Some funny video on Russia .
There are some things you will only ever see in Russia – thankfully. TwisterNederland is back with another crazy and hilarious compilation of outrageous sightings from the motherland. Drunks, crashes, explosions, jellyfish,
Please browse in this blog ‘Videos’.’Astrophysics.
It contains more videos including the declassified files from France,US and Russia.
“Sceptics expected that a deep-water dive would debunk the slew of extra-terrestrial theories surrounding an unidentified object sitting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
But the Swedish expedition team that took the plunge surfaced with more questions than answers – and certainly no solution to its origins.
The divers found that the object, which some have likened to the Millennium Falcon because of its unusual round outline, was raised about 10 to 13ft above the seabed and curved in at the sides, giving it a mushroom shape.
They added that the object has ’rounded sides and rugged edges’
‘First we thought this was only stone, but this is something else,’ diver Peter Lindberg said in a press release.
At the center of the object, which has a 60-meter diameter, has an ‘egg shaped hole leading into it from the top
Surrounding the hole, they found a strange, unexplained rock formation. Adding fuel to the speculative fire, they said that the rocks looked ‘like small fireplaces’ and the ‘stones were covered in something resembling soot’.
‘Since no volcanic activity has ever been reported in the Baltic Sea the find becomes even stranger,’ Mr Lindberg continued.
A brief video clip of the dive was released to Swedish-language paper Expressen and can be viewed on Gizmodo.
‘As laymen we can only speculate how this is made by nature, but this is the strangest thing I have ever experienced as a professional diver.’
The soot also proved cause for concern for Mr Lindberg’s colleague on the Ocean X explorer team, Stefan Hogeborn.
‘During my 20-year diving career, including 6,000 dives, I have never seen anything like this. Normally stones don’t burn,’ Mr Hogeborn said in the release.
‘I can’t explain what we saw, and I went down there to answer questions, but I came up with even more questions.
Another find that they saw in person for the first time was the 985-foot trail that they described ‘as a runway or a downhill path that is flattened at the seabed with the object at the end of it’.
The object was first found this month last year, but because of a lack of funding and bad timing, they have were not able to pull a team together to see for themselves – just the strange, metallic outline, and a similar disk-shaped object about 200 metres away.
As it was before the recent dive, the story behind the object is anyone’s guess.
‘We’ve heard lots of different kinds of explanations, from George Lucas‘s spaceship – the Millennium Falcon – to “it’s some kind of plug to the inner world,” like it should be hell down there or something,’ Mr Lindberg said.
Speaking to Fox News, he said: ‘We don’t know whether it is a natural phenomenon, or an object. We saw it on sonar when we were searching for a wreck from World War I. This circular object just turned up on the monitor.
While the Ocean Explorer team is understandably excited about their potentially earth-shattering find, others are slightly more sceptical and are questioning the accuracy of the sonar technology.
In the past, such technology has confused foreign objects with unusual- but natural- rock formations.
Part of the trouble they face, however, is that they have no way of telling what is inside the supposed cylinder- whether it is filled with gold and riches or simply aged sediment particles.
HD Video http://gizmodo.com/5918762/divers-explore-mysterious-spaceship+shaped-object-in-baltic-sea
None is intentionally rude to visitors.
As has been pointed out in the story it might be due to Cultural differences and the apprehension of the locals to be nice.
They end up the other way.
India ranks at 1.9%
Middle east known for Hospitality is missing.
Australia at .91% ?
How reliable is this survey?
Story:
Sounding out the top five rudest countries were the UK, Germany and “Other” (those Others are the worst, don’t you think?). The US placed 7th, behind China.
Some of the perceived rudeness may be attributable to cultural differences rather than anything intentional. For example, says Tatiana Danilova, Skyscanner’s Russian Market Manager, “the Russian language is not as polite as English, so when Russians translate directly from Russian to English, it can sound rude to an English speaker even if they don’t mean it to.”
“We were surprised to see Russians come in second place,” says Skyscanner’s Travel Editor, Sam Baldwin. He attributes this in part to the “familiarity breeds contempt” phenomenon. Although Russia doesn’t compare with the Mediterranean as a tourist destination, as visa regulations have relaxed, Russian holidaymakers are increasingly flocking to the Mediterranean and coming into contact with people from other countries.
The same principle may apply to the French: “As our closest neighbors, there has long been a familiar rivalry between the UK and France,” Baldwin says, and the preponderance of responses from the British Isles may have contributed to this result. Still, Baldwin says, “Even the French acknowledge that the way they are perceived is not entirely without basis.” (In France’s defense, I’ve always found Parisians to be just as rude to each other as they are to foreigners. Outside of Paris – and even within the city – people can be as gracious as anywhere.)
The British, for their part, voted themselves “world’s worst tourists” in a previous Skyscanner survey.
The countries rated as having the least rude locals were Brazil, the Caribbean and the Philippines.
