This is a group in Russian social network Vkontakte, but he does not post there personally. Sometimes the admins of the group translate his reports, but such reports have a dedicated banner which is not the case here.

Strelkov has no social network accounts.

Strelkov does not have a twitter account, he was telling this since the beginning of the conflict.

He claims to be a retired FSB colonel, not GRU. That means intelligence, not army special forces. I have not seen any evidence that he was with GRU.

Except that since the beginning of the conflict Igor Girkin aka Strelkov has repeatedly stated that he does not have any accounts in social networks.
Please, don't cite fakes.

Since the beginning of the conflict, Igor Girkin aka Strelkov has repeatedly stated that he does not have any accounts in social networks. Please, don't cite fakes.

It's KAL-007 all over again, the plane flew into the area with overzealous anti-air defence. But I still wonder how is it possible that in the era of GPS the planes still divert from the route by that much?

Previous to that, a tactical missile hit an appartment building with the military claiming that the missile in question has successfully hit the target even after parts of the missile were shown on TV.

He claims to be a retired FSB colonel, not GRU.

That's a good point, if you look at the previous routes of the plane you'll see that it is usually much more to the south, even above Crimea: http://de.flightaware.com/live...
But today it looks different: http://de.flightaware.com/live... Much more to the north.

I am confused: here is the route of that flight: http://de.flightaware.com/live...
But if you look for older dates, you'll see that the route is much more to the south, almost above Crimea (about 300-350 km deviation depending on the date you choose), e.g. http://de.flightaware.com/live...

Are such deviations normal or could the flight be directed that far to the north by ground control? (Not an expert, just curious).

The US is a bit behind the trend IMO, probably due to the lower electricity prices: I pay about $0.30 per kilowatt (Germany). Two years ago I have calculated that an LED lightbulb will pay for itself *within* the mandatory two years warranty. Now the prices has fallen even further, I can buy a very bright LED (as bright as 75W conventional bulb) for less than $13 at amazon. If you replace a 60W bulb with it you return the full price in 2 years even if the bulb is on about 2,5 hours per day.

As prices fell, I have replaced more and more bulbs with LEDs. Actually, I bought better and brighter ones and the older LED bulbs went to less used places. Now my household is 100% LED-lighted and that alone has cut my electricity usage about 30% although I've started to use TV and console more and got a portable A/C for the bedroom. I've even replaced the smaller bulbs in the desk lamps so I won't have to worry about my niece burning her fingers.

In Germany there are plenty of LED bulbs sold even at retail's. Online you get better prices though. One problem is the light temperature: many are too white (6000K) or too yellow (2700K). You have to look for the middle ground. A few may emit a quiet buzz, but that about sums up all the problems.

>America went in to stop some serious badness happening
Oh yes, those imaginary WMDs would do some real damage. Thank God the US was there to save the day.

You may want to consider OSMAnd -- openstreetmap for android. It has support for offline navigation and you can pre-download entire countries. Offline wikipedia is a nice touch as well: major tourist attractions are mentioned there so you have a handy offline travel guide. Very useful abroad where I usually don't have data roaming.

Yeah, the upsides of such a tie are obvious, but the real question might be: why is this option so dominant in the US as compared, for example, to Europe?

Hence the summary should read "Why is the US so backwards?". To which the answer is: "because people pay more this way".

Two-year contracts become less and less popular In Germany. There are people, of course, who want a new phone every two years and are ready to basically lease the hardware, but the prepaid options are getting more and more lucrative with an added bonus of being able to cancel the service at will.

If you want you can buy a dumbphone for 20 euros, get a prepaid card for free (some vendors even offer initial bonus) and give it a go.

Same with smartphones, I got my Nexus 4 directly from google and use prepaid with it. There is a vendor now who offers advertisement-paid mobile flatrate: you have to agree to receive an advertisement a day via SMS and the speed is cut to EDGE-level after the first 100Mb, but for me it is an ideal offer as I seldom call or send an SMS but use online messaging from time to time.