February 2011 |
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Yemen is teetering on the brink of civil war, and yet the UN Security Council has failed to produce even a joint political statement on the situation there, much less a concrete plan of action to avert this disastrous outcome.
Elections have become a crucial tool in attempts to achieve broader democratization of the world. The fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union stirred up drastic changes around the world, among them the appearance of new actors and coalitions seeking a democratic future.
If the world were not so preoccupied with Libya, the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the Arab revolutions and all their attendant problems for Europe, a lot more attention would have been devoted to the 14th congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in Havana (April 16-19).
Although Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced on Wednesday, April 13, that the case of the terrorist attack in Minsk had been solved, the investigation is still in full swing.
The developments unfolding in and around Libya prompt strange thoughts: not all of them kind and some outright reactionary. The strangest of all is that nothing would have happened, or something would have happened very fast and hence painlessly, had there been more "adults" around.1
South Africa has joined Brazil, Russia, India and China to form BRICS, an informal group of emerging economies.
The blast at the Oktyabrskaya metro station in the capital of Belarus at 5:58 p.m. Moscow time has, so far, killed 12 and wounded 126 people. This tragedy is profoundly shocking for two reasons: the number of victims and the fact that nothing like this has happened in the Belarusian capital since WWII.
"Let's go!" With these words Yury Gagarin blasted off on a flight that would shock the world. How could a country still emerging from the devastation wrought by WWII accomplish such an incredible feat of scientific, engineering and industrial progress?
While Russians will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight on April 12 with impressive 50-salvo fireworks, Sotheby's in New York will be auctioning off the descent capsule of the Vostok 3KA-2 spacecraft in which the dog Zvezdochka safely returned to Earth after a test flight; a sensor-laden mannequin nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich was ejected during the descent and landed nearby.1
Twenty years ago, on April 9, 1991, after two centuries, Georgia officially emerged from Moscow's "canopy of friendly bayonets." On this day, the Georgian Supreme Soviet, the highest body of power at the time, passed a resolution declaring Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union following a national referendum in which 98% of voters chose independence.
I had just got out of the elevator on the ground floor of the Moscow apartment building where I have lived for a number of years when my upstairs neighbour, a portly forty-something businessman, came in from the street. As usual, we both managed to whisper a zdrastye in mutual greeting.
Audiences in Italy can finally take a break from serious headlines - dominated this spring by the Arab upheavals, unemployment and illegal immigration - to watch the latest installment of a crime saga featuring Silvio Berlusconi as its main protagonist.
Unlike its neighbors, which export a large proportion of the world’s oil, Dubai barely has any oil and gas supplies of its own.
In the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a fierce battle to become the world’s leading space power.
Barack Obama announced his decision to run for a second term on April 4, nearly 19 months before the 2012 elections. He did it in a low-key manner through social media, email and text messages to his supporters. His campaign released a two-minute video featuring Americans talking about why they want Obama for four more years.
The dawning of the space age opened our eyes to the universe and the planet we inhabit, and the ability of humankind to venture beyond Earth’s atmosphere triggered a revolution in science – on this there was no disagreement among the Russian scientists interviewed by RIA Novosti in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight.
RIA Novosti's Andrei Stenin spent almost a month with the Libyan rebels. A photojournalist by trade, he wrote this account of his experiences as a collection of fast-moving vignettes in the hopes of giving readers a vivid picture of life on the front lines in Libya.
No matter how long a war may last, it is always followed by peace. And the strange war in Libya is no exception to this rule. In fact, it appears that many of the world's major powers have been preparing to broker a peace deal from the start.
The man who successfully lobbied French President Nicolas Sarkozy to recognize the rebel National Council as the legitimate government of Libya also urged the West to recognize rebel leaders Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev as the president and prime minister of Chechnya in the 1990s.2