Moscow has no plans to seize the flight recorders from the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, told Rossiya 24 channel.

The seizure of flight records would violate international law as it's up to relevant international agencies to investigate of the incident, he explained.

The analysis of the flight recorders "is the responsibility of ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization]; it's the responsibility of those states which have the most direct connection to this tragedy - the Netherlands, Malaysia and the states whose citizens were on board, and of course Ukraine,"Lavrov said.

The minister also called on the UN Security Council to urgently launch an open and impartial investigation into the plane crash in Ukraine.

"We want international experts to arrive on the crash site as soon as possible and retrieve the flight recorders in an instant," the FM stressed. "Despite statements coming from Kiev, we have no plans to seize the flight recorders."

First came the loud explosion that made buildings rattle: then it started raining bodies.

One of the corpses fell through the rickety roof of Irina Tipunova's house in this sleepy village, just after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 exploded high over eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists are fighting government forces.

"There was a howling noise and everything started to rattle. Then objects started falling out of the sky," the 65-year-old pensioner said in front of her grey-brick home.

"And then I heard a roar and she landed in the kitchen, the roof was broken," she said, showing the gaping hole made by the body when it came through the ceiling of the kitchen in an extension to the house.

The dead woman's naked body was still lying inside the house, next to a bed.

Russia has responded to US sanctions against its officials and businessmen by banning 12 more Americans from entering the country. Ten of those in the list are implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and two are connected to Guantanamo.

"We have mentioned before that it is futile to communicate with us in the language of sanctions. Such measures will not be allowed to pass without consequence," said a statement on the foreign ministry website.

Among the most high-profile targets are Rear Adm. Richard W. Butler the Commander, of the Guantanamo Joint Task Force, who is accused of "approved the use force to end the hunger strike among inmates", and Ricardo Sanchez, a retired general who commanded the Coalition Ground Forces in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, who was "directly responsible for the control of Abu Ghraib prison."

Most of the others on the "stop-list" are military personnel, who were found guilty of self-documented mistreatment and torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

It also includes the high-profile US District Judge Gladys Kessler, who has repeatedly ruled on the legality of force feeding at Guantanamo's Camp Delta, though ironically, was responsible for the landmark ruling, passed in May, that bans the US Army from force feeding Syrian detainee Abu Wa'el Dhiab.
The Russian foreign ministry says that it is preparing further bans.

"The latest wave of sanctions over Ukraine will necessarily result in counter-measures. Firstly, the border is being closed to multiple American citizens, which they will discover upon submitting a visa application. Meanwhile, economic sanctions will have a boomerang effect, and harm US business interest on Russian territory, In essence, the US is punishing itself."

The initial round of sanctions and counter-sanctions between Moscow and Washington was set off with the passing of the Magnitsky Act in the US in 2012.The act intended to prevent free entry to several Russian officials connected with the death of Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky, who passed away while in police custody in 2009.

Some Western states and Kiev rushed to find Russian involvement in the MH17 crash having no evidence to back their claims, Russia's Deputy Defense Minister told RT. He invited Ukraine to answer 10 questions to prove their commitment to an impartial probe.

Speaking to RT, Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov has criticized Western countries for jumping to conclusions just "24 hours after the crash" while there is no evidence.

"They try to show to the whole world that we are responsible for the crash. It is very strange that without any evidence my colleagues from western media would like to find somebody who is responsible for the crash," Antonov said. "It seems to me that this is part of information warfare which has been started against the Russian Federation and armed forces."

Instead of using the incident as the pretext for groundlessly blaming one of the sides, the catastrophe over Ukrainian sky should be used as a possibility to restart cooperation to "prevent such tragedies in the future."

Almost immediately after the news began to spread that a Malaysian Airlines plane was apparently shot down over Ukraine, Western media and politicians blamed Russia for the event, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be directly responsible, despite complete lack of concrete evidence about who is to blame. This event is being used by the United States and its Western allies to further isolate Russia, after they failed to achieve this objective by provoking Russia in Ukraine.

Unjustified blame on Russia

While Putin took the right approach by stating that the plane crash in eastern Ukraine must be investigated thoroughly and objectively, Western politicians used the disaster for their own political agenda of isolating Russia. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has stated that the crisis should "wake Europe up to the threat posed by Putin". In fact, this event is very beneficial to the United States, who have been unsuccessfully trying to persuade its European allies to slap heavy sanctions on Russia. NATO and the US have been provoking Russia to intervene in Ukraine by allowing Western-backed Ukrainian President Poroshenko to kill ethnic Russian civilians in Ukraine and even shelling Russian territory, killing a Russian national. Putin rightly did not fall for these provocations. The United States, therefore, wasted no time in using this plane crash for their own political gains, pressuring Europe to escalate sanctions against Moscow. Clinton has already called for the EU to increase sanctions on Russia, while the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott called on Russia to explain the disaster as it "now seems certain it's been brought down by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile", despite complete lack of strong evidence for such a claim.

