EHF Pseudo Champions League

Well, it seems Russia will not only refrain from retaliating to the US expelling some of its diplomats in response for the alleged Russian meddling in the US election - but Putin has also disregarded his foreign minister's recommendation to reciprocate, and will keep all US diplomats in place, and even invite their kids to the traditional New Year's festivities in the Kremlin:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russia-us-35-diplomats-expelled-9536358

This is a very calculated move by Putin. Despite the fact that he is a dictator, it's also doubtless that Putin is an astute leader who can assess the situation very quickly - unlike newly elected leader Trump who seems incompetent on virtually any issue. Putin wants to show himself as the good guy here, and I think Trump will no doubt take this bait rather easily.

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From the diary of an immigrant

Today I was smuggled across the border, and I finally made my way into Saudi Arabia. On the way here, I threw my ID card away (issued at the 1st Precinct of Varna, Bulgaria), so I had to tell the Saudi border control that I was a refugee from Donbass, Ukraine, looking for refuge from Putin's terror. They immediately believed me, and they put me on the train to Riyadh for free.

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Those who organised yesterday's shooting of Andrey Karlov, the Russian ambassador in Turkey, likely wanted to take a revenge at Russia for her actions in Syria and to disrupt the ongoing warming up between Turkey and Russia. It seems they have failed in this, because no signs of another freezing of these relations are seen. The Turkish foreign minister is still going to visit Moscow for a trilateral meeting with Iran and Russia on Syria. The only thing the assassination will change is probably the level of security measures before the meeting.

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Okay, I get it, Trump is basking in his glory from scoring an early win on his promise to keep US jobs at home. He has talked Carrier into staying in Indiana rather than running off to Mexico for profit - which has earned him applause by locals. And some raised eyebrows from both libertarians and the business itself. The issue with such individual ad hoc "solutions" is simple: it could incentivize other companies to blackmail the government into giving concessions (tax cuts for individual companies) by threatening to leave the country.

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We've all become perfectly aware by now that the EU has been under increasing pressure from hostile Russian propaganda, which threatens to undermine its relations with its partners, to block important decisions, and generally damage the credibility of the major European institutions by instilling fear and a sense of insecurity among the EU citizens. The purpose is to cause discord within the EU, and put its democratic values in question - and the means that the Russian government is using to achieve that are various, from think-tanks, to multilingual TV channels (RT), to pseudo information agencies and multimedia sources (Sputnik), trans-border social groups and religious organizations, to social media and internet trolls, and of course funding political parties (mostly Euroskeptic and right-wing) and populist movements.

That's basically what the part about Russia in the EU's recent report on Strategic Communication With A View To Counteracting Propaganda Against It By Third Countries says. This EU resolution only has an advisable character and doesn't impose anything on anybody, instead it recommends urgent measures for countering hostile propaganda, without prescribing bans on free speech or any such thing. All it does is identify a problem, and propose possible solutions within the law.

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Scared of the little green men in green uniforms without any signs on them, are we? Don't know where they're coming from and what they want from us, eh? East Europe trembles with the shaking ground under their boots, and prepares to eat the dust from under their heels. The angry bear is stirring, and is preparing for a predator leap: RRRAWR! But this time it's masked, it has no insignia, and it uses RT to convince the world that it's actually not a bear, but a mere lamb. You gotta believe it, or else!

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The whole world was watching with dismay, morbid curiosity and growing horror how the tragicomical and rather vulgar reality show that the US presidential campaign unraveled for the last few months. And though the monopolar world model has fast been sinking back into history for quite a while, the choice of the American people was still bound to have long-lasting implications on a global scale. So the world was watching nervously, waiting to see the outcome of this "choice between two evils". We wanted to know which would be "the lesser evil" for us all. And we were bracing ourselves for what was to come, and making bets on who the next one to be bombed would be - presumably depending on America's choice.

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When in the early morning of March 9, 1230, the Tzar of the Second Bulgarian Empire, Ivan Asen II decided to declare war on the short-lived Despotate of Epirus, he did that in an almost ritualistic way. He ordered the parchment of the peace treaty that had been violated by the Byzantines to be impaled on a spear. In the ensuing Battle of Klokotnitsa, the Bulgarian ruler turned the enemy into retreat and routed the Byzantine army, he captured their emperor Theodore Komnenos, and restored previous territories to the 2nd Bulgarian Empire.

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