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Caracas, Venezuela Population: 3.2 million Murder rate: 130 per 100,000 residents (official) . . . The numbers also don’t count those who died while “resisting arrest,” suggesting that Caracas’s cops—already known for their brutality against student protesters—might be cooking the books. Cape Town, South Africa Population: 3.5 million Murder rate: 62 per 100,000 inhabitants According to the South African Police Service, most of the Cape Town area’s violent crimes happen between people who know one another, including a horrific case last year in which four males doused a female friend in gasoline and lit her on fire. New Orleans, United...

Russian markets closed until Friday Russia ordered its main stock exchanges closed for another day Thursday as President Dmitry Medvedev called for pouring 500 billion rubles ($20 billion) into financial markets in an effort to stabilize them. The government is struggling to stem a dizzying plummet in share prices and restore confidence in the economy _ a plummet that has revived memories of the 1998 financial collapse. "We have sufficient reserves and a strong economy, which guarantees the avoidance of any shocks," Medvedev said in televised comments.

MOSCOW (AP) ― A plane carrying 88 people crashed in central Russia early Sunday killing all aboard, an emergency official said. The Boeing-737 traveling from Moscow to Perm went down about 3:40 a.m. Sunday, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said. The plane, operated by a division of Aeroflot, was on its approach to land in Perm when it crashed into an unpopulated area of the city, she said. A total of 82 passengers, including seven children, and six crew were on board, she said. She said there was no damage or deaths on the ground and investigators were working...

via translation - Moscow denounces politics "unfriendly act" of Ukraine to Russia MOSCOW - Moscow has accused Ukraine on Thursday pursue a policy "unfriendly" to Russia in the context of Russian-Georgian conflict and "complicate" the activity of the Fleet of the Russian Black Sea based in Crimea. "Lately the Ukrainian authorities are conducting a policy toward Russia that can only be described as unfriendly," said Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement. "We are seriously concerned by the fact that Ukrainian leaders constantly blown up the question of the duration of the presence of the fleet in the Black Sea from...

Iran has blamed Georgia for its confrontation with Russia and in a reference to Israel and the U.S., urged regional countries to unite against foreign interference. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday Georgia caused the crisis because it miscalculated the reaction to its use of military power in South Ossetia. Speaking earlier on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the conflict would not have taken place had Georgia “not allowed countries from outside the region to interfere in their internal affairs.” Analysts say that wary of U.S. troop presence in...

A Georgian Foreign Ministry official said Friday Georgia is to recall all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Moscow because of the Russian military presence in Georgia. Nato Chikovani says Georgia will withdraw its staff on Saturday, following a parliamentary vote in favor of the move on Thursday. Russian news agencies cite Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nestrenko as criticizing the move, saying it will not benefit bilateral relations. Georgia is angry at the lingering presence of Russian troops in Georgia despite Russia's promise to withdraw in accordance with an EU-brokered cease-fire. Also on Friday, officials in South Ossetia said...

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Fears that Russia might sell advanced weaponry to Syria kicked up a mini-storm of concern in Israel on Thursday. Syrian President Bashar Assad, in Russia for talks with President Dmitry Medvedev, has been campaigning to acquire weapons systems that include long-range surface-to-surface missiles, according to Russian media reports. The news of Assad's reported ambitions prompted immediate hand-wringing among Israeli officials and analysts. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was "analyzing the ramifications" of Assad's visit.

Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics Nervous neighbours Aug 21st 2008 | MOSCOW AND WARSAW NOBODY has watched the war in Georgia more anxiously than Russia’s western neighbours. Recently the Russians have been bellicose towards Ukraine, the three Baltic states and Poland. It was no surprise when leaders from the other four flew with the Polish president to Tbilisi to express solidarity with Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili. It was also no coincidence that Poland signed a deal with the Americans to host missile-defence interceptors. The deal marks the end of a game of hardball, with the Poles turning down many American offers...

Pictures of triumphant Russian soldiers sitting on armoured personnel carriers as they were driven through towns in Georgia will be among the lasting images of the seven-day war. But the victory did not tell the whole story, analysts said yesterday. The ageing vehicles were so lightly armed and so uncomfortable and hot to sit in that the Russian soldiers felt safer perched on top. “At least they could then react quickly if there was an attack,” Colonel Christopher Langton, an expert on Russian armed forces at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. For an invading force from what...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19, 2008 – Russia’s actions in Georgia are isolating Moscow from the international community, Secretary of State of Condoleezza Rice said today in Brussels, Belgium. Russia escalated a simmering conflict with neighboring Georgia 11 days ago when it invaded the former Soviet republic, followed by bombing civilian infrastructure and wreaking “havoc and destruction” in Georgian villages, Rice said. “The behavior of Russia in this most recent crisis is isolating Russia from the principles of cooperation among nations of the communities of states,” she said at a news conference after an urgent meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels....

