Moscow slams US statements on Russia's refusal to cut nuclear capabilities

Russia has rejected Washington's statements made in its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review that Moscow refuses to further decrease its nuclear capabilities.

"While just having a flick through the document, one can notice that its confrontational charge and anti-Russian focus stare in the face," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.


"The document's statement that Russia allegedly refuses to further reduce its nuclear capabilities is yet another example of the blatant 'falsification'," the statement said.


The US said in its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review that Russia continues to violate a series of arms control treaties and commitments.

"In the nuclear context, the most significant Russian violation involves a system banned by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty," said the 74-page US nuclear policy report released on Friday.

"In a broader context, Russia is either rejecting or avoiding its obligations and commitments under numerous agreements, and has rebuffed US efforts to follow the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with another round of negotiated reductions and to pursue reductions in non-strategic nuclear forces," it added.


The Russian Foreign Ministry said it has nothing in common with the actual state of affairs. "Certainly, we will be compelled to take into consideration the approaches introduced now by Washington and to take necessary steps in order to ensure own security," it noted.

The Russian Foreign Ministry urged the US to "team up to look for solutions to the problems that have been accumulating in the field of strategic stability."

The US report, which is largely in line with the 2010 review done by the Obama administration, reaffirms commitments to non-proliferation treaties but emphasizes the need to enhance capabilities to match with Russia, showing supports for US nuclear modernisation projects.


The review, the first of this kind since 2010, also calls for a "lower-yield" option with less powerful explosive capacity for ballistic and cruise missiles launched from submarines. 

Declassified Photos Of The US’s Preparations For Atomic Bombings Of Japan (16 Pics)

Interesting photos that show the US’s final preparations of "Fat Man" and “Little Boy” which were codenames for atomic bombs that were detonated over the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August of 1945.

Soldiers check the casings on the "Fat Man" atomic bomb. Multiple test bombs were created on Tinian Island. All were roughly identical to an operational bomb, even though they lacked the necessary equipment to detonate.

On the left, geophysicist and Manhattan Project participant Francis Birch marks the bomb unit that would become "Little Boy" while Norman Ramsey, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Physics, looks on.

A technician applies sealant and putty to the crevices of "Fat Man," a final preparation to make sure the environment inside the bomb would be stable enough to create a full impact once it detonated.

Soldiers and workers sign their names and other messages on the nose of "Fat Man."

At the airfield, "Fat Man" is lined up over a pit specifically constructed for it, from which it is then loaded into the plane that eventually dropped it over Nagasaki.

Both pits for "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," each roughly 8 feet by 12 feet, still exist today on the island and now serve as a memorial of sorts.

Workers check "Little Boy" one last time, keeping the tarp on for security reasons, following a similar lowering procedure like the one done for "Fat Man" three days later.

Once "Little Boy" is ready, the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, is reversed and positioned over the trench.

Left: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Right: Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, taken by Charles LevyAP

There Is A Cat Sanctuary In Hawaii Where People Come From All Over The World To Pet Them (11 Pics)

If you’re a cat lover and you’re planning on going to Hawaii, you can pay a visit to these lovely kitties in the Lanai Cat Sanctuary.

Lanai Cat Sanctuary in Hawaii is home to almost 500 cats

And you can cuddle every one of them!

The sanctuary is located on the small Hawaiian island of Lanai

People come from all over the world to visit

One man flew all the way from Japan just to spend a single day with the cats!

Russian Programmer Detained in Spain Has Been Extradited to U.S

Spanish authorities said Friday that an alleged Russian cybercriminal they detained last year at Washington’s request has been extradited to the U.S., a move likely to anger Kremlin officials, who say Russian citizens are being hunted down.

Russian programmer Pyotr Levashov —who the U.S. Justice Department says is one of the world’s most sophisticated hackers—was handed to U.S. Marshals, Spain’s National Police said.

The Justice Department and Mr. Levashov’s Spanish lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment. During court proceedings, the 37-year-old Russian had fought against his possible extradition, saying he feared he would be drugged and tortured once in U.S. custody.

Mr. Levashov was arrested in April while vacationing in Spain with his wife and son. At the time, U.S. authorities accused him of operating a vast network of compromised computers for malicious purposes. The Justice Department said Mr. Levashov allegedly spread a potent malware known as Kelihos since about 2010, harvesting login credentials, and gaining control of hundreds of thousands of computers.

