 RFE/RL Headlines 12/1/2009 6:33:29 PM A daily digest of the English-language news and analysis written by the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty |
| News  Britain Calls For Speedy End To Yacht Incident With Iran British Foreign Secretary David Miliband is calling for a swift end to the case of five British yachtsmen aboard a racing yacht that was detained by the Iranian Navy after allegedly straying into Iranian waters. However, Iran says they will be sternly dealt with if they had "evil intentions." More  Moscow Mayor Wins Another Libel Suit A Moscow court has ordered liberal politician Boris Nemtsov to pay the city's powerful mayor the equivalent of $17,100 for libel. More  Court Hears Serb Challenge To Kosovo Independence The legality of Kosovo's secession from Serbia is being reviewed by the International Court of Justice in hearings that started today in The Hague. More  World Russian Congress Kicks Off In Moscow About 1,000 delegates from 90 countries gathered today in Moscow for the third World Congress of Russian Compatriots, or Russians living abroad, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More Georgian authorities have refused to allow some Russian scholars to enter Georgia, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More A Samara Oblast court has sentenced 36 members of one of Russia's largest-known organized crime groups in the city of Togliatti, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More  South Ossetia Releases Georgian Bus Driver A Georgian bus driver detained by Russian soldiers in South Ossetia on November 29 was released today, RFE/RL's Echo of the Caucasus reports. More  Tatar Activists Plan Protests In Support Of Jailed Blogger Activists in Tatarstan say they are preparing to launch protest actions in support of a jailed blogger, RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service reports. More 'The Day I Killed The Soviet Union' December 1 is the happiest day of my life. On this day I killed the Soviet Union. More  Cops Gone Wild When the nation's top law-enforcement official starts sounding a bit like a wild-eyed anarchist, you know something must be up. Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev says citizens should be allowed to strike back at police who attack them without cause. Moreover, a leading lawmaker has suggested disbanding the police and starting over. More  Understanding Iran's Defiant Nuclear Policy The diplomatic standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions has grown more intense since President Mahmud Ahmadinejad announced that his government intends to build 10 new sites to enrich uranium to supply future nuclear power plants. At the same time, other Iranian officials have suggested Iran is still open to talks. This is not the first time that top Iranian officials have sent such mixed signals, alternating blustery statements with conciliatory gestures. More  Uzbekistan Withdrawing From Regional Power Grid Uzbekistan says it is withdrawing from a regional power grid that unites it with three neighboring countries. Tashkent says the "outdated and unreliable" Soviet-era system is creating conflicts among the member states and that it imperils electricity supplies to Uzbekistan’s domestic consumers. But the move could leave Uzbekistan’s impoverished neighbors, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, facing severe electricity shortages in winter. More  Fears of Dubai Default Eased, But Financial Problems Remain The debt problems besetting the Gulf emirate of Dubai set off fears that new chaos would spread through the global financial scene, but those concerns have eased somewhat. The state-owned conglomerate Dubai World announced that it is already in talks with creditor banks on the orderly restructuring of nearly half of its $59 billion debt. But economists wonder if more such shocks are waiting to happen -- just as the world thought it had overcome the worst of the global financial crisis. More  Central Asia, Eastern Europe Scarred By AIDS As the globe marks World AIDS Day today, the United Nations is warning that the disease continues to progress in many countries, most dramatically in the regions of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. More  Murder Highlights Missionary Role In Russian Church Nobody knows for sure who murdered Moscow priest Daniil Sysoyev, who died on November 19 after being shot by an unidentified assailant in his own church. But his death, which some have blamed on Islamic extremists, has cast light on how the Russian Orthodox Church has increasingly turned to proselytism work in recent years, and highlighted tensions between the church and Islam. More  Ahmadinejad Comes Back Swinging The announcement by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad that Iran is planning to build 10 new uranium-enrichment facilities surprised even seasoned Iran watchers. But many analysts say the announcement amounts to nothing more than political bluster. So what is Iran playing at? More  The Dark Side Of Lisbon Far from injecting new impetus into the European Union's foreign policy, the Lisbon Treaty is likely to further sap its effectiveness. Under the guise of the "streamlining" changes introduced by Lisbon, member states will wrest back most of the control over external relations they had ceded to the European Commission over the past decade. More  Too Much Love For Lukashenka On his trip to Belarus, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had to make at least one of his characteristic quips to President Alyaksandr Lukashenka -- although it wasn't sexist or racist this time. |