To most Americans, the 1980 Olympics never happened. The Carter administration sponsored a boycott ostensibly designed to punish the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. government used all its diplomatic power to get its allies in the Cold War to join the boycott. More than 40 countries went along. With no Americans participating, NBC canceled its coverage of the Games. Most American newspapers, which had planned to send hundreds of reporters and photographers to Moscow, scrubbed their plans, too. In all, no more than 20 American reporters traveled to Moscow for the Games. I was one of...

The Russian authorities have warned Manchester United and Chelsea fans arriving in Moscow for Wednesday night's Champions League Final that there will be a zero-tolerance approach to anti-social behaviour after witnessing the trouble involving Rangers supporters at the UEFA Cup Final in Manchester last week. Russian FA president Vitali Mutko said: "We drove through the centre of the city crowded with Rangers fans last week. Almost all of them were drunk and some were urinating in the streets. [...] But perhaps the biggest danger to those who are travelling is Russia's no-nonsense approach to alcohol. Public displays of drunkenness are...

It is a mistake to describe Moscow’s strengthening of ties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia as a step toward independence, or to compare the move with Washington’s Kosovo misadventure. Indeed, the two regions in the Caucasus -- which, unlike Kosovo, at least have a legal claim to independence -- are useful levers to step up pressure on Mikheil Saakashvili’s regime and, hopefully, can act as catalysts for its removal in the near future. As stated officially, Moscow has every right to help assure the welfare of its citizens. But the clear Russian position worldwide is that no illegal, unilateral secessions...

Russia's display of heavy weapons in this year's Victory Day parade in Moscow is "not sabre-rattling", President Vladimir Putin insists. Tanks and intercontinental missiles are to be paraded for the first time since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The outgoing Russian leader said that Friday's parade to mark the end of World War II would demonstrate Russia's growing defence capabilities. "We do not threaten anyone and do not intend to do so," he said. A dress rehearsal for the parade was conducted on Monday. Mr Putin is stepping down as president on 7 May to be replaced...

MOSCOW, April 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com)- The Moscow City government has made it clear that it will not tolerate the public promotion of sodomy during Labor Day celebrations on May 1st. "The city authorities will act decisively, just as they have in years past, to impede those actions," said Serguéi Tsoy, a spokesman for Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. "The absolute majority in society rejects those demonstrations, as well as the gay lifestyle and philosophy," Luzhkov added, and warned that if homosexuals took to the streets they could be injured by attackers, according to Interfax. "Homosexuals intend to create disharmony to obstruct...

FORT WAYNE, INDIANA - Throughout her life, Linda Eggert, a 51-year-old stay-at-home mother, has been a staunch Republican. But on May 6, when the marathon Democratic primary comes to Indiana, Eggert will cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton. more stories like this * Obama making plans to attract voters and money for November * Obama, Clinton spend time in low-priority states * Poll: Obama, Clinton running tight race in Indiana poll * Pelosi: Clinton, Obama sharing the ticket not a good idea * Harvard Survey: Young voters favor Obama * "Everybody is kind of rethinking their politics because of everything...

MOSCOW, Russia – In the lead-up to Passover, the recently-opened 'Shaarei Tsedek' Charity Center is teeming with activity. "It was only just a month ago that we last got a call, telling us that we have the opportunity to pick up another care package," explained one the Center's beneficiaries contentedly. "These are really good packages. We each received one for Purim and thank G-d we got the call again". This holiday campaign aims to distribute 15,000 packages to Moscow Jews, each of which bears a special mark indicating that the food products are 'kosher for Passover'. All items have been...

AN ALLEGED attempt to kill a former Russian spy who defected to Britain was being investigated by police last night. Oleg Gordievsky was admitted to a hospital in Guildford after falling ill in November last year. And yesterday he claimed he had been poisoned with the highly toxic metal thallium in a botched assassination attempt. Gordievsky, a KGB double agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence during the 1980s, claims he was targeted by a Russian assassin who visited him at his safe house in Surrey. The 69-year-old was unconscious for 34 hours after falling ill last year and...

