Closer than they seem: Check key WW2 Eastern Front battles in 3D

What the majority of us today has seen of World War II horrors are faded monochrome pictures, echoes from a distance past. RT cuts across the 75 years that separate the bloodiest war in the world from these days with 3D battle reenactments.
Some of the deadliest and fiercest battles of the Great Patriotic War – the Eastern Front of WW2 as it is known in Russia – also decided the fate of the whole global conflict between the Axis and the Allies. Check if you know them all.
They were doomed from the outset but never surrendered: The 10,000 defenders of the Brest Fortress were encircled and cut off in the very beginning of Hitler’s June 1941 Blietzkrieg – but held out under heavy shelling for more than a week. The tragic fate and courageous resistance of the Soviet fortress in Belarus became legendary.
READ MORE: ‘Dying, but won’t surrender’: Brest Fortress resists the Blitzkrieg
Fought between October 1941 and early 1942, the Battle of Moscow became the first time when the seemingly unstoppable Nazi war machine was defeated on the battlefield. It cost the Soviet defenders just under 2 million lives, while the German army lost half a million men, injured or killed.
READ MORE: Moscow’s last stand: How Soviet troops defeated Nazis for first time in WW2
The largest and one of the bloodiest confrontations in the history of mankind, the six-month Battle of Stalingrad of 1942-43 turned the tide of World War 2 – and a whole city into rubble. It is said that the average life expectancy of a soldier in the horrific meat grinder was at one point only 24 hours.
Multinational Soviet troops lost more than 1.1 million soldiers in casualties, while Nazi German troops and their European collaborators lost some 1.5 million. Despite the bitter price, Hitler ruled out that the encircled German army could surrender, and it was only due to a German field marshal disobeying the order that the remains of Wehrmacht forces were captured alive.
READ MORE: Halting Hitler's push: Bloodiest WWII battle in RT's 3D reconstruction
The Battle of Kursk is known as the biggest tank clash in history: over 8,000 armored vehicles, 5,000 planes and 3 million soldiers fought from both sides near the city some 500 kilometers southwest of Moscow.
While Stalingrad spelt the first major triumph of the anti-Nazi forces in the war, sending waves of hope across the world, it was in the 49 battles starting from Kursk that the Soviet army gained a platform to start a counter-offensive against Hitler.
READ MORE: Turning the tide of WWII: Biggest-ever tank battle in RT's 3D graphics
The Battle for Berlin — the final major WWII offensive that involved 3.5 million troops and lasted two weeks. From his bunker, Adolf Hitler was sending out orders to fight, even as more than 1 million Soviet and Allied troops surrounded the German capital. Only after Hitler’s suicide, his generals capitulated. The German Instrument of Surrender took effect on May 8 at 23:01 CET. As this came after midnight Moscow time, May 9 was proclaimed Victory Day in the USSR.

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Cradle of alien life? Ocean on Saturn moon resembles habitable lakes on Earth

Enceladus, shown in this recent image captured by the Cassini spacecraft, one of Saturn's moons (Reuters / NASA)

The newly-discovered subsurface ocean on Saturn’s icy moon of Enceladus is similar in makeup to some of the life-bearing salt lakes on Earth, a new US study suggested.

Astrobiologists believe this small moon is the best place to search for alien life in the Solar System.

The 505-kilometer-wide satellite is geologically active, with powerful geysers blasting through its ice shell. 

Those geysers contain water which researchers suggest comes from an ocean located beneath the moon’s icy surface.

A new paper entitled ‘The pH of Enceladus,’ published on Wednesday in the journal ?Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, looks into the chemical reactions that occur as Enceladus' ocean water comes into contact with its rocky mantle.

The authors based their research on data gathered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004.

They used mass-spectrometry measurements of the gases and ice grains in Enceladus’ plume to develop a model that estimates the saltiness and pH of the water in the moon’s inner ocean.

According to the US team’s findings, the ocean on Enceladus is likely salty and has a basic pH of 11 or 12, neutral pH being 7.

The same pH levels are found in ammonia-based glass-cleaning solutions, but some organisms on Earth are still capable of living in such conditions.

The high concentration of sodium chloride (NaCl) makes Enceladus’ ocean resemble terrestrial ‘soda lakes,’ such as ?Mono Lake in California.

READ MORE: NASA promises 'definitive evidence' of alien life by 2025

It’s good news for the those hunting alien life as a the fauna of Mono Lake includes brine shrimp and many different microbes.

The team’s model suggests that the ocean’s high pH is explained by serpentization, a process where metallic rocks from Enceladus' upper surface are transformed into minerals due to contact with water.

Serpentization also leads to the production of molecular hydrogen (H2), which is a potential source of chemical energy for any life form in the ocean’s water, the paper said. ?

"Molecular hydrogen can both drive the formation of organic compounds like amino acids that may lead to the origin of life, and serve as food for microbial life such as methane-producing organisms,"

the study’s lead-author Christopher Glein, from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, said in a statement.

Glein described serpentinization as a link between geological processes and biological processes on the moon.

"The discovery of serpentinization makes Enceladus an even more promising candidate for a separate genesis of life,"

he stressed.

The hidden ocean was discovered on Enceladus earlier this year by Italian scientists from Sapienza University in Rome, who also analyzed Cassini data.

They said that active hydrothermal vents are likely to exist on Enceladus’ seafloor, providing conditions similar to those that gave rise to some of the first life forms on Earth.

