Putin praises motorbikes by jumping on a Harley

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin jumped on a Harley Davidson and made his way into an international biker convention in southern Ukraine atop the motorbike. Nearly 5,000 bikers from Europe and other countries around it gathered in Sevastopol for the annual festival on Saturday on Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. Putin is visiting Ukraine for talks with [...]

Otunbayeva became first female President of ‘Troubled state of Kyrgyzstan’

Career diplomat interim leader, Rosa Otunbayeva sworn in as first female president of Kyrgyzstan today, 3 July 2010. She has become the first female leader of an ex-soviet central Asian nation. Remember, few days back a new constitution has been developed in the country which has established a parliamentary democracy. She was foreign minister of [...]

Suicide bombing in Chechen capital wounds 5

A suicide bomber detonated himself in the capital of Chechnya region in Russia on Wednesday, which wounded three police officers and two civilians, officials reported. The blast took place at 6 p.m. at the center of Gronzy, a city gingerly trying to come back to life after being devastated in two wars between separatists and [...]

Kyrgyzstan: Referendum after Ethnic conflicts

Kyrgyzstan fears that new constitution can inflame ethnic clash that is why interim Government has held referendum. The new constitution seems a bit offensive as it gives parliament more power and sets stage for general elections in September. The final results are expected on Monday however according to officials voter turnout was 55%. These referendums [...]

World Summit: turned attention to nuclear threats

G8 which is compose of eight major industrial countries were scheduled to open their second day of talks on Saturday and this is said to focus on nuclear threats with Iran and North Korea together with President Barack Obama. World leaders of G8 from eight countries – United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada [...]

Georgia took down Stalin Statue

The statue of Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin has been removed from the central Square of Gori which is the home town of Stalin. Statue was taken down in middle of night on Friday. It was six meter high and was made of Bronze. According to the head of the city council, Zviad Khmaladze, this statue [...]

Unpaid Debts: Russia cutting gas supply to Belarus!

Russia is slowly stopping gas supply to the neighbor Belarus because of unpaid debts of around 200m$. Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, made this order earlier today. He had already warned Belarus that if they wouldn’t pay off the gas debts within few days, they can face cuts. Remember, a fifth of Europe’s supplies of Russian [...]

117 killed in the ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan

A "well-known person" which was suspected of fomenting the worst ethnic riots for about 20 years now, was arrested Monday by the Kyrgyzstan’s interim government. The Health Ministry said that 117 had been killed in the clash. Ninety-three in Osh and twenty four in Jalalabad and many more has been wounded in the violence which [...]

75,000 Uzbeks flee riots in Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyz mobs torch Uzbek villagers and slaughtered the residents. More than seventy-five thousand Uzbek refugees have fled across the border into Uzbekistan. The Uzbek Emergencies Ministry said in a statement carried by Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency that most of the Uzbek refugees were elderly people, women, and children, and many had gunshot wounds. Refugee [...]

South Korea satellite launch,delayed due to malfunctioning

A planned satellite launch of South Korea’s space program was postponed. The satellite suffered a setback due to malfunctioning firefighting equipment. The fire retardant suddenly sprayed from three nozzles which is set up near the launch pad to extinguish any blaze according to a spokesman at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Pyun Kyung-bum. [...]

Massive Blast in Russia`s Largest Coal Mine-11 dead

A regional emergency services ministry official said that a huge and massive methane explosion tore through Russia`s largest coal mine, killing 11 workers and injuring 41 others. ITAR_Tass news reported that a second blast early in the Sunday morning forced authorities to discontinue rescue operations when contact with 20 rescuers was lost. The second blast destroyed the [...]

Somali pirates hijack Russian tanker

Somali pirates hijacked the Russian oil tanker, MV Moscow University, 350 miles off the coast of Yemen on Wednesday. The announcement of the hijack was made by the EU Navfor Commander Rear Admiral Jan Thornqvist at the Kenyan port city of Mombosa. “This morning we had an attack on a Liberian flagged ship Moscow University [...]

