Russian security serves have foiled a plot by a group of Islamists to blow up a high-speed train running between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the Kommersant business daily said Monday. A blast on the same route that authorities blamed on Muslim rebels killed 26 people in November 2009. The respected daily said the group of […]
China began on Wednesday to test its first aircraft carrier, The Washington Post reported. The carrier is a retrofitted former Soviet ship called the Varyag. It is considered the first step in China’s plan to eventually build a handful of carriers as part of a wider development of naval might. China bought the carrier from […]
On August 5, Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister and heroine of Ukraine’s 2004 pro-western Orange Revolution, was arrested during her trial. Tymoshenko was in court defending herself against charges of overstepping her authority and allegedly making an illegal gas price deal with Russia in 2009. The presiding judge, Rodion Kireyev, accused her of systematically […]
Iranian lawmakers blamed Russia for the latest delay in activating its the Bushehr nuclear plant. “The Russians keep making bad promises,” lawmaker Asgar Jalalian told Aftab Yazd daily. “One of reasons for continued payment to the Russians is that our contract with them does not have a financial ceiling and lacks clear timing on contract […]
After attending the summit of the Shanghai cooperation organization in Kazakhstan Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jin Tao flew to Moscow where they worked on a mammoth gas sale agreement from Russia to China guaranteed to provide the Chinese with energy security and Russia with hefty profits. The haggling over price […]
The Jerusalem Post By David Harris June 21, 2011 We’re on the verge of another “flotilla” to Gaza. Estimates of the number of ships and participants vary from day to day, tending downward, but the erstwhile organizers insist that the maritime operation will take place. Their spokesmen have been hyperactive in drawing attention to the […]
The Palestinian Authority has presented the Quartet of peacekeeping nations (the United States, Russia, United Nations and European Union) with four pre-condition for resuming talks with Israel. Palestine Liberation Organization chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Saudi newspaper Al-Watan in an interview Friday the list of demands included the following: 1. A complete halt to all […]
An old Russian joke that merely expanded with every leadership change goes like this: A Russian train is stuck. Stalin comes in and orders that the train driver be shot. His order is carried out but the train remains stuck. Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev comes in and gives an order to rehabilitate the train driver […]
A cynic may be excused for saying that there was vintage Chicago in Barack Obama’s recently concluded trip to Europe. It started with the Irish and finished with the Poles and, at the Warsaw ghetto Memorial, the president even met with some Polish Jews to assure them that he would be there for Israel. The […]
Posted by Colin Barr– Think the debate about U.S. creditworthiness can’t get any sillier? Guess again. A week after Standard & Poor’s finally told us what we already knew, that the U.S. fiscal fiasco is in danger of spinning out of control, along comes Weiss Ratings of Jupiter, Fla., to reaffirm we can’t max out […]
