 RFE/RL Headlines 5/7/2010 A daily digest of the English-language news and analysis written by the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL is looking for guest bloggers, preferably writing from and about our broadcast region. If you're interested, drop us a line at webteam@rferl.org. |
| Features  Amid V-Day Festivities, Soviet Partisan Braces For War Crimes Verdict Veterans around the world are preparing to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II this weekend, but former Soviet partisan Vasily Kononov is in no mood to celebrate. He is bracing for a decision by the European Court of Human Rights, which will rule on May 17 whether post-Soviet Latvia had the right to jail him for alleged war crimes. Moscow has warned of dire consequences if the court rules against the man hailed in Russia as an anti-Nazi hero. More  Postwar Diary: The Lone Photograph I was 41 in 2004, when I was first shown this black-and-white picture: four men posing on horseback, one with a baby boy in his arms. It was the first time I'd ever seen my grandfather, Parkizat Sharipzhan. He's the man in his early 30s on the far right, with a briefcase in his hands. More  After Just A Year, Are Wheels Coming Off EU's Eastern Partnership? A year after its celebrated inception, the European Union's Eastern Partnership for Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan has sunk into the kind of obscurity that tends to envelop unloved EU projects. More  Eurozone Leaders Meet On Greece As leaders of the 16 eurozone members meet in Brussels today to finalize Greece's rescue package, stocks and the euro continue to fall. What is the potential for the debt crisis to spread to other parts of Europe and the world? More  British Conservatives Woo Lib Dems Britain's opposition Conservatives have asked the Liberal Democrats to help them form a government after the closest general election in decades, with no party emerging with an outright majority. More  Armenia Moves To Contain Toxic Site Responding to dire warnings from ecologists, Armenian authorities have moved to clean up a toxic-waste burial site near Yerevan that appears to have been dug up by unknown intruders several months ago. More  Muslim Students In Iraq Stage Sit-In Lecturers and Muslim students at northern Iraq's Mosul University staged a sit-in today to protest deadly attacks against Christian students, RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq (RFI) reports. More  Kazakhstan Awards Bakiev Pilot Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has given the pilot who flew the ousted Kyrgyz president out of Kyrgyzstan last month a special state award, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports. More  Tajikistan Rejects Iran Visa Offer An Iranian government official said today that Tajikistan has rejected an offer to establish visa-free travel between the two countries. More  Moscow Subway Victims Remembered About 300 people gathered today near the Solovki memorial on Moscow's Lubyanka Square to mark 40 days since scores of people were killed and injured in subway suicide attacks. More  Tajik Students Win Ruling For Lower College Tuition A Tajik court has sided with students and ordered tuition at a university in northern Tajikistan to be lowered. More  Armenia Seeks Fleeing Witnesses An Armenian law-enforcement body investigating the death of a man in police custody says it is trying to contact two key witnesses who left the country after the incident. More  Georgian Opposition Blocs Out Of Vote Two Georgian opposition parties have withdrawn their candidates from the nationwide local elections scheduled for May 30. More  Armenia Forecasts Increased Growth The Armenian Central Bank says the country's economy will expand by at least 3 percent this year. More  Eastern Partnership? Never Heard Of It European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called it a “new start” in the EU’s relations with its Eastern neighbors. But one year after the signing in Prague of the Eastern Partnership with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, the European Union seems to have all but forgotten what was then touted as a landmark initiative. More  Croat Selected For Top UN Human Rights Post Ivan Simonovic, Croatia's justice minister, is the new UN human rights representative at UN headquarters in New York. More  What’s Up In The Upper Chamber? It has been a long time since anyone paid much attention to the Federation Council, the putative upper chamber of Russia’s legislature. Although its chairman, A Just Russia head Sergei Mironov (now on Twitter!), occasionally makes headlines for some odd statement or other, the body itself plays its role in Russia’s faux-democratic political system almost unnoticed. More  Lawyer Who Defended Children On Death Row Jailed Amnesty International has called on Iran to release a human rights lawyer who was arrested on May 1 after being convicted of "propaganda against the system." More  Norwegian Filmmaker Leaves Azerbaijan With Less Than He Came In With Noted Norwegian journalist and filmmaker Erling Borgen recently visited Azerbaijan to produce a documentary on freedom of expression -- or the lack thereof -- under the authoritarian leadership of President Ilham Aliyev. He left with first-hand experience. More  Middle East Is Watching Iran's Nuclear Program If Iran fails to allay suspicions about its nuclear program, countries in the region will likely step up efforts to bolster their own security. A nuclear-armed Iran might not provoke a proliferation cascade -- Israel's suspected acquisition of nuclear arms in the 1950s did not -- but it could prompt an uptick in spending on conventional arms and missile defenses. More  U.S. Hopes To Keep Armenia-Turkey Reconciliation Process Alive RFE/RL Armenian Service director Harry Tamrazian says the Obama administration has not signaled any willingness to give up on the process, and some level of active engagement by U.S. officials is likely to continue. More |
