Section: Newsweek (USA)
Russians Await Putin’s Response to Economic Crisis
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A prominent opponent has warned Vladimir Putin his days in power are numbered, as Russia awaits the president’s response to the dramatic decline of the rouble. Putin has been silent as the currency collapsed against the U.S. dollar this week before making up some of the lost ground on Wednesday, but he is sure to be...
A Plastic Christmas for Crimea
First the Russians took over Crimea; now the Russian-imposed leaders are taking over Christmas. The government of Crimea has prohibited citizens from selling Christmas trees felled in the region. While this may come off quite Grinch-like, authorities are simply too concerned about the damage to nature to allow real trees for Christmas this year....
British Soldiers Accused of Torture and Abuse During Iraq Occupation
In a suite of rooms in a ‘safe house’ in a city in southeastern Europe, investigators employed by the British government have been interviewing a stream of Iraqi civilians for the past 18 months. The questioners are members of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) and the men and women they are seeing are victims or witnesses of alleged...
Russia Invites Kim Jong-Un for May Visit
Russia has invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to attend a May ceremony marking the end of World War Two, in what would be Kim’s first foreign visit since taking the helm of the reclusive state in 2011, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily said on Wednesday. Kim would probably meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, as North Korea backs...
Russia Hints at U.S. Effort to Avoid a U.N. Showdown Over a Palestinian State
A top Russian diplomat said on Tuesday that the United States is preparing a resolution at the United Nations Security Council that it hopes will avert an immediate diplomatic showdown over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and restart the peace process. “We have the U.S. text at our disposal,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Gennady Gatilov,...
What People Are Searching For, According to Google
Every December, as one year is about to give way to the next, Google reveals what we’ve searched for the most in the past 12 months. On Tuesday, the company published its 2014 Year in Search, formerly called Zeitgeist. The data tracks what Internet users have typed into the empty rectangle on Google’s search engine—which as of October...
Ukraine Bans NYE Fireworks Out of Respect for Those Affected by Crisis
Authorities in Ukraine’s capital city Kiev announced there will be no fireworks display for the city’s New Year’s celebrations this year, in honour of those affected by the crisis in the country’s east, where fighting between pro-Russian rebels and government forces has killed nearly 5,000 people in the last year. Kiev...
Putin Orders Snap Military Drills on NATO Border
Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered snap military drills for Russian armed forces in the Baltic region to test Russia’s “battle-readiness”, a ministry of defence spokesperson told Russian news agency Interfax today. “A self-sufficient, multi-purpose army of air, sea and land units was assembled in the period of less than a day in the...
Court Orders Autopsy on German Lawmaker Who Criticized Russia
A German court has ordered an autopsy on a conservative member of parliament who was a prominent critic of Russia’s Vladimir Putin in order to rule out any link between his death and his hardline stance toward the Kremlin, state prosecutors said. Andreas Schockenhoff, a deputy parliamentary floor leader for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s...
Cheap Oil Puts Russia’s Economy in Tailspin
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in Vienna at the end of November, at the most recent OPEC meeting, when Russia’s Igor Sechin—the chief executive of Rosneft (Russia’s largest oil producer), former KGB apparatchik and all-around best crony of President Vladimir Putin—met with Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi. Neither,...
