Vladimir Putin Is Elected for The Fourth Time As Russian President.

Vladimir Putin

Senior officials say decisive victory reflects popular support for muscular foreign policy

Senior Russian officials have said that Vladimir Putin’s decisive win in the presidential elections reflects popular support for his muscular foreign policy and would bolster his role as a counterweight to the west.

“It is now obvious to everyone that Putin pursues an independent foreign policy and stands up for the national interests that the citizens of our country share,” Valentina Matviyenko, head of the federation council, told the Russia 24 television station on Monday. “This strengthens his capabilities, this strengthens his weight, this strengthens his authority in the world.”

But Putin sought to play the peacemaker at a meeting with his seven defeated presidential challengers in the Kremlin. “We have no intention of engaging in some kind of arms race,” he said. “Just the opposite, we will seek to develop constructive relations with other countries. We will do all we can to solve all disputes with our partners using political and diplomatic means.”

Putin’s victory, with a 76.7% share of the vote, comes amid high tensions between London and Moscow over the nerve agent attack in Salisbury. Investigators from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in the UK on Monday to begin testing samples from the 4 March attack, which Putin has denied was Moscow’s doing.

There was a certain swagger in Moscow after Putin’s victory. His campaign head thanked Great Britain for mobilising Russian voters over the nerve agent attack. Putin’s first executive order of the day was to call up army reservists for military training.

But opposition activists highlighted a number of cases of vote rigging and statistical anomalies, including millions of votes cast in polling places that recorded exactly 85%, 90% and 95% turnout. The respected Russian business daily Vedomosti also noted the appearance of nearly 1.5 million votes overnight, equivalent to 2% of the vote.

The total number of ballots cast on Sunday for Putin, who has spent 18 years as Russia’s most powerful politician, exceeded 56.2m. That was a record total, even discounting the nearly 1m votes he gained as a result of the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said on Monday there had been no real choice in Russia’s presidential election and complained it had been marked by unfair pressure on critical voices.

“Choice without real competition, as we have seen here, is not a real choice,” the OSCE said in a statement, adding that restrictions on fundamental freedoms, as well as on candidate registration, had limited the space for political engagement. Russia’s central election commission said on Monday morning that it had not registered any serious complaints of violations.

Vladimir Putin

Putin’s most serious rival, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was barred from the race. The central election commission said that the communist candidate, Pavel Grudinin, came second with 11.8% of the vote, and third was the ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky (5.6%). The only candidate to openly criticise Putin during the campaign, the liberal TV star Ksenia Sobchak, won 1.6%.

Putin has never faced a serious threat to his rule since he came to power on the eve of the new millennium. He won 53% of the vote in the 2000 presidential election, 71% in 2004 and 63% in 2012.

Turnout at the elections on Sunday was more than 67%, the commission reported. The Kremlin had initially sought a 70% share of the vote with 70% turnout but was said to have lowered its expectations as the election drew closer.

About 10 million more Russians voted for Putin than in 2012, when he appeared on the defensive after mass voter fraud at parliamentary elections sparked protests in Moscow and other large cities.

Perhaps the most surprising result came from Moscow itself, where Putin won just 47% of the vote in the 2012 elections. On Sunday he took 70% of the capital city, one of the main bastions of the opposition.

The opposition pointed to video evidence of voter irregularities at a number of polling stations across Russia. They included ballot stuffing and attacks on some vote observers, as well as reports of ballots being cast by “dead souls”, people who have died but remain on the electoral rolls.

In one video shared online from the Siberian region of Yakutia, voters patiently queued behind a man shoving ballots into the ballot box.

Turnout is usually highest in the North Caucasus, where a machine of administrative support regularly pushes turnout, and vote share for Putin, above 90%. In Dagestan, an election monitor said he was beaten by a crowd of several dozen men. During the encounter turnout at his polling site jumped significantly. 

One polling place in Chechnya, where observers managed to remain until the end of voting, showed just 35% turnout. In others where there were no observers, it was close to 100%.

