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Poland’s financial and securities regulator KNF said on Friday it had filed a complaint with local prosecutors accusing a “person acting in the name of JP Morgan Securities” of possible market manipulation. A spokesman in London for JP Morgan Securities, a unit of JPMorgan Chase, declined to comment. The complaint is connected with transactions that took place on Nov. 12 when late transactions in what newspapers dubbed a “miracle” fixing session on the Warsaw bourse helped the main WIG20 index .WIG20 recover a good chunk of its losses. More

That Russia would jury-rig a nuclear sub underscores Putin’s fury and laser beam intent to defend Russian boarders from recent aggressive moves towards her on behalf of NATO and the US.

Christian Science Monitor
Russian sub accident points to Navy’s shortcomings
The malfunction of the firefighting system, which spewed deadly freon gas through the forward compartments of K-152 Nerpa, an Akula-II class attack sub undergoing diving trials in the Sea of Japan, has a little-known international twist. Though neither government has officially admitted it, both Indian and Russian media have been reporting for months that the 12,000-ton Nerpa was to be handed over to the Indian Navy early next year under a 10-year lease.

The acquisition would multiply India’s military capabilities in the sensitive Indian Ocean, and raise questions about Russia’s role in proliferating nuclear technologies. Indian news agencies reported last week that a team of 40 Indian naval specialists was slated to arrive later this month in Vladivostok to learn about the ship. “India was one of the main supporters of Russia’s defense industries after the Soviet Union collapsed, and provided funds that helped to keep our aviation and shipbuilding going,” says Vadim Kozulin, a military expert with the PIR Center, a security think tank in Moscow. “It’s only been in the past three years that Russian military procurement budgets have been greater than the earnings from exports.”

According to media reports, the deal was struck in 2004 in which India paid up to $650 million to refit the Admiral Gorshkov, a Soviet-era aircraft carrier, and assist completion of the Nerpa, which had lain on blocks at the Komsomolsk-na-Amur shipyard since its construction was largely abandoned in 1991. The Akula-II class of nuclear subs, a late Soviet-era design, are able to dive deeper, more than 600 meters, run more silently than previous attack subs, and move at speeds up to 33 knots while fully submerged. The Nerpa will not be equipped with the Akula class sub’s standard complement of long-range cruise missiles, due to international strictures on proliferation of missile technology, says Pavel Felgenhauer, military expert with the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Moscow.

But Indian media have reported that the Indian Navy may install indigenous nuclear-capable missiles, and use its operational experience with the Nerpa to help develop Indian-built nuclear-powered subs. The Nerpa’s patchwork history may have contributed to Saturday’s disaster. “They are using bits of Soviet equipment and hardware, brushing off the rust and putting in new stuff,” says Mr. Felgenhauer. “That’s just not a good way to develop operational equipment.”

Moreover, Russia’s military establishment has a crushing shortage of qualified experts. “That submarine was being constructed over a period of 15 years, and was the only one being built at the Amur shipyard during that time,” says Alexander Goltz, a military expert with the online newspaper Yezhednevnaya Gazeta. “How many of the original specialists and skilled workers would have stayed on during that period? Very few. Everything conspired to make that ship very vulnerable.” Captain Dyagalo said that 208 people were aboard the Nerpa at the time, including 81 servicemen plus naval technicians and workers from the Komsomolsk-na-Amur shipyard. Fourteen civilians were among the dead, he said.

Initial reports indicated that the accident resulted from a malfunction of the Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) system, which is used to quickly suffocate a major fire with a stream of a freon mixture. The foam is only supposed to be released when a submarine compartment is engulfed in flames. Any contact with it will kill an unprotected person instantly. “[The Nerpa incident] is a completely abnormal kind of accident, not the sort of thing that’s ever supposed to happen aboard a submarine,” says Mr. Goltz. More

Also See: At least 20 dead in Russian nuclear submarine accident

(AFP) — President-elect Barack Obama has told Polish President Lech Kaczynski he will go ahead with plans to build a missile defence shield in eastern Europe despite threats from Russia, Warsaw said on Saturday. “Barack Obama has underlined the importance of the strategic partnership between Poland and the United States, he expressed his hope of continuing the political and military cooperation between our two countries. The plan has enraged Moscow, master of Poland and the then Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Regarding it as a grave security threat, the Kremlin has threatened to aim its own missiles at the planned US installations. Just hours after Obama’s victory speech, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow would station short-range missile systems in its Kaliningrad enclave wedged between Poland and fellow EU member Lithuania. More

The Telegraph
Russia has successfully tested a stealth missile able to penetrate the US defence system being built in Poland. In a clear show of military strength amid rising tensions with Nato allies, Kremlin chiefs fired a Topol RS-12M rocket, which has nuclear capabilities, from their Plesetsk space centre to a target 3,700 miles across the country. The test came a week after Washington and Warsaw formally agreed a deal to host components of a US missile defence shield in Poland.

