Does the House of Windsor have right to British throne?

© AP Photo/Jon Furniss/Invision

The history of the British Royal Houses has always been shrouded in mystery: citing the results of DNA tests as well as hereditary genetic disorders researchers, have called into question the legitimacy of the present British royalties.

Scientists from the University of Leicester claimed last year there could be a break in the royal blood line, citing an astonishing mismatch of the DNA of Richard III to that of some of his descendants: it is not possible to trace his modern male-line relatives through the Y chromosome. Henry VII Tudor, who seized the power in 1485 after defeating the king in the Battle of Bosworth Field, cemented his power by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and niece of Richard III.

The current royal family share a direct blood line to the Tudors, researchers underscored, calling into question the House of Windsor's right to rule. In addition to the suspicious DNA tests' results scientists also pointed to some hereditary genetic disorders, suggesting there could have been some skeletons in the closet of the Queen Victoria's mother, German-born Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

In 1995 a book by D.M. Potts was published examining the defective hemophilia gene in the royal bloodline. The author claimed that while Queen Victoria's son Leopold as well as some of her grandchildren suffered from the deadly disease, no member of the royal line before Leopold had been struck by the condition. In this light there could be only two possibilities: either one of Victoria's parents had an extremely rare gene mutation (1 in 50,000), or Queen Victoria was the illegitimate child of a hemophiliac man.

According to the scientists from the Royal Society of Medicine, the defective gene has not been registered in seventeen generations of the family on Queen Victoria's mother's side. So far, experts suggest, neither the queen, nor her descendants could be recognized as legitimate British monarchs. However, Victoria was considered the only hope of the British crown: none of her grandfather George III's sons produced a healthy heir, her uncle George IV's daughter died when she was 21 in 1817, and none of King William IV's ten children by the actress Mrs. Jordan could take the throne in accordance with the royal rules.

Historians note that hemophilia has played an important role in Europe's history: the defective gene passed through Victoria to many of her descendants, including the son of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, Alexei, the heir to the Russian throne. Experts speculate that it was Alexei's disease that led to the entry of Rasputin into the Tsar's family undermining its prestige and contributing to the disastrous Russian revolution.

In addition, experts point out that George III, Victoria's grandfather, suffered from porphyria, a rare inherited disease, resulting in such conditions as mental disorder, abdominal pains and itchy skin. Remarkably, none of Queen Victoria's descendants has ever suffered from porphyria disease.

The question remains open whether the evidence obtained by scientists will ultimately shake the positions of the House of Windsor and particularly its current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

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Dead whale found washed ashore at Cuddalore, India

The carcass of the beached whale at Pettodai near Periyakuppam in Cuddalore on Thursday.

The carcass of a 30-foot-long whale washed ashore at Pettodai near Periyakuppam on Thursday evening.

A group of fishermen spotted the carcass near the shore at around 6 p.m. and alerted the Forest Department.

News about the dead whale spread like wildfire and people gathered in large numbers to get a view of the mammal.

"The whale had a length of 9 metres and weighed nearly five tonnes. A post-mortem examination alone can reveal reasons behind the death and how it was swept to the shore. The whale might have been hit by a barge or a ship passing through the coast," Sundaramurthy, Cuddalore Range Forest officer said.

The carcass was found stuck in the sand and an earthmover was engaged to retrieve it.

It was later buried in a pit on the shore by the Forest Department.

Last month, a male dolphin beached at the Solai Nagar coast in Puducherry. The dolphin died after efforts to rescue it failed.

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Dead whale found washed ashore on Indian coast

The carcass of the beached whale at Pettodai near Periyakuppam in Cuddalore on Thursday.

The carcass of a 30-foot-long whale washed ashore at Pettodai near Periyakuppam on Thursday evening.

A group of fishermen spotted the carcass near the shore at around 6 p.m. and alerted the Forest Department.

News about the dead whale spread like wildfire and people gathered in large numbers to get a view of the mammal.

"The whale had a length of 9 metres and weighed nearly five tonnes. A post-mortem examination alone can reveal reasons behind the death and how it was swept to the shore. The whale might have been hit by a barge or a ship passing through the coast," Sundaramurthy, Cuddalore Range Forest officer said.

The carcass was found stuck in the sand and an earthmover was engaged to retrieve it.

It was later buried in a pit on the shore by the Forest Department.

Last month, a male dolphin beached at the Solai Nagar coast in Puducherry. The dolphin died after efforts to rescue it failed.