The Kremlin had pushed a broad get-out-the-vote campaign before the elections, apparently concerned that Putin’s popularity might not be enough to get voters to the polls. Incentives included raffles for prizes including iPhone Xs and cars.

On Sunday night Putin’s campaign chairman declared turnout to be high and needled London by suggesting that it may have been a rally-round-the-flag response by voters to the accusations of Russian involvement in the nerve agent attack on a former spy in the UK.

“Right now the turnout numbers are higher than we expected. We need to thank Great Britain for that because once again they did not consider the Russian mentality,” the chairman said. “Once again we were subject to pressure at just the moment when we needed to mobilize.”

This story was first published in the Guardian. com - https://goo.gl/i7b1Nb

Iconic Scientist Stephen Hawking Dies At 76

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with a debilitating motor neuron disease when he was 21. He went on to become one of the world's most prominent scientists.

Stephen Hawking died Wednesday after complications due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. He was 76.

The world-renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist were best known for his work on black holes. Hawking theorized that, contrary to the prevailing scientific belief that black holes were inescapable for all forms of matter and energy, they actually emitted a form of radiation ― now known as Hawking radiation. He also played a key role in the mathematical effort to unify Einstein’s general theory of relativity with the emergent field of quantum physics. 

Hawking used his position as one of the world’s most famous scientists as a platform to discuss a wide range of issues, from the existence of extraterrestrial life to the nature of philosophy. He skyrocketed to public prominence in 1988, when he published his first general-audience book, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. The cosmology treatise has sold approximately 10 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling science books of all time. 

In 1963, when he was just 21 years old, Hawking was famously diagnosed with the debilitating motor neuron disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Though 80 percent of those with ALS die within five years of diagnosis, and Hawking’s own doctors gave him roughly two years to live, he survived for decades, perhaps longer than any other patient with the disease in medical history. Hawking used a wheelchair to move around and a sophisticated computer system to speak for much of his time as a public figure. 

The physicist’s inspiring ― and turbulent ― personal story was dramatized in the 2014 movie “The Theory of Everything,” which was based on a memoir by Hawking’s first wife, Jane Wilde. Actor Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Hawking in the film won him an Oscar for best actor.

Stephen Hawking, Jane Wilde Hawking and family attend the British Academy Film Awards at The Royal Opera House on Feb. 8, 2015 in London. (Fred Duval/FilmMagic via Getty Images) More

Hawking was born on Jan. 8, 1942 ― the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death ― in Oxford, England, to Frank, a physician specializing in tropical disease, and Isobel, a medical secretary. He and his three younger siblings grew up mostly in the town of St. Albans, just north of London, in what has been described as a highly intellectually-engaged home.

At the St. Albans School, Hawking was an indifferent student, preferring to spend his time playing board games and tinkering with computers. But he nonetheless gained admittance to his father’s alma mater, University College at Oxford University, in 1959, at the age of 17. 

Upon arriving at Oxford, Hawking toyed with the idea of studying either math or medicine before eventually settling on physics. His attitude toward academic work remained lackadaisical in college. He rarely attended lectures and has said that he spent only 1,000 hours on studies during his three years at Oxford, or just an hour a day.

Still, Hawking’s natural brilliance started to shine through as an undergraduate ― and he apparently felt that his tutors resented him for doing so well with so little work. When he submitted his final thesis, it was given a grade on the border between first-class honours and second-class honours, so Hawking had to face an oral exam that would determine his grade. Knowing his reputation, he reportedly told his examiners, “If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First.”

He got a First. And, as promised, Hawking enrolled in graduate school at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1962, studying under the physicist Dennis Sciama and the famed astronomer Fred Hoyle. He became interested in the then-nascent study of black holes and singularities, the existence of which had been implied by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. 

 

Stephen Hawking in Chicago on Dec. 15, 1986. After Hawking lost his voice to pneumonia the prior year, computer scientist Walter Woltosz gave him a device that helped him vocalize words that he typed. (Associated Press)

While studying at Cambridge, Hawking met Wilde, a fellow St. Albans native who was a student in modern languages at Westfield College in London at the time. Before the two started dating, Hawking collapsed while ice skating and couldn’t get up. His mother made him go to the doctor, who diagnosed him with ALS and estimated he had just over two years to live.