While American officials insist the shield is designed to defend against a potential attack from Iran or North Korea, Moscow has maintained that it is an unacceptable affront to its own security. The Russian Foreign Ministry last week promised “to react, and not only through diplomatic protests” to the shield’s construction. Following the test strike, Col Alexander Vovk of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces said: “The launch was specially tasked to test the missile’s capability to avoid ground-based detection systems.” More

Source: Herald Tribune
NATO warships entered the Black Sea on Thursday for what the alliance said were long-planned exercises and routine visits to ports in Romania and Bulgaria. The move is not linked to the tensions over Russia’s invasion of Georgia, which lies on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, about 900 kilometers (550 miles) from the Romanian coast, said officials at NATO’s military command in southern Belgium. Three warships — from Spain, Germany and Poland — sailed into the Black Sea on Thursday. They are due to be joined by a U.S. frigate, the USS Taylor, later this week. They are “conducting a pre-planned routine visit to the Black Sea region to interact and exercise with our NATO partners Romania and Bulgaria, which is an important feature of our routine planning,” said Vice-Adm. Pim Bedet, deputy commander at allied maritime headquarters in Northwood, England. However, the move risks increasing tensions with Russia which has deployed ships from its Black Sea fleet to the Georgian coast.

A senior Russian general warned Poland…that it was leaving itself open to retaliation - and possibly even a nuclear strike - by agreeing to host a US missile base. General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian armed forces’ deputy chief of staff, issued the extraordinary threat in an interview with Interfax, a Russian news agency. “Poland, by deploying [the system] is exposing itself to a strike - 100 per cent,” he was quoted as saying, before explaining that Russian military doctrine sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them”. More

The Bush administration has pressed Poland and the Czech Republic to accept US anti-missile systems and radar installations on the pretext that they are being deployed to prevent an attack on Europe by Iran, which possesses neither the required ballistic missile warheads nor nuclear weapons. Despite vehement protests from Moscow, US officials have denied that the anti-missile systems represent a threat to Russia. However, the circumstances in which the agreement with Poland was signed make clear that it is directed against Moscow. Long stalled by wrangling between Warsaw and Washington over Polish demands for high-tech anti-aircraft systems as the price for basing the missiles, the pact was wrapped up within days of the appearance of Polish President Lech Kaczynski alongside Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili at an anti-Russian rally in Tbilisi.

Russian officials responded to the US-Polish agreement with apocalyptic language. General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, said that Poland was “exposing itself to a strike, 100 percent.” He noted that Russian military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons, not only against any nation that conducts an attack on Russia with nuclear weapons, but “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them.” More

WARSAW, Poland
An agreement that will allow the United States to install a missile defense battery in Poland exposes the ex-communist nation to an attack, a Russian general said Friday. Poland and the United States struck a deal on Thursday to deepen military ties and place a missile interceptor base in Poland. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian general staff told reporters Friday that the agreement exacerbates U.S.-Russian relations that are already tense because of fighting between Georgian and Russian forces. He said the deal “cannot go unpunished.” And in the strongest threat Russia has issued in reaction to plans to put elements of a missile defense system in former Soviet satellite nations, the Interfax news agency quoted Nogovitsyn as saying Poland was risking attack. “Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent,” Interfax quoted Nogovitsyn as saying. More

BBC News
The US and Poland have agreed a preliminary deal on plans for the controversial US defence shield, Warsaw has announced. The plan would see the US base 10 missile interceptors in Poland in exchange for help strengthening Polish defences, said PM Donald Tusk. The scheme is highly controversial and has been opposed by Russia. Poland is reported to have demanded security help after Moscow threatened to target its missiles at the bases. The Polish Foreign Ministry told the PAP news agency that the deal would be signed at 1800 GMT. The US signed a deal with the Czech Republic in July to base tracking radars there as part of the missile defence system. The US wants the sites to be in operation by about 2012. Russia has expressed concern about the system in the past, with one official saying the deal “complicates” global security.

What’s at stake is what former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard.” He called Eurasia the “center of world power extending from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.” He continued: “The most immediate (US) task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.” Dominating that part of the world and its vast energy and other resources is Washington’s goal with NATO and Israel its principal tools to do it: More

US attempts to get Georgia into NATO, coupled with its desire to erect an anti-missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech republic would give it first strike capability towards Russia. Moscow sees this as a national security threat against the sovereignty of Russia. Political economist F William Engdahl believes this is the geopolitical endgame being played out in Georgia. See Video

Moscow is angry about U.S. plans for missile-defense sites in eastern Europe and Izvestia cited a “highly placed” military aviation source as saying, “While they are deploying the anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, our long-range strategic aircraft already will be landing in Cuba.” Izvestia said this apparently refers to long-range nuclear-capable bombers. Former Russian Air Force Commander-in-Chief Anatoly Kornukov told Russia’s Interfax news agency Thursday that the country’s “strategic bombers are entitled to use airfields in any country, including Cuba, as long as its leaders do not object.” More

Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus. The medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.

Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug. The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well above the average of about eight. More