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It's time for 'Mistress Europe' to show America the door

© bosnapress.co

It's an age-old, tragic relationship. The mistress and her gadfly, selfish male-benefactor, who is really not a benefactor, but instead is more like her jealous, despotic jailer. Oh yeah, sure, he festoons her with cute presents now and again, chocolates, stockings, perfumes and the like. He also professes ardent devotion and vows to protect her. In return she gratifies his basic needs. But when it gets down to it, the mistress is dispensable, a plaything that is brutally discarded when he is done.

That pretty much sums up the relationship between the United States and Europe. Macho Washington is always reassuring the Europeans of his undying love and chivalrous defence from all sorts of supposed enemies. But it's a pathetic relationship, fundamentally, of unequals. Europe is expected to link arms and parade for the master on occasion. But if she so much as attempts to assert her rights, she is slapped down with boorish contempt. "Hey, babe, shut your mouth and fix me another drink."

In 1949, among the ashes of the Second World War, the US set up the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Despite its grandiloquent, chivalrous public profession of "alliance" the real purpose of NATO was to "keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down". Those are the unguarded words of the first NATO secretary-general, Lord Ismay.

That defined the essential subservient role of Europe as far as the Americans were really concerned. NATO was and still is not so much an alliance of protection. It is a bondage outfit that the Americans make the Europeans wear.

The real purpose of the US-led "alliance" was, and has remained, the ability of America to straddle Europe, to assert its hegemony, and to make sure Europe always performed as a tool for US power to transcend. Europe could not ever be strong and independent in the eyes of Washington. Least of all, Europe could never contemplate having normal cordial relations with its neighbouring, some might say natural, partner in Russia. Oh no, Europe was compelled to lay back and provide a service for Washington's geopolitical desires.

When you think about the Cold War, that period of some 45 years living under the awful fear of annihilation, saw the Americans lodge their nuclear weapons in various European countries; and they are still there. It saw thousands of American troops occupy Germany; and they are still there. It saw America professing protection of the poor European damsel-in-distress allegedly from a drooling Soviet "evil empire"; and so it still goes on.

Some Europeans saw through the charade of course. German Chancellors like Willy Brandt and Gerhard Schroeder, who tried to normalise relations with Moscow, were thwarted by American (and British) mischief-making. Then there were the NATO Gladio covert terror operations that committed false flag atrocities against European citizens, which were duly misattributed to the Soviet Union. There is no reason to believe that such covert ops have been terminated, as in the current Ukrainian turmoil, as a means of keeping the Europeans frightened and disposed to "trusting" the Americans for "protection". Keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.

Today, some 25 years after the official end of the Cold War, nothing much has changed. America still vows ardently to "protect" poor little Europe from a slavering Slavic monster who, we are told, is just waiting for a chance to pounce and have its evil way with Washington's European "ally".

What protection? Europe has been endangered for decades by American base urges for its own gratification of global hegemony - at Europe's expense.

Can Europe come to its senses and rethink this tawdry relationship? Can Europe dare to assert it own rights independently from its domineering American master?

What has Europe ever really got from the overbearing, demanding American, who ultimately is deeply insecure about his own abilities and his so-overblown pretensions.

This whole Ukraine crisis has been an American ploy from start to finish, aimed at driving an artificial animosity between Europe and Russia. It should be so obvious that Russian energy supply to Europe is a major prize coveted by the Americans. Regime change with covert mass murder thanks to the ever-efficient CIA in that department, followed by massive propaganda false narratives and false flags, a war of terror on ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, more propaganda distorting Russia, followed by economic sanctions, tensions and now vows by America to arm up the neo-Nazi regime it installed in Kiev. How deluded can Europe be not to see the glaring truth of it all?

Meanwhile, who is paying the price for this swaggering American megalomania? Why it is the Europeans of course, and as always. War on Europe's doorstep and sanctions busting the EU economy apart are the price for being in bed with this American megalomaniac.

The callous, careless American attitude is there to see on occasion when his ego gets the better of this tongue. Remember the US State Department official who on the eve of the regime-change operation in Kiev last February divulged the real attitude of Washington towards the Europeans. In a secret phone call that was leaked, the US official and ambassador to Ukraine said of the imminent coup: "Fuck the EU!"

Then we had US Vice President Joe Biden months later bragging about the fact that the effete Europeans had to be browbeaten into adopting American-led sanctions against Russia. "President Obama had to bounce the Europeans into adopting the sanctions," crowed Biden to an American public audience, as if he was referring to a sexual conquest.