Years later, during a symposium at Cambridge on his 70th birthday, Hawking reflected on how much he struggled to stay motivated after his diagnosis. Why work so hard for a PhD when you could be dead in two years?

“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up”. Stephen Hawking, as he celebrated his 70th birthday

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet,” he said. “Try to make sense of what you see and about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

Hawking’s motor control deteriorated rapidly; he was soon walking to class on crutches. Yet the disease spurred him to deepen his relationship with Wilde quickly. They married in 1965.

After receiving his doctorate in cosmology, Hawking stayed at Cambridge to continue studying some of the most essential questions about the structure of the universe. In 1968, a year after Jane gave birth their eldest son, Roger, Hawking took a post at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and began the mature phase of his academic career. 

Over the next decade, Hawking published a string of groundbreaking papers on cosmology and theoretical physics that made him a celebrity in the scientific community.

He and English mathematician Roger Penrose wrote key papers in the late 1960s that related the Big Bang ― the event that created the universe ― and black holes, proving that both were the result of singularities in the fabric of space-time. In the early 1970s, Hawking and several other physicists co-wrote a proof of the hypothesis that all black holes can be described in terms of just their mass, angular momentum and electric charge. 

It was in 1974 that Hawking proposed what is widely considered his most significant theory: that black holes can emit subatomic particles, now known as Hawking radiation. Prior to his paper, physicists had been sure that nothing could escape the crushing gravity of a black hole. The existence of Hawking radiation also implies that black holes can eventually wither away and die, something that had previously been inconceivable to scientists. 

Soon after publishing his paper, Hawking, just 32 years old, was named a fellow of the prestigious Royal Society. He briefly taught at the California Institute of Technology before assuming the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a post dating back more than 400 years that was once held by Isaac Newton. 

Though Hawking’s family life flourished during this time ― he and Jane Hawking went on to have two more children ― his health did not. He reluctantly started using a wheelchair in 1969, and by the mid-70s, he could no longer feed or clothe himself.

 

Stephen Hawking on a trip to Cape Finisterre in Spain in 2008. The scientist married and divorced twice and had three children. (MIGUEL RIOPA/Getty Images)

In 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia while on a trip to Switzerland. Doctors performed a tracheotomy that allowed him to breathe but rendered him unable to speak naturally. At first, he communicated using word cards, which was agonizingly slow. But in 1986, computer scientist Walter Woltosz gave him a device that would vocalize words he typed using a joystick. Hawking called this system, which has since been upgraded several times, “The Computer.” Its electronic voice was an integral part of the physicist’s public image.

Hawking first came up with the idea of writing a book about cosmology for a general audience in 1982. He said he conceived of the project to “earn money to pay [his] daughter’s school fees.” The first draft of A Brief History of Time was finished in 1984, but Hawking’s publisher felt it was too difficult for laypeople to understand, so he went back to work. The revision process became more complicated after Hawking lost his voice in 1985, but he managed to publish the book in 1988. 

It was a massive hit: The book was on The New York Times’ best-seller list for three years and The Sunday Times’ U.K. best-seller list for nearly five. Its publication propelled Hawking to international fame that’s endured to this day. He published five additional general-audience books on science, plus one memoir and four children’s books. He also guest-starred on both “The Simpsons” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” 

At age 74, Stephen Hawking sits onstage during an announcement of the Breakthrough Starshot initiative with investor Yuri Milner in New York on April 12, 2016. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

Stephen and Jane Hawking separated after several years of tension in 1990, which Jane said was exacerbated by her husband’s newfound “fame and fortune.” The physicist began a relationship with Elaine Mason, one of his nurses. After his divorce from Jane Hawking, he married Mason in 1995.

Hawking and his ex-wife did not speak for several years, but they started communicating again after he and Mason got divorced in 2007. Stephen and Jane Hawking later began living around the corner from one another in Cambridge.

