE observers for “the joint control of the border.”

As the violent conflict continues in the east of Ukraine and the number of refugees fleeing to Russia grows, Putin vowed to provide help to everyone who needs it.

“Everything that’s going on in Ukraine is of course the internal business of Ukrainian government, but we are painfully sorry that people die, civilians,” Putin said. He added that the killing of journalists was “absolutely unacceptable.”

“In my opinion, there is a deliberate attempt to eliminate representatives of the press going on. It concerns both Russian and foreign journalists,” the president said.

‘West should stop turning world into ‘global barracks’

Speaking in front of ambassadors on Tuesday, Putin expressed hope that Western partners will stop imposing their principles on other countries.

Digital Library Site Cryptome Claims All Snowden Files Will be Published in July ‘to Avert a War’

Screenshot from cryptome.org

Stephen: This does appear to have an element of fear-mongering within it (particularly the reference to ‘a war’), but it could well be true and I’m sure there are many around the world who’d love to see the entire content of all of Snowden’s files.

From Russia Today - July 1, 2014 – http://tinyurl.com/o7cqydv

​All of the National Security Agency files accessed by former contractor Edward Snowden could be published in the month of July if vaguely worded predictions tweeted this week from the digital library site Cryptome prove to be correct.

A series of micro-messages published by the website — a portal for sharing sensitive documents that predates WikiLeaks by a decade — suggest further Snowden leaks may be on the way.

“During July all Snowden docs released” reads an excerpt from one Cryptome tweet sent on Monday this week.

“July is when war begins unless headed off by Snowden full release of crippling intel. After war begins not a chance of release,” reads another tweet sent from Cryptome on Monday this week. “Only way war can be avoided. Warmongerers [sic] are on a rampage. So, yes, citizens holding Snowden docs will do the right thing,” insists another.

Follow-up tweets from the organization have been equally vague, however, and a report published by a journalist at Vocativ on Tuesday does little to disclose what information, if any, will be published in the coming weeks.

Other dispatches this week from Cryptome direct followers to watch for two upcoming conferences planned for this month: the biannual Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) event in New York City starting July 18, and the Aspen Institute’s yearly Security Forum the following weekend, which will feature appearances from the likes of former NSA directors Keith Alexander and Michael Hayden.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former United States Department of Defense staffer attributed with leaking the so-called “Pentagon Papers” during the Vietnam War, may have a role in the possible Cryptome release. Ellsberg is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at HOPE, and Cryptome tweeted that those wanting more information on the release of Snowden docs should stayed tuned to that event for his speech and another from a yet-to-be-announced special guest.

As the tweets continued through Monday, Vocativ journalist Eric Markowitz approached Cryptome founder John Young for further details. Ahead of that article’s publication, however, Cryptome published the email exchange between Young and the reporter, the contents of which provide little more except for vaguely worded predictions that could be deciphered to conclude that Mr. Ellsberg may or may not discuss unpublished Snowden documents at HOPE later this month.

“July is a summitry of anti-spy and pro-spy events, HOPE and Aspen Security Forum. Both sides will be pushing their interests, with dramatic revelations by newsmaking and news breaking speakers,” Young wrote to the reporter. “At Aspen there is a star-studded list of top military and spy officials, defense industry and main stream media parading the need to combat the Snowdens and the WikiLeakers who do not understand the necessity of a luxurious and wasteful natsec and spy warmongering.”

Elsewhere in the back-and-forth, Young makes reference to a crowd-funding campaign started by the site last month on Kickstarter that has so far helped the organization raise more than $14,000.

“We, modestly, will conclude our kick-spy Kickstarter campaign in asynchrony with the Bold Names,” Young continued. “To hell with all of the preeners who from all appearances, get togethers, books, public relations and mutual consultation are working together to assure they remain synchronous.”

“July is hot as hell, so a great month to burn through public money ferociously, battling over which voracious information producer can inflame the newsmaking loins of peace and war: in times of both prepare for both, endlessly elbow bending at the perfidy of the PR competitors,” he added. “So, definitely, Snowden documents will be released in July. If the contending parties have their way, all of the documents will be released to kickstart the war on terrorism, in Iraq, in Iran, in North Korea, in the Holy Land, across Africa, Caribbean Drug Sea, the US-Mexican border, and the areas of operations always on alert in DC, Fort Meade and Colorado Springs.”