After years of delay, Russia plans to deploy this year the first satellite of its new constellation replacing the space component of the early warning system, Russian media reported. It will also double as an emergency communication satellite.

The satellite was developed for the military, so naturally little is known about it. Identified by disambiguation 'product 14F142', it is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to Kommersant newspaper.

The spacecraft will be the first in a constellation, aimed to replace the old Oko-1 early warning system, which allows Russia survey countries possessing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and detect possible launches.

Oko-1 is currently in bad shape. To be fully operational, it needs four 73D6 satellites in placed in a highly elliptical orbit, dubbed 'Molnya' (lightning) orbit, to provide full-time coverage of the area of interest, and an additional backup satellite in a 71X6 geosynchronous orbit. Russia lost the last of the 71X6s in April this year and has not launched replacements for the 73D6s since 2008, with only two still operational.

Russia urges an impartial and open investigation into the Malaysian Boeing 777 crash in Ukraine and an international commission to be set up. Addressing the UN, Russia's envoy Churkin said a probe into Ukraine's aviation authorities is also necessary.
"As we see it, it is necessary to investigate not only the crash itself but also how Ukraine's aviation authorities performed their professional duties," Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said as he questioned why a passenger flight was allowed over an area of armed conflict.

Malaysia Airline said in a statement on Friday that Ukraine's traffic controllers ordered the Boeing-777 to lower by 500 meters when the aircraft entered Ukrainian airspace. It added that pilots were supposed to fly at 35,000ft (10,660 meters) throughout Ukrainian airspace, but air traffic control on the ground instructed MH17 to fly at 33,000ft (10,058 meters).

Russia's envoy said ensuring the security of civilian aviation in a state's airspace is the responsibility of the state.

Speaking at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, Churkin called for an international commission under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to be launched. He said that a thorough investigation into the crash should be conducted and its outcome should not be prejudged.

CNN has pulled correspondent Diana Magnay out of her post covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the reporter tweeted that Israelis cheering bombs hitting Gaza, and who had allegedly threatened her, were "scum."
Magnay was "threatened and harassed" before and during her report, a CNN spokeswoman told The Huffington Post, leading to the reporter's reaction on Twitter.

"She deeply regrets the language used, which was aimed directly at those who had been targeting our crew," the spokeswoman added. "She certainly meant no offense to anyone beyond that group, and she and CNN apologize for any offense that may have been taken."

Israelis could be heard cheering missiles heading for Gaza on Thursday during a live Magnay report from a hill overlooking the Israel-Gaza border.

"I think you can probably see there are lots of Israelis gathered around who are cheering when they see these kinds of Israeli strikes," Magnay said during the report.

Just hours after 15-year-old Tariq Abu Khdeir left for Ben Gurion International Airport to return home to Tampa, Florida, Israeli police raided and ransacked the home of his family in the Shufat neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. The police arrested Abu Khdeir's uncle and cousins without charges.

The Israeli motive appears to have been revenge for the family's role in publicizing CCTV footage of Abu Khdeir's brutal beating at the hands of Israeli police, and their public campaign to secure his return to the US.

Abu Khdeir had been jailed without charges after being beaten inches from his life during rioting in Shufat in protest of the murder of his cousin, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, by Israeli nationalists seeking vengeance. Footage of the beating was aired on news outlets around the world:


By beseeching a shockingly obstinate Florida congressional delegation to agitate for Abu Khdeir's release and return home, his family generated further media attention, throwing the Israeli government on the defensive. Under pressure from the US State Department, Israeli police finally released the brutalized teen on July 16.

Remember @CongressEdits, the tweetbot that alerts whenever a Wikipedia article is edited from a government IP address? There's a Russian version now, and it just uncovered some pretty drastic edits to a Wikipedia article that mentions Flight MH17, originating from a Russian government IP address.

As The Telegraph reports, @RuGovEdits tweeted that a computer user from within the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VHTRK) edited the Russian-language version of the Wikipedia entry about the Malaysian Airlines passenger jet shot down over Ukraine yesterday.

The original version of the Wikipedia article listing civil aviation accidents stated that MH17 had been shot down "by terrorists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic with Buk system missiles, which the terrorists received from the Russian Federation." Emphasis added.

The edits originating from the government-owned computer changed the article to read "the plane [flight MH17] was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers". Again, emphasis added.

@RuGovEdits alerted the public with a tweet that says (translated): "Wikipedia article List of aircraft accidents in civil aviation has been edited by RTR [another name for VGTRK]".

If @RuGovEdits is to be trusted (and considering the Wiki-twitterbot code is widely available on Github, it probably can be), it certainly seems like someone within the Russian government is working to hide the widely-held fact that Russian weapons were used to bring down MH17. But while Wikipedia might be malleable, it's also transparent. [The Telegraph via Amanda Zamora]