Section: Free Malaysia Today (Malaysia)
Coca-Cola blames ad agency for map showing Crimea as part of Russia
KIEV: U.S. drinks firm Coca-Cola on Wednesday blamed a marketing agency for a map used in an online advertising campaign that showed Crimea to be part of Russia and which drew protests and threats of a boycott from angry Ukrainians. Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014, leading to condemnation from Western governments which...
Dutch expert says vindicated by probe into MH17 photos
THE HAGUE: A Dutch forensics expert who worked on the MH17 air disaster demanded a ministerial apology Tuesday saying a police probe has cleared him of any wrong-doing in showing medical students photos of the dead. University professor George Maat was reportedly fired from the Dutch national forensics team after he gave a lecture in Maastricht...
Ukraine utility cyber attack wider than reported
KIEV: A central European security software firm said on Monday that a cyber attack last month in Ukraine was broader than initially reported last week when the nation’s secret police blamed a power outage on Russia. Western Ukraine power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported an outage on Dec. 23, saying the area affected included regional...
Pentagon: ‘No reason’ for Russia to view US as threat
WASHINGTON: Russia has no reason to consider the United States a threat to its national security, the Pentagon said Monday after Moscow published a report highlighting Washington and NATO for the first time. Russia’s new national security document, signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year’s Eve, names as threats both the United...
Japan PM Abe approaches Russia for peace deal, anti-terrorism
TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe courted Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, holding out the prospect for a summit as he renewed his call for progress on an elusive World War II peace treaty. The two countries have never officially struck a peace accord more than after 70 years after the end of the conflict amid a territorial...
MH17: Dutch investigators to study citizen journalism probe
THE HAGUE: Dutch prosecutors said Sunday they would “seriously study” claims by citizen journalists to have identified Russian soldiers implicated in the crash of flight MH17, shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014. The claims are made by a British-based group of “citizen investigative journalists” called Bellingcat, which specialises in...
Crimea official says Ukraine has cut off power again, Interfax reports
MOSCOW: A Crimean official said on Thursday that Ukraine had cut off a major source of electrical power to the region, a month after saboteurs first plunged the Russian-annexed peninsula into darkness. Kirill Moskalenko, a spokesman of the governor of Sevastopol city, said Ukraine has cut off the Kakhovka–Titan line to Crimea. “The line has...
Merkel takes centre stage in EU’s year of crises
BERLIN: In a year of crises for Europe, from the Ukraine war to Greece’s debt turmoil to the historic refugee influx, Germany’s Angela Merkel emerged as the continent’s de facto leader, drawing more praise and fire than ever. Whether spearheading EU diplomacy with Moscow, bargaining with Athens over tough bail-out terms or...
Putin: ‘We don’t want the USSR back but no one believes us’
MOSCOW: Russia is not trying to bring back the USSR, President Vladimir Putin said in a documentary aired Sunday, but the problem is that “nobody wants to believe it”. Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, which saw pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych ousted by pro-European demonstrators, Moscow has accused the West of using “the politics...
Putin: Russian secret services foiled 30 planned attacks in 2015
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday hailed the country’s secret services for foiling around 30 planned attacks and uncovering more than 320 foreign spies in 2015. “I want to point out that this year, thanks to the efforts of the FSB employees, more than 30 crimes of a terrorist nature have been prevented,” said Putin in a...