So let's clear this phoney, priggish rhetoric. America doesn't give a fig for Europe. It never has done and never will. The stocking of American nuclear weapons in Europe and the threat of nuclear war with Russia has always been a bogeyman for the Americans to terrorise the European continent with, so that America can stretch out its arrogant boots.

However, something significant seems to be at last stirring over the Ukraine crisis. There is a palpable sense that Europe is slowly realising that it is being used-and-abused by the Americans for their own selfish strategic interests. Germany in particular seems to be coming to its senses. Chancellor Angela Merkel along with French President Francois Hollande decided to engage directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to broker a peace deal over the Ukraine conflict. The Americans were pointedly shown the door and kept out of the proceedings. And lo and behold, a tentative peace deal was brokered - because the Americans were shunned.

Martin Shulz, the German president of the European Parliament, recently told a German television forum - to rapturous applause - that the Americans should "back off" and let Europeans sort out the conflict in their midst. There is thus more than a sense that the Germans and other Europeans are belatedly realising that they have been lied to and systematically cheated on by the Americans in the latter's habitual attempt to criminalise Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Russia is not the problem, Russia is not the threat to security. It is the Americans and their promiscuous regime-change libido in every corner of the world, with Ukraine being the latest victim, that is the whole damn problem.

Merkel's defiant rebuttal of American plans to arm the Kiev regime to the teeth and drag Europe into a war with Russia is a first step of Europe showing Washington the door. It's long overdue. But maybe, just maybe, Europe is finally tiring of its role of being the plaything-mistress for the macho Americans. Don't hold your breath, all the same.

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Gorbachev: Nemtsov's murder was an attempt to destabilize Russia

© Sputnik/Grigoriy Sysoev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Soviet ex-President Mikhail Gorbachev sees the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov as an attempt to destabilize Russia. He also warns against calls to give excessive powers to law enforcement and security agencies.

"The assassination of Boris Nemtsov is an attempt to complicate the situation in the country, even to destabilize it by ratcheting up tensions between the government and the opposition," Gorbachev said.

"Just who did this is hard to say, let's not jump to any conclusions right now and give the investigators time to sort this all out," he added.

Gorbachev did not rule out that the high-profile murder could encourage some people to urge the authorities to introduce a state of emergency, which he said would only exacerbate what is already a difficult situation.

Boris Nemtsov was shot and killed in downtown Moscow on Friday night by unknown assassins who fired at least six shots at the opposition politician before taking off in a white car, probably a Ford Focus or Ford Mondeo, which is currently being sought by police.

Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the assassination and expressed his condolences to the family. "Putin has stressed that this brutal murder has all [the] signs of a contract murder and is extremely provocative," presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday.

"With all due respect to the memory of Boris Nemtsov, in political terms he did not pose any threat to the current Russian leadership or Vladimir Putin. If we compare popularity levels, Putin's and the government's ratings and so on, in general Boris Nemtsov was just a little bit more than an average citizen," Peskov added.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, urged the law enforcement agencies to make every effort to track down the perpetrators of the "ghastly assassination of a prominent politician."

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How a jab plunged my life into madness

© Clara Molden



'You don’t give up’: two years after the start of his ordeal, life remains tough for Malcolm Brabant, his wife Trine and son Lukas

Malcolm Brabant's face - round, ruddy, full-featured, and crowned by a bald dome - is immediately recognisable. For 30 years he has been an award-winning member of the BBC's team of foreign correspondents, bringing wars, natural disasters, political stand-offs and occasionally something a bit more cheerful into our living rooms on the evening news.

If the countenance is familiar, though, his current location isn't. His usual on-screen sign-off is ringing in my ears — "Malcolm Brabant, BBC News, Athens" - but today he is welcoming me into his home in Copenhagen.

He is, he explains, currently living in exile from the Greek capital, and thereby "missing one the biggest news stories of my career". The reason is the biggest personal story of Brabant's 58 years. As he puts it with what I quickly learn is characteristic bluntness: "I went bonkers."

In April 2011, he attended an Athens clinic for a routine vaccination against yellow fever before an assignment in the Ivory Coast. As well as reporting from Athens, he has also travelled the globe to cover international stories, winning a coveted Sony award in 1993 for his reporting from a besieged Sarajevo at the height of the Bosnian crisis.