Skyscanner claims to be Europe’s leading travel search site, operating in over 25 languages with over 25 million visits and over 11 million unique visitors per month. It has offices in Edinburgh, Scotland and Singapore.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/04/03/the-worlds-rudest-nations-for-travelers/
Here’s the complete list of responses:
| Nationality | Percentage of votes |
| French | 19.29 |
| Russian | 16.56 |
| British | 10.43 |
| German | 9.93 |
| Other | 6.37 |
| Chinese | 4.3 |
| American | 3.39 |
| Spanish | 3.15 |
| Italian | 2.24 |
| Polish | 2.24 |
| Turkish | 2.15 |
| Indian | 1.9 |
| Swiss | 1.9 |
| Greek | 1.74 |
| Croatian | 1.57 |
| Austrian | 1.41 |
| Cypriot | 1.24 |
| Egyptian | 1.24 |
| Korean | 1.24 |
| Norwegian | 0.99 |
| Australian | 0.91 |
| Dutch | 0.83 |
| Irish | 0.83 |
| Swedish | 0.83 |
| Japanese | 0.66 |
| Danish | 0.5 |
| Canadian | 0.41 |
| New Zealander | 0.41 |
| Indonesian | 0.41 |
| Portuguese | 0.33 |
| Thai | 0.25 |
| Filipino | 0.17 |
| Caribbean | 0.08 |
| Brazilian | 0.08 |
Now that the Supreme Court has cancelled the licences issued for 2 G , (122 Licences),which includes Telenor and Etisalat the other important Company -Sistema Telecom,MTS, which has Russian Government backing, is up in arms against the Indian Government for cancellation of the Licence.
The Company,backed by Indo-Soviet Bilateral Treaty is planning to go for international arbitration.
The outcome is yet to be known.
What is relevant is the fact that can a Government renege its contractual obligations because its Ministers have engaged in corrupt practices?
If that were to be so, any one can file a case and the case may drag on and if the verdict is that there were irregularities involved, will the transaction become null and void?( we may not like it;the fact is that every Major Contract is won by Corrupt practices)
Under these circumstances, what is the sanctity of the Government saigning a Contract?
Similar instance was witnessed in Antrix-Devas scam which involved ISRO Transponder sale.
Antrix threatened to go to Court as the Government cancelled the Deal( nothing was heard of thence).Telenor and Etisalat are also thinking on these lines- to go for International Arbitration.
(Telenor and Etisalat have announced quitting India).
I feel that they are right.
While the culpability remains with the Company, it does not warrant cancellation of Licences for fraud and manipulation by a few, both on the Government and the Company’s side.
At best the Companies may be asked to pay a hefty fine.
If the present cancellation of Licences for ‘manipulation and kick backs’, no organisation can do business with the Government as the Manipulation and Bribery is a part of market economy at the Operating Level.
This what the Government means when they say that the fall out of 2 G will affect international investment in India.
I shall blog separately how an International Contract is negotiated in India.
Those who have experience in the dealing with the government are aware of this. (and the Government as well).
”
Russia-based Sistema JSFC, the majority shareholder in Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd (SSTL) that operates the MTS brand of mobile phone services, has sent a notice to the Union government invoking the right to protect its investment under a bilateral treaty, the first such challenge by an overseas company following the cancellation of 122 licences by the Supreme Court on 2 February.
Apart from using the provisions of the bilateral investments treaty (BIT) between India and Russia to move against the government, “the company also plans to contest the Supreme Court order by filing a review petition within this week”, Vsevolod Rozanov, president and chief executive officer of SSTL, said in an emailed statement.
One of Russia’s largest conglomerates, Sistema has a 56.68% stake in SSTL, which had 21 of its 22 licences cancelled. It has proposed, in the notice to the government, “to settle the dispute in an amicable way within six months (by 28 August). A copy of the letter has also been sent to the Indian embassy in Moscow”, the company said.
The India-Russia BIT allows a private investor to initiate dispute arbitration proceedings against the government, said Anuradha R.V., partner at Clarus Law Associates.
“The key question before the arbitral tribunal…would be whether the effect of the Supreme Court verdict amounts to a violation by the government of India of the rights of an investor from Russia under the BIT,” she said. “The defence of the government in such a case would need to be carefully articulated under the provisions of the BIT, to the effect that the Supreme Court ruling does not amount to an ‘expropriation’, or an action equivalent to expropriation as defined under the BIT.”
Sistema has invoked clause 9.1 of the BIT, which was signed on 23 December 1994 and came into force on 5 August 1996. If the dispute was not settled within six months, it “reserves the right to commence proceedings against India before an international arbitration tribunal set up in accordance with the arbitration rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and/or in any other available forum”, the company said.
If a verdict over the dispute goes against the government, Sistema may have to be compensated for losses on its investment in India, Anuradha said. However, such bilateral pacts typically don’t contain a provision to impose a penalty that’s over and above such compensation”
http://www.livemint.com/2012/02/29003022/2G-Licences–Sistema-sends-no.html
Russia‘s president has threatened to deploy missiles to target the US missile shield in Europe if Washington fails to give a legal action if the shield continued to be built without a binding agreement outlining it would not be aimed against Russia.
US, used to taking nations for granted as it has been with the likes of Egypt,Pakistan, is.one of thee days going to take Moscow for granted and is going to get hit.
Unfortunately the world will be hit for the worse.
For a bankrupt nation this brinkmanship is uncalled for.
Some one will call US’s bluff,possibly Iran?
Time US behaved measuredly
The US has repeatedly assured Moscow that its proposed missile defence system would not be directed against Russia’s nuclear forces and reinforced its stance again. “I do think it’s worth reiterating that the European missile defense system that we’ve been working very hard on with our allies and with Russia over the last few years is not aimed at Russia,” said Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. “It is … designed to help deter and defeat the ballistic missile threat to Europe and to our allies from Iran.”
But Medvedev said Moscow would not be satisfied by simple declarations and wants a legal guarantee setting out the boundaries. He added: “When we propose to put it on paper in the form of precise and clear legal obligations, we hear a strong refusal.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/23/medvedev-threatens-us-missile-shield
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