Spain’s National Court approved Mr. Levashov’s extradition to the U.S. in October, rejecting a counter-extradition claim filed by Russia.

U.S. authorities have dismissed speculation that Mr. Levashov’s case was related to investigations into alleged foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Still, it is emblematic of a series of extradition battles pitting Washington against Moscow in third countries.

In addition to Mr. Levashov, three other alleged Russian hackers have been arrested in Europe on U.S. warrants in recent months, one in the Czech Republic, one in Greece and another one in Spain.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has criticized the arrests, saying the U.S. has engineered a “global manhunt” against its citizens.

Asked why many alleged Russian cybercriminals travel overseas despite the risk of getting caught, a former Russian hacker said: “High IQ doesn’t protect you from doing stupid things.”

Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes Are Betraying the Constitution in the Service of Donald Trump

Asked at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 if the delegates had created a republic or a monarchy, Benjamin Franklin is reported to have replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Paul Ryan has abandoned the effort to keep it.

At the heart of the US Constitution is a system of checks and balances that was established primarily to guard against the concentration of power in an executive branch that might tend toward royalism. The founders of the American experiment wanted to prevent a repeat of the monarchical abuses of King George III, against which their constituents had risen in revolution.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” warned James Madison, the essential author of the Constitution, who explained, “The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.”

What Madison asserted in the late 1780s remains true to this day: For the system of checks and balances to function, the leaders charged with responsibility for the various branches of government must zealously defend the authority of the branches they lead. They cannot allow one branch to become the extension of another.

This is the basic duty that House Speaker Paul Ryan rejected when he chose to make the legislative chamber subservient to President Trump’s lawless executive branch. Ryan’s abandonment of the Constitution began long ago. But it culminated with the speaker’s decision to support Friday’s release of a partisan memo produced by disgraced House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) to discredit law-enforcement agencies that have organized and supported inquiries into Trump campaign and Trump administration wrongdoing.

“Discrediting law enforcement is the memo’s transparent purpose and why it has been embraced by President Trump,” argued a Washington Posteditorial that condemned Ryan’s choice. “Written mainly by the staff of Devin Nunes (R-CA), the loose-cannon chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the memo reportedly makes the case that the FBI abused spying authorities as it sought permission to surveil a former Trump adviser,” noted the Post. “The Justice Department called its potential release, which Mr. Trump reportedly intends to approve, ‘extraordinarily reckless.’ The FBI released its own startling public statement citing ‘grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.’ Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote in a Post op-ed that the Nunes memo ‘cherry-picks facts, ignores others and smears the FBI and the Justice Department.’” 

The Post’s editorial appeared just before the release of the memo. But the concerns it expressed were confirmed by the document, which makes over-the-top and highly speculative allegations about how the inquiry into the Trump team’s Russia ties has been conducted, and especially about how FISA warrants were obtained, but fails to present an even minimally credible case that the inquiry is unnecessary or inappropriate.

That memo is so thin in content and character that it adds weight to the argument made by the Postwith a headline that read: “Paul Ryan is tarnishing the House.”

The speaker’s embrace of Nunes and his memo has dishonored the chamber that he, above all others, is duty bound to defend.

But that is the least of the sins against the American experiment committed by Ryan in collaboration with Nunes. Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley, a key Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, aptly describes Ryan and Nunes as “co-conspirators” in doing the bidding of a president who has “freaked out” over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Nunes is a secondary figure, whom Quigley appropriately dismisses as nothing more than an agent for Trump.

Ryan’s dereliction of duty is the more serious matter, as it betrays the most fundamental tenets of the Constitution. When the speaker chose to facilitate this bungling effort by Nunes to smear the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice on Trump’s behalf, the Wisconsin Republican signaled a willingness to make the House of Representatives an appendage of the White House.

In so doing, Ryan abandoned the solemn oath he swore “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”

Paul Ryan is not supporting the Constitution. He is shredding it. It is grotesque for the speaker to claim that he is aiding and abetting Nunes because “that brings us accountability, that brings us transparency, that helps us clean up any problem we have with [the Justice Department] and FBI”—as Ryan did Thursday in a crudely defensive and wildly dishonest attempt to deny his true intentions.