His reaction to the vaccine, however, was anything but routine. "It fried my brain," he states simply. Overnight a previously sane man developed severe psychosis. An agnostic, Brabant became so convinced he was the Messiah that he telephoned his bemused fellow correspondent, Allan Little, to appoint him "first disciple" and ask him to record his words of wisdom.

One minute he was announcing that the Queen was aware of his divine status, the next he was claiming to be able to stop the traffic just by thinking about it, and control all technology. To prove the point, he flushed his Kindle down the lavatory.

It was utterly bewildering for those around him, especially when he switched into the persona of Winston Churchill, and then the Devil. Yet, because he had no insight into how strangely he was acting, Brabant also attempted to carry on reporting, with results that horrified previously admiring editors at the BBC.

With the corporation's support, he was sent to hospital in Athens, then released, but shortly afterwards he experienced a second mental breakdown. Unable to work, broke and broken, he returned to his childhood home in Suffolk where he tried and failed to get the help he needed from the NHS. While there, and out of control mentally, he presented himself, clad only in cycling gear but minus a bike, at BBC Television Centre in West London, which was being picketed in a pay dispute. He demanded to see senior managers and generally caused such a scene that the police were called.

"I was the man in Lycra, come to solve the strike," he recalls without flinching. "I really thought in my madness that I could do it but, of course, I was away with the fairies. That will have been the last time many of those people at the BBC saw me face to face."

At one stage, he bumped into Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent partially paralysed after being shot in Saudi Arabia in 2004. Brabant attempted, Messiah-like, to effect a miracle cure by rubbing his back.

He ended up back in Greece and no better. He was persuaded by his Danish wife, Trine Villemann, to abandon their rented home, pack what few possessions they could fit into their estate car, alongside their 11-year-old son, Lukas, and the family dog, and drive across the continent in a desperate search for psychiatric help in Denmark.

Perched on the sofa beside her husband in their typically Scandinavian white-walled apartment in the Danish capital, Villemann grimaces when she recalls just what a state he was in. "I have been around mental illness before [her father hanged himself], but I have never seen someone so gone before. Malcolm was clawing around in the deepest, darkest parts of his mind," she says. "It would have killed a lesser human being."

She pauses as she pushes her long blonde hair back from her face. "I am ashamed to remember them now, but there were even times when I thought it would be better if he died because his suffering was so great.

"I have this nagging image in my head that won't ever go away of Malcolm, sitting on his bed in the hospital, with his arms folded. He was rocking backwards and forwards, saying, 'I'm the Devil, I'm the Devil'. Whatever anger I'd felt about the situation we were in evaporated in that moment."

The Danish health professionals who slowly and painstakingly brought Brabant back to sanity told him that he would have to spend the rest of his life on medication. He decided otherwise.

"I was determined this wasn't going to beat me. When I finally left hospital in 2012, I would rattle as I walked around because I was carrying so many pills. I was a one-man chemist's shop. It took me another year and a half to reduce my medication. I stopped taking it in January of last year, and since then I have gradually been getting stronger and stronger."

So much so that he is now back at work, and back on our screens after almost four years away. His unheralded return came earlier this month with his reports on the murder of two people by an Islamist extremist in separate attacks in Copenhagen.

Brabant says: "In the aftermath of those attacks, I was working in the old way: until I dropped. I need to. Because of my illness, we have lost everything. I have a 15-year-old son to support, and we don't even have a car any more. I am the man from the BBC who arrives by bicycle. It makes me feel like a cub reporter again."

Picking up the threads of his career and of his reputation is one part of his life today in Copenhagen. But Brabant and his wife are also pouring their considerable energies into spearheading a campaign that they hope will prevent others suffering as a result of vaccinations.

"My husband had absolutely no previous history of mental illness," says Villemann. "There was nothing latent in him. I have no doubt at all that his severe psychosis was brought on by the yellow fever vaccine."

Brabant adds: "I was not a one-in-a-million case. We are determined to make the manufacturers, Sanofi Pasteur, investigate what is happening. I have provided them with open access to all the doctors who treated me so they can hear what their vaccine did to me, but they haven't been in touch. They are refusing to engage."

Faced with this silence, the couple have been collecting reports from many others around the globe who suffered similar consequences to

Brabant. And it is not just a question of a few individuals sounding the alarm bells. In 2005, Dr Thomas Monath, a world expert on yellow fever, who sits on various World Health Organisation committees, confirmed publicly that the vaccine in question can cause "really severe and significant, serious adverse events".