In the article eventually posted by Vocativ on Tuesday, Markowitz wrote that “Young has also ducked inquiries about how (or from whom) Cryptome received the document,” and “did not respond directly to questions about what the content of those leaked documents would reveal, other than to say that there may exist some ‘technical documents’ used ‘to combat techniology [sic] of spying well beyond those promoted for “public debate.”’”

“So again, it’s important to take all of this with a grain of salt,” Markowitz wrote.

If you think there have been more earthquakes than usual this year, you're right. A new study finds there were more than twice as many big earthquakes in the first quarter of 2014 as compared with the average since 1979.

"We have recently experienced a period that has had one of the highest rates of greatearthquakes ever recorded," said lead study author Tom Parsons, a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, California.

But even though the global earthquake rate is on the rise, the number of quakes can still be explained by random chance, said Parsons and co-author Eric Geist, also a USGS researcher. Their findings were published online June 21 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. [Image Gallery: This Millennium's Destructive Earthquakes]

With so many earthquakes rattling the planet in 2014, Parsons actually hoped he might find the opposite — that the increase in big earthquakes comes from one large quake setting off another huge shaker. Earlier research has shown that seismic waves from one earthquake can travel around the world and trigger tiny temblors elsewhere.

"As our group has been interested in the ability of an earthquake to affect others at a global scale, we wondered if we were seeing it happening. I really expected we would see evidence of something we couldn't explain by randomness," Parsons told Live Science's Our Amazing Planet in an email interview.

The new study isn't the first time researchers have tried and failed to link one earthquake to another in time and across distance. Earlier studies found that the biggest earthquakes on the planet — the magnitude-8 and magnitude-9 quakes — typically trigger much smaller jolts, tiny magnitude-2 and magnitude-3 rumblers. Yet, no one has ever proven that large quakes unleash other large quakes. Finding a statistical connection between big earthquakes is a step toward proving such connections takes place.

View gallery

Earthquakes larger than magnitude-7 since 2000.

But despite the recent earthquake storm, the world's great earthquakes still seem to strike at random, the new study found.

The average rate of big earthquakes — those larger than magnitude 7 — has been 10 per year since 1979, the study reports. That rate rose to 12.5 per year starting in 1992, and then jumped to 16.7 per year starting in 2010 — a 65 percent increase compared to the rate since 1979. This increase accelerated in the first three months of 2014 to more than double the average since 1979, the researchers report.

The rise in earthquakes is statistically similar to the results of flipping a coin, Parsons said: Sometimes heads or tails will repeat several times in a row, even though the process is random.

"Basically, we can't prove that what we saw during the first part of 2014, as well as since 2010, isn't simply a similar thing to getting six tails in a row," he said.

But Parsons said the statistical findings don't rule out the possibility that the largest earthquakes may trigger one another across great distances. Researchers may simply lack the data to understand such global "communication," he said.

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A man walks inside his house damaged by an earthquake of magnitude 6.1 in Nagarote town April 11, 20 …

"It's possible that global-level communications happen so infrequently that we haven't seen enough to find it among the larger, rarer events," Parsons said.

However, earthquakes smaller than magnitude-5.6 do cluster on a global scale, the researchers found. This suggests these less-powerful quakes are more likely to be influenced by others — a finding borne out by previous research.

For example, the number of magnitude-5 earthquakes surged after the catastrophic magnitude-9 earthquakes in Japan and Sumatra, even at distances greater than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), earlier studies found.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook andGoogle+. Original article at Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.

• Related video

Big earthquakes double in 2014

The Earth has recently had "one of the highest rates of great earthquakes ever recorded," a researcher reveals.
Explanation

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin has been slammed for arming rebels and fanning flames of separatism in eastern Ukraine. But there is strong evidence recently that it's just the opposite: He now wants to bring about a truce.