Make no mistake: Paul Ryan has zero interest in accountability, transparency or cleaning up problems with law-enforcement agencies and the investigative process. He has shown no interest in legitimate and necessary oversight of intelligence agencies. He has never been identified with the cause of civil liberties or with the defense of privacy rights.

What Paul Ryan has been identified with is extreme partisanship and with the determination of congressional Republicans to defend Donald Trump—even if that defense comes at the cost of a system of checks and balances that was established 231 years ago to guard against precisely the abuses that are now occurring.

Now that marijuana is legal, San Francisco is erasing everybody's misdemeanor convictions

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced that his office will retroactively apply California’s marijuana-legalization laws to past criminal cases. This means San Francisco will expunge and seal the records of misdemeanor marijuana offenders, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today.

This decision was announced by George Gascón at a news conference. The San Francisco District Attorney was joined by city supervisors, the director of the city’s Office of Cannabis, the Drug Policy Alliance reform group, and the president of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP.

California legalized recreational marijuana in November. Voters approved Proposition 64, the LA Times reported, making California the most populous state in the nation to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Californians who are 21 and older can possess, transport, and buy up to 28.5 grams of marijuana.

The same proposition that legalized recreational marijuana in the American coastal state allows offenders to petition for resentencing. That is, it allows it if their crime would have received a different penalty under the new law.

Proposition 64, the 2016 referendum item that legalized recreational marijuana in California, allows marijuana offenders to petition for re-sentencing if their crime would have received a different penalty, or no penalty at all, under the new law. An individual can petition a court to recall or dismiss their case, but not everyone has the money for legal feels or the time to go through the entire process. 

However, instead of waiting for individual petitions, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón will speed up the entire process. Mr. Gascón and his office will immediately dismiss and seal over 3 thousand misdemeanor marijuana convictions in San Francisco, some of which date back to the 1970s.

Thousands of people whose marijuana convictions branded them with criminal histories can now rest at ease. Obtaining government benefits and finding jobs will not be as difficult any more. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, around 5,000 Californians have already petitioned the courts, hoping to have their marijuana convictions expunged.

But, that is not all San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón’s office will do. Offenders who received a felony marijuana conviction will also be resentenced.

Meanwhile, social media is already buzzing with news about the DA’s decision, which seems to have caused celebration among marijuana enthusiasts all over California, who hope their cities will follow in San Francisco’s footsteps.

Maryland Senate votes to end parental rights of rapists

The Maryland Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to end parental rights of rapists over children conceived through rape.

The 45-0 vote sends the bill to the House, where an identical measure has advanced for a vote later this week. Both chambers have made the bill a priority this session after it failed to pass for nearly a decade. Last year, lawmakers were criticized for failing to pass the bill after its 90-day session ended in April.

Sen. Robert Zirkin, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said the measure has posed complicated issues involving due process for the accused, because the issue can involve fathers who have not been criminally convicted of rape. Zirkin also said the bill poses issues related to laws designed to protect victims. While the measure has been improved over the years, Zirkin said lawmakers will need to keep working to make the law better after it is enacted.

"This body has passed this bill unanimously on eight different occasions and I think we're about to do it as well, but it doesn't mean it's not without its complications, and we'll be addressing some of those in years to come," Zirkin, a Baltimore County Democrat, said before the vote.

The measure is crafted as an emergency bill, so it would take effect immediately with the signature of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who has expressed support.

"We've had it before us for, I believe, nine years and I'm proud to say I voted for it every time we've had it and fought for it, and it is absolutely imperative that we get this bill passed out of this chamber, out of the House and signed by the governor," said Sen. J.B. Jennings, a Republican who is the Senate minority leader.

About 45 states and the District of Columbia limit parental rights of rapists, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. About 30 allow or require the complete termination of rights. The other states and the District of Columbia deny or restrict some aspect, such as custody or visitation.

Various studies over the last two decades estimate that between 17,000 and 32,000 rape-related pregnancies occur in the United States every year, according to NCSL. Studies vary widely on the outcome of pregnancies resulting from rape, according to an analysis of the bill by the Maryland Department of Legislative Services.