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Yemen: Recipes imposed from outside won’t work

Russia consistently calls for a peaceful resolution to the internal political crisis in Yemen. This should be achieved through an inclusive inter-Yemeni dialogue under UN auspices. No ready-made solutions may be imposed from the outside.
Continued hostilities only strengthen the positions of terrorists in the country, and must be stopped. Coalition air strikes have continued despite announcements of an end to the Decisive Storm operation. Renewed strikes have resulted in new civilian casualties. Needless to say that we are concerned with these developments.
We support the UN's intention to bring together all Yemeni stakeholders in Geneva. It is important to ensure the inclusiveness of the process. The Houthis should also become party to the talks, representing a third of Yemen's population. Attempts to isolate one party from the political process will only lead to new fighting.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina: Effective sovereignty through equality of constituent peoples

On May 12, the UN Security Council will hold a debate on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Russia is interested in the sustainable and normal functioning of Bosnian state institutions.

The principle of equality for the three constituent peoples, as provided for by the Dayton Accords, must be fully respected.

It is important to continue the policy of conferring full responsibilities for the situation in the country onto the Bosnians themselves. After new central and entities’ state bodies were formed on 31 March, new opportunities are open in that regard. Abolishing the Office of the High Representative is long overdue.

International partners should seriously address the emergence of extremism within the Muslim Bosniak community. This is a threat to the post-conflict Bosnian society that should be adequately assessed. A new confirmation of this trend is the terrorist attack by an armed Islamist against a police station in the town of Zvornik on April 27.

We continue to witness selective accusations against Bosnian Serbs, as well as Bosnian Croats, regarding their activities allegedly undermining the constitutional foundations, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. These accusations are illegitimate and unconstructive. They distort the real situation in the country and create unnecessary tensions in relations between the constituent peoples.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Appeals court tells FCC to let merger docs stay secret

A federal appeals court has ruled that secret business documents related to the proposed merger between AT&T and DirecTV don’t need to be disclosed.

The Federal Communications Commission said previously that confidential business information involving the relationships between content producers and DirecTV and similar television service providers should be open for the public to analyze.

CBS, Viacom and Disney took aim at the FCC’s request, however, and brought the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. There, on Friday this week, Circuit Judge David Tatel quashed the FCC’s demands and sided with the producers who insisted that publishing the contracts would “cause substantial harm” to their businesses “and the highly competitive programming marketplace in which they operate.”

In response, the DC Circuit said it did not believe the FCC had adequately proved why disclosure to the public was “necessary

” to the agency in determining whether or not to approve the $48.9 billion proposed merger.

“[T]to justify disclosure, the information must be ‘necessary’ to the Commission’s review process. Otherwise, Congress and the Commission have decided, the risk to the affected businesses will not be worth it,”

the motion reads in part. According to the appeals court, the FCC’s request does not meet this requirement.

READ MORE: AT&T to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion in mega acquisition

“We share petitioners’ apprehension about a process that puts tremendous pressure on the commission, the parties and this court to get their ducks in a row in a short time,”

the court said in its decision. “In our view, the commission has failed to make its case.”

In response to the ruling, a spokesperson for FCC said the agency was “studying the opinion now and considering the options available to the commission.”

Meanwhile, Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, said in a statement: “We are delighted the court sided with broadcast networks and NAB in protecting highly confidential information from being widely disseminated during merger reviews.”

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Parade Relay: RT to air live Victory Day commemorations from across Russia

The Parade Relay is the latest in RT’s series of special projects dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War, as its theater of WWII is known.

RT will air a live broadcast of Victory Day parades from all around Russia as part of an extensive project to mark the occasion. Dubbed the Parade Relay, the event will stream on RT channels and online platforms around the world in Russian, English, Spanish and Arabic on May 9.

RT will broadcast military parades live on Victory Day from Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Samara, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladivostok, St. Petersburg, Severomorsk and other Russian cities. In Sevastopol, RT will cover the land, sea and air force show. The Relay starts at 7:00 am Moscow time (4:00 am GMT) with a march in Novosibirsk.

The Parade Relay will run live on RT International, RT Arabic, RT Spanish TV channels, online on RT Russian and on RT’s YouTube channels in English, Russian, Arabic and Spanish as well.

This is the latest in RT’s special on-air and online projects dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War and the Soviet victory over the Nazi Germany in World War 2.

“Living photos"

retells the most significant episodes of the war through animated sketches on the basis of war-era photos and eye-witness testimonies. 3D-reconstructions of major places and events of the Great Patriotic War appears in RT studios throughout broadcasts, taking the viewer back in time to witness the War’s iconic battles – including the Battle of Stalingrad, the defense of the Brest Fortress and the Battle of Moscow. The broadcast of the RT International flagship channel will be airing in Moscow’s international press center on May 8th and 9th.

Online, RT has launched http://9may.rt.com/— a special multimedia portalavailable in English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, French and German. The website offers historical information, unique photos, interactive battle map, and chronology of the main events of the War. It also features the complete War Witness: Heritage documentary series, with 70 veterans and survivors of the Great Patriotic War – and their descendants – offering unique testimony and reflection on the war that shaped their lives and the fate of the world.

Ahead of the Victory Day celebrations, RT together with Russia’s oldest record label Melodiya have put together a special collection of the most iconic songs from the era entitled ‘Songs of Victory’. The music inspired and carried the Soviet people through the horrors of war, and became an emotional, spiritual outlet for the people who played an important part in achieving victory.

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