 RFE/RL Headlines 3/1/2010 8:23:16 PM A daily digest of the English-language news and analysis written by the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty |
| News  Russia Reckons With Lackluster Olympics The Olympic Games are over, but for Russia the finger pointing has only just begun. After the country's weakest performance ever in the Winter Games, ordinary Russians are stunned and President Dmitry Medvedev is calling for sports officials to resign. More  Brussels Rolls Out Red Carpet For New Ukraine Leader Ukraine's newly sworn-in President Viktor Yanukovych is being given the red-carpet treatment in the EU capital today. His visit is seen as hugely symbolic in Brussels -- it's the president's first trip abroad, coming four days ahead of his next foreign visit, to Moscow. More  Karadzic War Crimes Trial Resumes Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic has begun his opening defense statement at his genocide and war crimes trial in The Hague -- describing the Bosnian Serb cause as "just and holy." More  Russians Mark 15th Anniversary Of Journalist's Assassination Russians today are marking the 15th anniversary of the unsolved murder of the country's most-popular television journalist, Vladislav Listyev. More  Ex-Georgia Leader's Son Ends Strike A son of former Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia has ended his hunger strike at the request of the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church. More  Moldova-Romania Unification Moldovan parliament speaker and acting President Mihai Ghimpu says nobody will be able to stop the reunification of Moldova with Romania "if people will push" for it. More Kyrgyz human rights activist Nematillo Botakoziev has been reported missing in Dushanbe. More  Armenian, Georgian Presidents Pledge Closer Cooperation Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian pledged closer cooperation between their respective countries. More  How Green Is Rafsanjani? Faezeh Hashemi, a former lawmaker and the daughter of Iran’s former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has said that her father is a member of the opposition movement. More  Islam Would Make Obama Confess His Mistakes The commander of Iran’s Basij force, Mohammad Reza Naghdi, has said that if U.S President Barack Obama visits Iran, he will confess to “his mistakes” as did Abdolmalek Rigi, the recently captured head of the rebel Sunni group Jundollah. More  Azerbaijan's Extravagant Olive Trees Azerbaijan’s native olive trees, oaks, and firs are being crowded out after around 3,000 bushes and 300 trees were brought to Baku last week to be planted in Baku's National Park. More Russian officials are facing embarrassing questions over video showing more than 100 modern tanks that were apparently left unguarded next to a rural train station in Yekaterinburg. More  A New 'Sedition' On The Way Hard-line blogger Mahdyar Basiji believes that "the sedition" -- a term hard-liners use to describe the Green opposition movement -- is not over. More More  Shrinking Glaciers Threaten Tajikistan's Economic Dreams Tajikistan's contribution to global warming is minimal, with only a handful of factories and just one in 10 households owning a car. But its rapidly shrinking glaciers have it being ranked among the countries hardest hit by climate change. More  Postcommunism's Achievements, Disillusionment Leading thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic gathered over the weekend at Columbia University in New York to assess the significance of the 1989 revolutions that led to the demise of communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe -- what has been achieved and what failed. More  Presidential Party Wins Tajik Landslide, But Who Came In Second? According to Tajikistan's election officials, President Emomali Rahmon's People's Democratic Party is on course to win a landslide in the February 28 parliamentary polls. But it is the second-placed party that is attracting more attention. So far, that looks likely to be the Islamic party. More  OSCE Says Tajik Elections Failed Democratic Standards Europe's main election watchdog says Tajikistan's parliamentary and local elections failed to meet basic democratic standards. More  Russia's Yukos Case In Strasbourg An Uphill Battle A year ago at a Russian justice-system awards ceremony, Russia's representative to the European Court of Human Rights, Pavel Laptev, said: "Members of the press -- write this down: Russia will win the [Yukos] case. It is possible to win under the procedures of the European Court of Human Rights." More  Election Fever Sweeps Kurdistan As election fever sweeps Iraq's Kurdish region, the widespread perception is that in the seven years since the U.S.-led war ousted the Hussein regime, the two principal Kurdish parties have finally succumbed to the myriad problems associated with governance. More  What's New In Russia's New Military Doctrine? The doctrine avoids the thorniest issues. It contains no hint as to how Russia will supply its military with new weapons and how it might deal with what may become the greatest military challenge to Russia -- the rise of China. More |