Rene Magritte, the celebrated Belgian surrealist painter, once painted an apple and wrote on it, "This is not an apple." He did the same on a pipe. Today, he could as well paint his country, Belgium, and certainly Kosovo, the youngest nation in the world, and write, "This is not a country." Belgium is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, with its majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and few German-speaking citizens unable to decide what and for whom the state stands for. Kosovo is a self-inflicted pain and the world will not be able to withstand it given the...

For decades, Soviet schoolchildren flocked to the Moscow Planetarium to gaze at the stars. Now plans to reopen the landmark silver-domed structure, shut for repairs 14 years ago, are mired in a struggle for control of an institution situated on a pricey patch of real estate. The conflict took a startling turn Wednesday when staffers say about 20 uniformed men forced their way onto the grounds, beat an unarmed employee and proclaimed that a new boss was in charge. It was a development that longtime director Igor Mikitasov described as a hostile takeover, Russian style. In the struggle for property...

Russian police have raided the Moscow offices of the oil giant BP and its joint venture TNK-BP. The searches have renewed fears that the Russian government wants greater control of foreign-owned energy assets. There is market speculation that the Kremlin would like the state-owned gas firm Gazprom to buy the stakes of BP's Russian partners in TNK-BP. Last year, TNK-BP was forced to sell its stake in the Kovykta gas field at a discount price to Gazprom. In 2006, Shell was forced to cede control of its Sakhalin gas field to Gazprom. "We will co-operate with the authorities but we...

Falling icicles kill sixTue Feb 26, 10:01 AM ET MOSCOW (Reuters) - Six people have been killed in three days by icicles falling from buildings in a central Russian region, ITAR-TASS news agency reported Tuesday. Plummeting chunks of ice is an annual hazard for pedestrians in Russia during the spring when the sun finally melts thick layers of ice and snow which build up on roofs over months of freezing temperatures and darkness. Medical authorities in the region of Samara told ITAR-TASS that five people died in the city of Samara and another person died in the nearby town of...

Russia has offered to host and finance events to mark Israel's 60th anniversary, but an official source in Jerusalem cautioned that there are no free lunches in Moscow. The source said the Kremlin's "embrace of Israel" would bring it political benefits. "There are no free lunches where the Russians are concerned. They are doing this to gain influence and they won't hesitate to pour money into the Israel anniversary events," the source said. A few days ago the minister in charge of the 60th anniversary celebrations, Ruhama Avraham Balila, met senior Russian officials in Moscow. Vyacheslav Nikonov, the executive director...

MOSCOW. Feb 18 (Interfax) - About 50 members of the Young Russia movement protested against the unilateral recognition of independent Kosovo near the Serbian embassy in Moscow on Sunday. The action started with a three-minute film about Kosovo. Then a girl in a black wig, black paint on her face and a sign reading Condoleezza Rice on her chest and back sawed chains off a 'Pandora's box' and let out a young man dressed as death. Ten people wearing military uniforms and American flags on their chests surrounded the duo. The 'death' stabbed Serbia on the globe with scythe...

MI6 plotted to murder Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in a staged car accident in a tunnel five years before Diana, Princess of Wales died in a similar crash, a renegade former spy has told the inquest into her death. Richard Tomlinson, who worked for MI6 in the early 1990s, told the High Court he had seen a two page document, drawn up in 1992, detailing three plans to kill Mr Milosevic. Diana inquest: MI6 plotted tunnel murder One plan was to use a strobe light to blind Mr Milosevic’s chauffeur The first involved using a Serb opposition paramilitary group, which...

Putin Threatens to Target Neighbors AP February 14, 2008 MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin on Thursday repeated his threat to aim Russian rockets at former Soviet satellite states if U.S. missile defense facilities are deployed there. Speaking about U.S. plans for interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic, Mr. Putin said that "our experts consider that this system threatens our national security and if it appears, we will be obligated to adequately react to this." "We are warning people ahead of time: if you take this step, then we will make this step," Mr. Putin told...

Putin holds final annual news conference of 8-year Russian presidency AP MOSCOW: Vladimir Putin extolled Russia's economic revival and staked a claim to a role in ruling the country for the foreseeable future as he responded to questions Thursday at the final annual Kremlin news conference of his eight-year presidency. Putin used the nationally televised marathon of more than 4 1/2 hours to burnish his image as a competent, caring president in control of a resurgent country with growing influence. He stressed that Russia wants good relations with the West, but will stand up to any perceived threat from the...

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 - The United States is worried that Russia, China and OPEC oil-producing countries could use their growing financial clout to advance political goals, the top U.S. spy chief told Congress on Tuesday. Such economic matters joined terrorism, nuclear proliferation and computer-network vulnerabilities as top U.S. security threats described by National Director of Intelligence Michael McConnell in an annual assessment.

