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Russia Tag

The Democrats have been wailing about the Russian influence on the 2016 election, but it turns out, as Mary blogged earlier this week, that they are implicated in creating their own army of fake Russian bots to influence the 2017 Alabama Special Election. According to reports, Democrats spent the same amount of money on fake Russian bots intended to spread disinformation and fake news as the Russians spent on real Russian bots.

*UPDATE 2:42PM: Ukraine's parliament has approved "martial law for 30 days in the regions bordering" Russia. The undeclared war between Ukraine and Russia took a horrific turn on Sunday after Ukraine claimed that Russia opened fire on its navy in the Kerch Strait, which separates the Black and Azoz Seas. The attack wounded six sailors and Russia seized at least three Ukrainian vessels.

The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned an illicit Iranian-Russian network supplying oil to the Syrian regime. The elaborate oil scheme was used to finance the Islamic terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, a department press release said Tuesday. The covert shipment of Iranian oil was run by the aid of the Russian state-owned company Promsyrioimport. The network delivered millions of barrels of oil to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime and hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamic terrorist groups, the Treasury Department disclosed.

Friday, a Russian woman was charged for allegedly interfering in US elections, including the 2018 midterms. The Department of Justice indicated that the criminal charges are not indicative of interference to the degree that electoral outcomes were swayed. Elena Khusyaynova, 44, is accused of attempting to "sow discord", "as part of a conspiracy that exploited thousands of social media accounts and emails that claimed to be owned by U.S. residents, authorities said," reports CNBC.

Poland has signed a long-term gas deal to buy natural gas from the United States to ease its reliance on Moscow. Polish state-run energy company PGNiG signed a 20-year supply contract with Louisiana-based Venture Global LNG. "Today we can fulfill our efforts to improve the sovereignty, security, and competitiveness of our gas sector," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters on Wednesday.

The Department of Justice has indicted seven Russians who participated in a cyberattack against those who exposed a Russian doping conspiracy that led to the country's banishment from the 2016 and 2018 Olympics. A grand jury located in the Western District of Pennsylvania indicted the men on charges of "computer hacking, wire fraud, aggravated identify theft, and money laundering."

In July, the Department of Justice charged Russian national Maria Butina with conspiring to defraud the United States and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.  She has pleaded not guilty to all charges. U. S. prosecutors admitted they misread text messages they used in court Friday to claim that Butina traded sex for access.  They were attempting to show Butina as a flight risk and say the mistake should not diminish their case to continue holding her.  She had been denied bond in July, but her attorney wants her released on home confinement.

When I read Michael Crichton's famous Jurassic Park in the 1990's, I knew enough about the approach to sense that cloning could be used to bring back extinct animals. It appears that Crichton's novel was indeed prophetic, as scientists are attempting to extract cells from the mummy of a 40,000-year-old foal from Siberia in an attempt to use the sample to clone the extinct species back into existence.