Mayhem erupts as parliament extends Russian Navy lease

Smoke bombs went off and eggs rained down on Ukraine’s parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Litvyn on Tuesday as the chamber voted to extend the presence of a Russian Navy fleet in the Black Sea to 2042, in return for cheaper gas from Russia. Opposition lawmakers hurled eggs and smoke bombs inside Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday as [...]

Russia: Polish plane crash investigation to improve ties

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told a delegation from Warsaw on Saturday that he hoped the investigation of the April 10 presidential plane crash near Smolensk would help better ties with Poland. He said on the beginning of the meeting set to discuss the investigation that not only will they find the cause of the crash for [...]

The Katyn Forest – Carrying two Polish tragedies 70 years apart

The tragic deaths of Poland’s president and top elites on Saturday in a plane crash that killed 96, left another deep wound in the Poles who had seen another great catastrophe on the same day. The sadness of the day was increased as the deaths took place near the very same Katyn forest in Russia, [...]

Russia investigates cause of air-crash

The Polish President Lech Kaczynski scheduled burial is on Saturday at the end of an official week of mourning. He will be buried alongside his wife and first lady Maria Kaczynski. The president’s body was returned to Warsaw Sunday. His twin brother, the former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski was present. The Polish president and 95 [...]

Polish president’s coffin returns home

The coffin of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski returned home on Sunday, after he and 96 other major political and military elites of Poland perished in a plane crash in Russia. The coffin was draped in the red and white national flag of Poland and was welcomed by Poland’s Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw and [...]

Poland mourns President’s tragic death

Outside the churches of Poland, where church services are being held for a week of mourning for Polish President Lech Kaczynski and the 96 others who died in a jest crash in Russia, flowers and notes are being laid. The President and the 96 members boarded on the plane were headed for a memorial of [...]

Judge gunned down

A judge in Moscow, Russia was gunned down by unknown men after leaving his apartment on Monday. Last February, he sentenced some of the members of a group called the White Wolves, to spend 23 years in jail. The said group was behind murders. The judge shot dead in the entrance of his apartment. Unidentified [...]

New Russian bombing kills two

Another Russian bombing took place on Monday outside a police station in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region of Ingushetia, killing two police officers, officials said. The recent bombing follows a number suicide bombings taking place in the country. Last week, two attacks on the Moscow metro killed 50 Russians. The chaos has led the government [...]

Polish leader dies in Russian jet crash, along with 97 others

The Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of Poland’s highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia. Accompanying him were 97 others who are reported dead as well. The 26-year-old Tupolev were reported to have no survivors, Russian [...]

Kyrgyzstan opposition sets up ‘people’s government’

The opposition in Kyrgyzstan says it is setting up a “people’s government” after deadly clashes left some 65 dead. An opposition leader and former foreign minister, Roza Otunbayeva, informed  that the new defence and interior ministers had been appointed. The whereabouts of President Bakiyev are not clear but reports say that he has flown out [...]

Moscow subway bomber was 17-year-old widow from Dagestan

One of the two female suicide bombers who attacked Moscow’s subway was a 17-year-old from Dagestan, Russian investigators said Friday, where a leading newspaper called her the widow of a slain Islamist rebel. Federal investigators identified one of the attackers as Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, a 17-year-old widow from Dagestan. They said they were still trying to identify the second bomber. [...]

Moscow Metro bombing masterminds ‘will be destroyed’

The masterminds behind a double suicide bombing on the Moscow Metro will be “destroyed”, Russian leaders have said. The attacks, in the morning rush hour, killed at least 38 people and injured more than 60, officials say. No group has said it carried out the attacks, but security services have blamed rebels from the North [...]

Russia bans Adolf Hitler’s biography

Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf”, was added to a list of books that are banned in Russia for their extremist content. The book tells the story of Hitler’s early years and exposes elements of his anti-Semitic political ideology. The book “has been freely available up to now on several websites and was also sold semi-legally [...]

US and Russia announce deal to cut nuclear weapons

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have agreed a new nuclear arms reduction treaty after months of negotiations. The treaty limits both sides to 1,550 warheads, about 30% less than currently allowed, the White House said. The deal replaces the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The leaders will sign the pact in [...]