IMAGE: Anna Loginova posed to prove she was a woman as well as a weaponRussia's most famous female bodyguard Anna Loginova has been killed after failing to prevent her own Porsche being carjacked. The glamorous 29-year-old died from head injuries after clinging on to the door handle and being dragged along the street at high speed as the car screeched away. "She suffered serious injuries and died at the scene," said a police spokesman. Police believe that she was killed in a random carjacking and was not the victim of an attack based on her work for wealthy high-profile Russian...

Gay Parade in Moscow planned for May 21:38 | 24/ 01/ 2008 MOSCOW, January 24 (RIA Novosti) - Gays rights activists plan to hold a march in central Moscow in May, their third attempt after previous parades were banned by the Moscow mayor, the event organizer said. "We expect this to be a political and public event, without outrage, but with specific demands," Nikolai Alexeyev said, speaking on the Ekho Moskvy radio station. Moscow authorities rejected official requests by Gay Parade organizers in 2006 and 2007 for permission to march, on the grounds that it would interfere with the rights...

Russian police are hunting a "werewolf boy" - who snarls and bites - after he escaped from a Moscow clinic just a day after being rescued from the wild. Doctors expressed shock saying he was found living with a pack of wolves in a remote forest in the Kaluga region of central Russia. The 'werewolf boy' has escaped from a Moscow clinic just a day after he was found. It is thought he was raised by wolves and his toenails are like claws"He's clearly dangerous to other people," said a police spokesman yesterday. "He's got typical wolf-like habits and behaviour....

Outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin will award the country's Badge of Honor to Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan, director of Moscow's Bronnaya Synagogue Agudas Chasidei Chabad, for helping to stop a knife-wielding assailant in a January 2006 attack at the synagogue, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. Student Yosef Kogan, the rabbi's son, will also receive an honor from Putin for wrestling 20-year-old Alexander Koptsev to the ground after he ran through the synagogue, attacking and injuring nine people. Tried in the Moscow City Court on charges of attempted murder and incitement of ethnic hatred, Koptsev was sentenced in September 2006...

North Korean workers attacked near Moscow 11:25 | 11/ 12/ 2007 MOSCOW, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - A group of North Korean workers were attacked by local residents in Volokolamsk, in the Moscow Region, a police spokesman said on Tuesday. Up to 30 local residents armed with baseball bats attacked the trailers housing the workers on Tuesday. As a result of the assault, four of the Koreans were hospitalized with injuries. A total of four locals were subsequently detained by police in connection with the attack. There are some 10,000 North Korean workers in Russia. The majority of them are...

The Rossijskaya Gazeta reports (in Russian, see translation below) that first Moslem medical center has been created in Moscow, Russia. In that center everything is done the Moslem way.

Today Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the Catholic archbishop in Moscow for the past 16 years, celebrated his last public Mass before his departure to Minsk, capital of Belarus. Report from Russia- by Dr. Robert MoynihanMOSCOW, Russia, October 28, 2007 -- His voice shaking with deep emotion, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz celebrated his last public Mass and delivered his last, dramatic homily this morning in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Moscow before leaving the Russian capital to take up his new and difficult assignment in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belorussia.  "I think he is one of the heroes of the...

An opposition politician running in Russian parliamentary elections was shot and seriously wounded on Wednesday as he entered his house in the southern Russian region of Dagestan... Farid Babayev, who will lead the regional list for the liberal anti-Kremlin Yabloko party was in a serious condition in hospital, RIA novosti news agency reported after an unidentified gunman fired on him in the regional capital Makhachkala. "The incident occurred at about 10 p.m., not far from his home. Farid Babayev is now in hospital in a serious condition," ... Dagestan is in the North Caucasus, next to Chechnya,

21 November 2007, 14:10 Russian Church may revise relations with WCC if liberal trends prevail - spokesman Moscow, November 21, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church might revise its relations with the World Council of Churches if liberal Protestant circles take the upper hand in that organization, the Moscow Patriarchate has said. "Everything will depend on how the World Council of Churches develops. At the present time, we see resolute steps against adopting documents which run counter to the Orthodox faith within the Council. The principle of gaining a consensus has been introduced for making the most important decisions," Moscow...

It appears that Israel's raid into Syrian territory in order to take out a nuclear facility, a chemical weapons depot, or a missile storage unit (depending on who you believe) also had one other side benefit; the raid exposed the brand new Russian air defense system bought by Syria and Iran to be useless against Israeli airplanes: Information coming out of Iran indicates that the military there is very dismayed at how ineffective new Russian anti-aircraft systems were during the Israeli September 6th air strike on a Syrian weapons development facility near the Iraqi border. Syria and Iran have both...