Even the manufacturer seems to be aware that all may not be well. In 2013 its head of vaccine innovation, Dr Ronald Neeleman, admitted to a conference that the vaccine in question had not been reviewed in many years. "[It serves] a small market, with very low returns, and there is not really an incentive to redevelop," he said.

If Dr Neeleman was hinting that it is past its sell-by date, then, as Brabant points out, it remains a product "routinely available in high street chemists. It is given to British soldiers who are going overseas. And it is used widely in Africa, where there are few channels for reporting when people go mad after taking it".

"We are not anti-vaccine in general," stresses Villemann. "Yellow-fever vaccination saves lives, but what concerns us is that, when something goes wrong, there appears to be no help for people like Malcolm whose lives have been ruined."

They are seeking financial compensation and they are prepared for it to be a bruising fight. To which end they have bared all in a book, .

They are also working on a documentary film, using some footage they shot during the most gruelling chapters of Brabant's illness.

Aren't they tempted to draw a veil and just get on with their careers?

"Even if we wanted to," Brabant replies phlegmatically, "we couldn't. It's out there anyway because of how I behaved."

"No one rolls out the red carpet to welcome back people who have suffered a mental illness," says Villemann. "That cannot go unchallenged."

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Mystery fireballs light up Kerala sky

© PTI

Forensic scientists collecting evidence from the spot after a fireball fell from sky at Karumaloor in Kochi on Saturday.

Thiruvananthapuram: Different parts of Kerala witnessed mysterious fireballs in the sky alongside sonic booms on Friday night, fuelling multiple theories about the reasons behind the phenomenon.

Early indications pointed to the likelihood it could even have been normal meteors brightening up the night sky. The phenomenon occurred on Friday around 10.30pm local time in the state. In some places in Ernakulam district, a few residents even alerted the police and fire and rescue personnel.

Social media, too, got into the act, with people posting their experiences of witnessing the aerial spectacle accompanied by a booming sound. Some of those who experienced it even mistook it for an earthquake. One person tweeted that a ball of fire had fallen over Kochi.

Some people in the state's commercial capital, Kochi said they felt mild tremors after witnessing a luminous object falling from the sky. Interestingly, the phenomenon seemed to be visible right to the southern end of the state. Sightings of the light in the sky were also reported from the northern districts of Malappuram, Palakkad and Kozhikode.

Some have speculated that the pieces that fell from the sky could be rocket debris that re-entered the earth's atmosphere. However, no special activity appears to have been spotted by the radars. Ernakulam district collector M.G. Rajamanickam said no clues had been received for any apparent earthquake.

© Twitter

Fireball in Kerala.

The meteorological department is making an assessment of the phenomenon, and early indications are that the phenomenon has no link to any climate change issue.

Meanwhile, a suspected depression or an impact crater, believed to be caused by a 'fireball spotted last night in several districts of southern Indian state of Kerala, has been located in Karimalloor village in Ernakulam district on Saturday.

A team of the State Disaster Management Authority is on their way to the spot, official scientist from the authority, Sekhar Kuriakose said here.

"We have located a suspected impact crater at Karimalloor village in Ernakulam district and our team is rushing to the spot," he said.

It is yet to be ascertained as to what exactly caused the phenomena, but there is a possibility that the crater might be caused by a meteor, he said.

A huge 'fireball' was noticed streaking across the sky last night in parts of Thrissur, Ernakulam, Palakaad, Kozhikode and Malappuram districts of Kerala.

An area in the village, where the crater was noticed, was found charred, he said adding more details are expected after the officials visit the site.

However, authority dismissed speculations that the 'fireball' could be celestial debris, as the consortium of space agencies closely monitor any space related activities and would have notified the management of any such appearance.

Kuriakose even dismissed the 'object' as anything related to 'metal' as Air Traffic Control radar system would have recorded it.

Meanwhile, science author and cosmology researcher, Rajagopal Kamath, said that the 'fireball' could be "a rocket or satellite debris. It also could be stony chondrite meteorites as in many places people have claimed that they have seen a bluish flame, which is peculiar to any meteorites."

The locals said they felt tremors and witnessed sounds with the passing of the 'object'.

"We saw a fireball like a meteor. Initially, we thought someone had burst a cracker. The doors and windows started shaking. Some thought there was an explosion somewhere," a local hailing from Kochi said.

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