Russia-U.S. to have a Nuclear treaty soon: Kremlin

Kremlin said on Saturday that the U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev have agreed that Washington and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a new nuclear disarmament treaty. U.S. and Russian negotiators have been meeting in Geneva to discuss a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), [...]

China sets out study on obtaining benefits from Arctic ice melting

A Stockholm research institute said on Monday that China has started exploring ways to gain economic and strategic benefits from the ice melting at the Arctic due to global warming. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) further said that the Chinese officials were being cautious in expressing interest in the region for fear of causing alarm [...]

Kutcher visits Russia to improve U.S. relations

Hollywood actor and Web-savvy activist Ashton Kutcher says he will “crowd source” questions about the Kremlin’s push to develop a Russian Silicon Valley to his 4.5 million Twitter fans. The actor is part of a U.S. delegation of technology and social media leaders that arrived in Moscow as part of White House efforts to improve ties with Russia. Kutcher told reporters here Thursday that [...]

Swedish PM asks Russia about Baltic Sea dumping

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt requested explanations from a previous government on Russia’s release of toxic waste into Swedish waters in the Baltic Sea on Thursday, his spokeswoman told AFP. Swedish public television SVT reported Wednesday that between 1991 and 1994, Russia dumped chemical weapons and radioactive waste off the shores of Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic [...]

More than 80 nations sign ‘Copenhagen Accord’

Over 80 nations have signed the “Copenhagen Accord”, in order to fight the climate change, documents showed on Wednesday. China, India and Russia are among the nations yet to make clear if they will endorse the deal. On January 18, the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat wrote to all countries, asking them to state by January 31 [...]

Sweden and Poland join forces in calling on U.S. and Russia nuclear arms cuts

Sweden and Poland’s foreign ministers on Tuesday called on the United States and Russia to reduce their tactical nuclear arsenals and pressed Moscow to withdraw its nuclear weapons from areas adjacent to EU member states. In an op-ed published on the Web site of the International Herald Tribune, Sweden’s Carl Bildt and Radek Sikorski of Poland singled [...]

13 countries agree on plan to save wild tigers

12 of the Asian countries along with Russia attending the first Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation on Friday vowed to double the number of wild tigers by 2022, finish off poaching that has devastated the big cats and prohibit the building of roads and bridges that could harm their habitats. However, the historic declaration adopted by the [...]

Tiger farms should shut: World Bank

China and other Asian nations should shut privately run tiger farms as they are inhumane and fuel demand for the endangered big cat’s bones and skin, the World Bank said Thursday. The call came as governments from 13 countries where tigers exist in the wild met in Thailand to discuss their conservation and how to boost tiger numbers. Tiger farms [...]

NATO, Russia resumes military relations

Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia were to re-launch military ties Tuesday with senior officers meeting for the first time since such high-level talks were frozen over Moscow’s war with Georgia in 2008. Russian chief of staff Nikolai Makarov was due to join the alliance’s military committee in Brussels for a so-called NATO-Russia Council, the [...]

13 countries meet in hopes of saving wild tigers

Conservationists and the World Bank warned on Wednesday that efforts to save the wild tiger are at a critical point and it will take greater political will and cooperation from Asian countries to prevent the big cats from becoming extinct. The message was delivered to the 13 different tiger range states attending the first Ministerial [...]

Greenpeace activists block nuclear shipment in France

On Monday, Greenpeace activists said they were blocking a train which was transporting nuclear waste to the French port of Cherbourg, from where it was to be shipped to Russia then. Protesters blocked the railway line by chaining themselves to it so as to prevent the train from reaching French port. The four protestors were [...]

Save the Tigers!

Tigers are in a critical decline because of human encroachment, the loss of more than nine-tenths of their habitat and the growing trade in tiger skins and body parts. From an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, the number today ranges between 3,200 to 3,600, most of them in Asia and Russia. Now [...]

No agreement on new Iran sanctions

NEW YORK — Diplomats from six key powers focused on possible new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program at a meeting Saturday, but reached no agreement. Robert Cooper, the European Union’s political director who chaired the meeting, said the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany concluded “that Iran has failed to follow [...]