In 2011, Hawking appeared on the Discovery Channel TV series “Curiosity,” in which he reflected on the origins of the universe and rejected the likelihood of both a God and an afterlife. (He once dismissed the latter as “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”) Only in confronting the finite nature of death, he said, do we appreciate the remarkable beauty of life in the present.

“There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either,” Hawking said. “We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

In addition to his two former wives, Hawking is survived by three children and three grandchildren. 

·       This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Terrorist Attack on Burkina Faso's Capital Ouagadougou.

Security personnel take cover as smoke billows Friday from the French Institute in Ouagadougou.

(CNN)At least seven people have been killed and six attackers "neutralized" Friday in Burkina Faso after attacks on the national army headquarters and the French Embassy, a government minister said.

It's not yet clear who was behind the violence in the West African nation's capital, Ouagadougou.

France's special envoy to Africa's Sahel region, Jean-Marc Châtaigner, urged people to avoid the city centre in a tweet referring to a "terrorist attack."

Rémi Dandjinou, Burkina Faso's minister of communication, told CNN that an explosive device was used in the attack on the General Staff of the Armed Forces. At least five people were killed and two attackers "neutralized" there, he said.

People watch as black smoke rises in the capital of Burkina Faso after it came under attack Friday.

Four attackers were also "neutralized" and two Burkina Faso security members killed at the French Embassy, according to Dandjinou.

He cautioned that the death toll might change.

A spokesman for the French Ministry of Defense told CNN the situation at the embassy was under control.

Freelance journalist Yacouba Ouédraogo, who is in Ouagadougou, told CNN the shooting had stopped and that the people who attacked the army headquarters wore Burkinabé army clothes.

A government statement urged people to keep calm and avoid areas where there might be gunfire.

The French Embassy earlier said on Facebook that attacks were underway there and at the French Institute, a cultural organization about a mile away.

France's ambassador to Burkina Faso, Xavier Lapdecab, urged people via Twitter to act with "absolute precaution" as the attack was ongoing.

Burkina Faso's national police warned people to move away from areas around the "vicinity of the Prime Ministry -- and the United Nations roundabout" in a post on its Facebook page. 

"The specialized units of the defence and security forces are in action," it said.

The Prime Minister's office later posted on Facebook that it was not affected by the attack.

The US Embassy urged people to seek shelter.

"Attacks are reported to be ongoing in downtown Ouagadougou, in the Koulouba area. The affected area includes the Chief of Staff Headquarters. Avoid downtown Ouagadougou. Shelter in place. Monitor local media for updates," it said on Twitter.

USEmbassyOuaga@Usembassyouaga

Attacks are reported to be ongoing in downtown Ouagadougou, in the Koulouba area. The affected area includes the Chief of Staff Headquarters. Avoid downtown Ouagadougou. Shelter in place. Monitor local media for updates. #lwili

2:09 PM - Mar 2, 2018

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France has a military presence in Burkina Faso as part of Operation Barkhane, which was launched in 2014 to combat jihadist activity across the Sahel region.

The West, particularly France, considers Burkina Faso a key ally in the fight against al Qaeda in the region.

The country was formerly known as the Republic of Upper Volta when it was established in 1958 as a self-governing colony under France. It gained full independence in 1960.

 

Bystanders look on as security personnel move beside an armoured personnel carrier in Ouagadougou.

It's not the first time that sites in the capital have come under attack.

An attack by gunmen last year on a restaurant in Ouagadougou left at least 18 people dead, including two attackers. The victims were of several different nationalities.

That assault echoed a similar one in 2016 on a cafe and hotel popular with Western diplomats in the same district of the city that left 29 dead. Responsibility for that attack was claimed by an al Qaeda affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Later that year a jihadist assault on the Grand-Bassam beach resort killed 16 in neighbouring Ivory Coast.

CNN's Jennifer Deaton, Farai Sevenzo, Natalie Gallón, Antoine Crouin, Hande Atay Alam and Tim Lister contributed to this report.

 The story was first published on CNN. Com - https://goo.gl/LjfjDx