To do so, however, Putin must face down nationalists at home pressuring him to send in troops to support the rebels occupying town halls and border posts and fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine after the new Ukrainian president ended a mainly one-sided cease-fire.

Putin's strategic aims have not changed: He wants to keep Ukraine at least partly in Russia's orbit and prevent it from joining NATO.

But he is also mindful of Russia's other global relationships, and he needs to move carefully to avoid more sanctions from the European Union and the United States.

His solution? Try to negotiate a truce in Ukraine while securing some long-term levers over Ukraine.

The Russian leader scored a measure of success last month when the new Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, declared a cease-fire that some rebels accepted. While the truce was frequently broken and failed to persuade the rebels to disarm, it set the stage for consultations involving a former Ukrainian president, the Russian ambassador, European officials and insurgent leaders.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a meeting with Russian ambassadors, envoys and diplomats …

The two rounds of peace talks didn't produce any visible results, and Poroshenko canceled the truce on Monday evening. But they brought together the warring parties for the first time, an important success for Putin. The Kiev government had previously resisted his calls to sit down with the rebels, whom they brand as "terrorists."

On Wednesday, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine called for restarting the talks in an attempt to reach an agreement on a new cease-fire that would be respected by both warring sides.

Leonid Kuchma, a former Ukrainian president who has represented the government in the talks, is well-known to Putin, who dealt closely with him for years. Another man at the table was Kuchma's former chief of staff, Viktor Medvedchuk, who lives in Russia and has close personal ties to Putin.

Putin's ultimate goal is to get Kiev to appoint a Kremlin-friendly figure like Medvedchuk as a regional boss in eastern Ukraine, and see him nurture close ties with Moscow. That may not be immediately achievable, but other steps, like Poroshenko's promise to increase the power of provincial authorities, could increase Russia's sway in eastern Ukraine.

But Putin will need to offer something in return, and his options are limited. Issuing a direct call for the rebels to lay down their arms would sound like a betrayal of their cause and shatter his carefully nurtured image of a tough leader who is ready to stand up to the West.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a meeting with Russian ambassadors, envoys …

Many of the rebels, driven by their hatred of a Kiev government that they despise as a "fascist junta," could also be reluctant to disarm.

And Poroshenko, for his part, is facing strong public pressure for a quick military victory, meaning it would be political suicide for him to heed Russian calls to extend the cease-fire and withdraw his troops from the east.

When the mutiny in the east began in mid-April following Russia's annexation of Crimea, some Kremlin strategists might have thought that they could keep the tensions on a slow burner to wring concessions from the Kiev government. But as the battles intensified and the death toll climbed into the hundreds, the anger it has generated is making it increasingly difficult to de-escalate the crisis.

Hawkish members of Putin's inner circle have become increasingly demanding, and there are increasing signs of discord at the top of the Russian leadership. Even if Putin did try to soften his stance, it is far from clear that his lieutenants would carry out his orders.

Putin's economic adviser, Sergei Glazyev, has made a series of bellicose statements, including his recent proposal to send Russian military jets to protect the rebels in eastern Ukraine from government air raids. The Kremlin disavowed his words, saying Glazyev was expressing his private opinion.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin looks at Soviet World War II era posters as he visits a WWII histor …

Other Russian hawks could be working quietly behind the scenes, orchestrating covert assistance to the rebels. At the border Wednesday, Associated Press journalists saw fresh tracks — a sign that military vehicles had crossed from Russia into Ukraine.

The extent of Russian involvement in the rebellion remains murky. Ukraine and the West say Russia has fomented the insurgency with troops and weapons, including tanks and rocket launchers. Moscow has denied sending any soldiers or military equipment and insisted that Russians fighting in the east are private citizens.

If heavy weapons have crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine as the U.S. says, they haven't made any significant impact on the ground, where the Ukrainian military enjoys massive military superiority over the rebels.

AP journalists in the east have seen a few armored vehicles that the insurgents said they seized from the government, but those could do little to the hundreds of tanks, self-propelled howitzers and rocket launchers that the Ukrainian military has deployed.

