 RFE/RL Headlines 9/15/2009 5:33:51 PM A daily digest of the English-language news and analysis written by the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty |
| News  Russia Raises The Heat With tensions again on the rise between Moscow and Tbilisi, Russia has inked defense pacts with breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, allowing it to maintain military bases in the rebel regions for the next half-century. Following attempts by Georgia to blockade Abkhazia, Moscow also threatened to seize Georgian ships in the Black Sea. More  Iraqi Who Threw Shoes At Bush Released From Jail Muntadhir al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist jailed for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush, has been released in Baghdad today after serving nine months of a one-year jail sentence. More  Belarusian Opposition Activist Fined Over Flag A court in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk has fined an opposition activist for "unsanctioned public action," RFE/RL's Belarus Service reports. More  Georgian Officials Say Railway Blast Terrorist Act Georgian officials say there was an explosion at the railway station in the Georgian town of Zugdidi, RFE/RL's Georgian and Russian services report. More  Death Toll In Kazakh Rehab Center Fire Rises The number of those killed by a fire at the drug rehabilitation center in the southeastern Kazakh city of Taldy-Qorghan has risen to 38, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports. More Arsen Ghazarian told RFE/RL that Armenians would be able to "implement serious joint projects in the energy sphere" and open up "quite serious projects in the textile sector" if the border was opened. More  Man Sent To Mental Hospital After Refusing To Pay Bribe Mahammad Gurbanov, 56, works as a vendor and says he was asked on September 12 to pay extra customs on goods he had imported from Turkey. More  Syringe Snag Could Leave Tajik Infants At TB Risk Officials in Tajikistan's northern Sughd Province say more than 15,000 infants cannot be vaccinated for tuberculosis because the UNICEF-provided vaccines were sent without syringes, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports. More Azerbaijani Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Arif Agaev and officials representatives of Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry attended a ceremony at Kant's Secondary School No. 4 when the classes began on September 14. More  Grandchildren Of Dissident Iranian Ayatollah Arrested Three grandchildren of Iranian dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri have been arrested in the Islamic holy city of Qom, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. More  CPJ Releases Major Report On Unsolved Killings Of Journalists In Russia "It is a sad irony: While the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia itself is relapsing to some of its Soviet ways. In fact, for journalists, Russia is a more dangerous place now than it was during the Cold War..." So begins a special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists called "Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia." More  What Not To Wear At Gazprom A document purporting to be a detailed dress code for female employees of Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, has become a viral hit in Russia. More Inspired by "The Atlantic's" mock "World Leaders" Facebook group, RFE/RL presents a Facebook-style summary of last week's events. Click on any of the status updates for more information. More  Life Under The Tsar At the start of the 20th century, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky won the support of Tsar Nicholas II to conduct an ambitious photographic survey of the Russian Empire. Between 1907 and 1915, Prokudin-Gorsky traveled widely in a railroad car equipped with a darkroom, recording aspects of Russia’s diverse culture. More  EU Reviews Caucasus Strategy, Mulls Afghan Future EU foreign ministers are attempting to flesh out a partnership offer to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. In Afghanistan, the bloc is looking to take up a bigger role once a new government is in place. And on Iran, it is ready to impose sanctions if nuclear talks fail. More  Islamic Party Leader Says He Supports Secular System Tajikistan's Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), the only officially registered Islamic party in Central Asia, wants to boost its two-seat presence in the Tajik parliament in the next elections, scheduled for February 2010. To achieve that goal, the party is seeking to shrug off its old image of a conservative rural party, recruiting many women and young technocrats. RFE/RL correspondent Farangis Najibullah recently caught up with IRP leader Muhiddin Kabiri on the sidelines of the 19th Economic Forum in Krynica, Poland. More  EU-Uzbek Ties Deepen, As Rights Issues Sidestepped The European Union and Uzbekistan appear to have normalized their relationship a year after the EU dropped its sanctions against Tashkent, imposed in the wake of the mass killings of protesters in Andijon in May 2005. After a routine meeting of senior officials in Brussels, both sides sought to downplay differences and focus on pragmatic cooperation. More  Should Iranians Care About Jerusalem? Iranian reformist groups, still alive and active despite brutal suppression, have announced that they will launch new demonstrations against President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on "Day of Jerusalem" this year. More  What I Saw While Afghanistan Voted Here’s what I saw during the elections in Ghazni. My colleague, Steve, and I arrived from Kabul via Blackhawk helicopter a couple of days before the vote. The new ring road linking the capital to the south was not safe enough to drive. The plan was for us to coordinate with U.S. State Department officials to monitor the voting. As it turned out, they don’t travel without a military escort and, under election rules, military vehicles couldn’t go near the polling stations. More  Lessons of Beslan A 2004 report on Russia Media Coverage of the Beslan Tragedy, whose 5th anniversary was September 1, is striking as an early account of what have become the Russian government’s standard rules of engagement toward the press. More |