23 October 2007 Russian Church: Constantinople ruins talks with Catholics Moscow, October 22, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church representative to European institutions accused the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on Monday of seeking to establish itself as the top authority in the world's Orthodox communion and of ruining Orthodox-Roman Catholic dialogue. The representative, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, was referring to the 10th meeting of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. The delegation of the Moscow Patriarchate withdrew from the meeting, held in Ravenna, Italy, in protest against...

THE Kremlin said it may call a referendum on the closure of the Lenin mausoleum - where the mummified body of the father of the Russian Revolution once lay in honour. "It's obvious that having this necropolis in the centre of the country is a nonsense," Vladimir Kozhine, a Kremlin policy-maker said in the official Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper due to appear tomorrow. "But as for knowing whether it should be there or not, that's for others to decide and the best way for that is a referendum. "If 80 per cent of people say that Lenin's body should be buried,...

Nothing but an announcement on Fox at this time.

Russian Court Upholds Moscow Ban on Gay Pride Parade By Peter J. Smith MOSCOW, September 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Russian Court has vindicated the city of Moscow's decision to ban Gay Pride parades. On Tuesday Moscow's Tverskoi District Court rejected the protest filed by Pride organiser Nikolai Alekseev ruling that the ban enforced by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and city authorities was legal under Russian law and justifiable over security concerns. Aleckseev and approximately 100 other homosexual activists including Marco Cappato, an Italian member of the EU parliament, and German MEP Volker Beck, had gathered before City Hall to protest...

Road to MoscowBill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow By Fedora SummaryDuring the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton’s student protests and Moscow trip generated much controversy, but few answers. While Clinton’s government files from that era seemingly remain unavailable even today, there is at least more information available than in 1992. The public record reveals that Clinton’s social network and views on Vietnam were influenced by a pattern of contact between Communist agents and sympathizers and Clinton’s academic and political associates. This pattern is documented here through an analysis of Clinton’s antiwar activity up through the time he left Oxford...

Associated Press MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) - The sheriff of a north-central Idaho county where a shooting rampage left four dead and three wounded last May wants more people to obtain concealed weapons permits and carry guns, including on the University of Idaho campus, to improve public safety. "In my opinion, if there were more students with (concealed weapons permits), the world would be safer," Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch told the Lewiston Tribune on Tuesday. "Just because we (law enforcement officers) are charged with protecting the public, doesn't mean the public shouldn't be able to protect itself." The university bans...

Wayne Rausch says Moscow - not to mention UI campus - would be safer places if more qualified people were packing MOSCOW - With 540 persons carrying concealed weapons permits in Latah County, Sheriff Wayne Rausch said Tuesday he wouldn't mind if more applied and qualified to carry guns. That includes on the campus of the University of Idaho. "In my opinion, if there were more students with CPWs, the world would be safer," Rausch said. He pointed out virtually anyone can carry a weapon in plain sight. People who seek concealed weapons permits, the sheriff said, are rarely a...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A crocodile survived a fall from the 12th floor of a block of flats in Russia after making an escape bid through a window, emergency services said on Wednesday. Diving out of the window has become a habit for the crocodile, called Khenar, with concerned neighbours saying it was the third time he had used that method to flee, Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported. The crocodile lost one tooth in the latest fall but was otherwise unscathed, said a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry in the Nizhny Novgorod region of central Russia. "It seems the owner was not...

Russia deploys most advanced S-400 missiles around Moscow Moscow, Aug 6 : Russia today deployed the most advanced S-400 air missile defence system, in the town of Elektrostal, about 50 km east of Moscow. The ceremony in Elektrostal was attended by Russian Air Force coammander Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin and Almaz Research and Production Association general director Igor Ashurbeili. With the deployment of the first battalion, a division of S-400 Triumph and a command post will protect the air of Moscow and its region. The units with S-400 (NATO version SA-21 Growler) and machinery arrived at the place of permanent dislocation...

A famous urban climber Alain Robert, aka Spiderman, who has “conquered” the Eiffel’s Tower, Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and Empire State Building, is coming to Moscow to climb the highest building in Europe – the Federation Tower.

A famous urban climber Alain Robert, aka Spiderman, who has “conquered” the Eiffel’s Tower, Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and Empire State Building, is coming to Moscow to climb the highest building in Europe – the Federation Tower.