Rebel leaders have pleaded with the Kremlin for military assistance, and some prominent Russian nationalists have publicly taunted Putin for cowardice. Such criticism could resonate with the broader Russian public, which has been heavily influenced by Russian state television's characterization of the Kiev government as a "fascist junta" that is killing Russian-speakers.

While the Kremlin has recently moved to tone down the rhetoric in the news media, many Russians — full of patriotic fervor after the annexation of Crimea in March — expect Putin to take resolute action.

In a sense, Putin has become a hostage of his own game of raising the stakes and fiery rhetoric, and it could be hard for him to soften his posture toward Ukraine without eroding his power.

___

Isachenkov has covered Russia and other ex-Soviet nations for the AP since 1992.

Suspected Israeli revenge killing of Palestinian triggers clashes

By Noah Browning

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The body of an abducted Palestinian youth was found in Jerusalem on Wednesday, raising suspicions he had been killed by Israelis avenging the deaths of three abducted Jewish teens.

News of the discovery of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair, who was last seen being bundled into a van earlier in the day, triggered clashes between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli police in the city.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Jewish settlers of killing Abu Khudair and demanded that Israel "mete out the strongest punishment against the murderers if it truly wants peace".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged police "to swiftly investigate who was behind the loathsome murder and its motive". He called on all sides "not to take the law into their own hands".

Police said they had found a body in the wooded outskirts of Jerusalem. Abu Khudair's father told Reuters the force had told him the body was his son.

An Israeli security source said Israel suspected the youth had been kidnapped and murdered, possibly in retribution for the killings of the Israeli teens. Their bodies were discovered on Monday, nearly three weeks after they were abducted in the occupied West Bank.

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Israeli army soldiers take positions during clashes with Palestinians in an early morning operation …

Israel says Palestinian Hamas militants killed them. The Islamist group has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation.

The White House condemned the killing of Abu Khudair and called on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to "take all necessary steps to prevent an atmosphere of revenge and retribution."

Netanyahu convened his security cabinet later on Wednesday as violence also flared up across the Israel-Gaza border, with Palestinians firing at least a dozen rockets and mortars, and Israel's military carrying out an air strike.

WHITE VAN

Abu Khudair's cousin said the 16-year-old was grabbed off the street after leaving his home in Jerusalem's Arab neighbourhood of Shuafat to go to morning prayers with friends.

"Somebody ran into the house to say one of the boys had been dragged into a white van, so (Mohammed's) mother called the police," the cousin, Naima, said.

Clashes in Palestinian Arab Neighbourhood in Easte …Play Video

The abduction came a day after the three Jewish seminary students - Gil-Ad Shaer and U.S.-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19 - were buried in a funeral attended by tens of thousands of mourners.

While the teenagers were laid to rest in the city of Modi'in, several hundreds Israeli demonstrators, some chanting "Death to Arabs", blocked the main entrance to Jerusalem.

Cries for revenge have echoed throughout the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They can be heard at the emotionally charged funerals of Palestinians killed by Israel, and the phrase "May God avenge his death" is often invoked at the burials of Israelis slain by Palestinians.

But deadly Israeli vigilante attacks, in declared retribution for Palestinian assaults, have been rare in recent years.

More common are the so-called "price tag" incidents in which mosques and Palestinian property are torched or damaged - originally a reference by ultra-nationalist Jews to making the government "pay" for any curbs on Jewish settlement on land Palestinians seek for a state.

Hebrew graffiti found on a building in the West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday read: "Price tag, Jewish revenge."

Tensions were high in the West Bank, where around 40 Palestinians were arrested in raids on Tuesday, the latest in a campaign by Israel to cripple Hamas there.

Four people were wounded by live bullets early on Wednesday in an Israeli raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin.

Near Hebron, Israeli forces destroyed the home of a Palestinian arrested on charges of shooting dead an off-duty police officer in the West Bank in April.

Israel, which suspended the demolition policy in 2005 as a Palestinian uprising waned, says destroying the homes of Palestinians involved in attacks on Israelis has a deterrent effect. Rights groups have condemned the practice as collective punishment.

(Additional reporting by Ammar Awad, Ori Lewis, Maayan Lubell and Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Noah Browning; Editing by Larry King)