 RFE/RL Headlines 12/28/2009 5:19:56 PM A daily digest of the English-language news and analysis written by the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty |
| News  Russia Warns EU Of Oil Cuts Russia has warned the European Union of oil supply cuts because of a fresh row between Moscow and Kyiv, the Slovak government said today, hours after Russia played down worries about a new gas row with Ukraine. More Villagers in a remote part of northeastern Afghanistan have reported that an air strike by foreign forces on December 26 killed 10 civilians, the provincial governor said today. More  YouTube Whistleblower Faces Prosecution A former policeman who accused senior officers of corruption in a series of video blogs will himself face prosecution for abuse of office, Russian investigators said today. More A reporter who covered the murder of a leading Kyrgyz opposition journalist this month was found dead in Kazakhstan over the weekend, police said today. More  Eight Confirmed Killed In Iran Protests Iranian state-run television acknowledged today that eight people were killed during the latest antigovernment protests in Iran. More  Bomb At Shi'ite Procession In Pakistan Kills 25 A suicide bomber attacked a Shi'ite Muslim procession in Pakistan's commercial capital, Karachi, today, killing at least 25 people. More  Pilots Sent To Prison For Kyrgyz Air Crash A Kyrgyz court today sentenced the pilots of an aircraft that crashed near Bishkek last year to five years in prison, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reports. More  Armenia Says Buyer Found For Confiscated Water Plant An Armenian official says a buyer has been found for a mineral-water company that was confiscated in a controversial move from a wealthy, opposition-linked businessman, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports. More  Armenian PM Vows To Expose Corruption Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian has pledged to crack down on wealthy and corrupt state officials in order to strengthen the rule of law, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports. More Russian police have freed 15 Kyrgyz children who were forced to work in an underground factory in Moscow Oblast, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More  Disturbing Iran Images On Holy Day Here's a roundup of some of the most significant video images coming out of Iran on Ashura today, which is among Shi'ite Islam's holiest days. More  Not Such A Riot Armenian riot police have long been accused by civic groups of using disproportionate force against citizens. More  You Are Invited To Witness An Execution Blogger Madyar reacts to an ad, published in an Iranian newspaper, that calls on people to attend the executions of alleged thieves in Khuzestan Province. More  Ashura Violence Marks Turning Point For Opposition Sunday's bloody clashes between security forces and members of the opposition in Iran have raised the stakes in a months-long postelection crisis. Some observers say the events that occurred on the major Shi'ite holiday of Ashura mark a turning point for the Islamic establishment and the Green opposition movement. More  Will Yemen Become A Major Al-Qaeda Sanctuary? After a Nigerian national who claims to have trained with Al-Qaeda in Yemen allegedly tried to blow up an international flight on Christmas Day, and following two Yemeni military airstrikes on suspected Al-Qaeda meetings this month, RFE/RL spoke with regional security expert Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center about the Middle Eastern country's role in international terrorism. More  The Poet The Taliban Couldn't Keep Down If there was a paradise on Earth, it was the beautiful valley of Swat. It had heritage, history, and traditions based on love and peace," says Abdurrahman Roghani, 58, an eminent Pashtun poet, writer, and social activist from Pakistan's Swat Valley More  Of Little Meaning, But More Entertaining This Time Uzbekistan is set to hold elections to an expanded lower house of parliament. And while they don't promise to be any better than the previous three, even if they don't have the "feel" of democracy, they at least "look" more like democracy in some ways. More  The Big Winner Of 2009: China (Again) China proved its economic might while most others were laid low by global recession. More  ...And The Big Loser: The International Community Visions of a rule-based world -- embodied by either the muscular idealism of the United States or the EU's Kantian concept of a just and universal law of states -- were on the retreat in 2009. The biggest loser as the decade draws to an end is the international community and the ideal of liberal internationalism. More  Economist Jan Svejnar On Recession And Recovery 2009 began with the world's major economies still reeling from the effects of the worst financial crisis in decades and in the midst of unprecedented action aimed at stemming its impact. It was also a year that saw calls for an eventual move away from the dollar as the world's chief reserve currency. As we near the end of 2009, the world's biggest economies appear to be gaining steam after a recession and financial authorities are mapping how to unwind their economic support. Where are we in the More  Defector Describes 'Amoral' Conditions In South Ossetia Twenty-five-year-old Vitaly Khripun, a border guard with the Russian Federal Security Service in South Ossetia, defected from his post on December 21 and has asked for political asylum in Georgia. Khripun was serving in the Java district along the administrative border that has separated South Ossetia from Georgia proper since last year's five-day war between Russia and Georgia. In his first interview since his defection, Khripun says he was motivated to act by the culture of corruption and crue More  Moldovan Dispute Underscores Orthodox Church's Clout An ongoing dispute over the timing of Christmas is once again the source of a political controversy in Moldova. This year, the dispute has led to a bitter standoff between the government and the Orthodox Church -- an incident that highlights the church's growing clout in ex-Soviet countries. More  Winning Entry: Boredom On Earth More  A Rotten Language We are enjoying our freedom of speech. We have the ability to express ourselves on particular topics and to do so in open public spaces and the mass media. But we must nonetheless express our beliefs within the limits and the terms of language itself. If language forms our thoughts (and vice versa), then totalitarianism has marked us in a fundamental way. More  Choosing Uncertainty This essay was a runner-up in a contest of student essays sponsored by the Vaclav Havel Library to mark the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. More  The Ashura Of My Younger Years For teenagers like me in the 1960s, Ashura was a time of sorrow and grief, yes, but the schools were closed for a few days. Now it is grief and politics, a lot of politics. Hate and a lot of slogans. "Down with..." or "Death to..." for political opponents -- even those who are Shi'ite clerics -- and moderates, and everybody and anybody who is not fully behind the current rulers of Iran. More  Protests and Clashes Mark Montazeri Memorial Service More |
