reuters post comment Burca Alice Larisa

oh this is spectacular!the title is tres formidable!Parfait! go reuters!
but i think it\’s a combination betwen absance of money for defence budget and the eatrhquake for Siberia, or maybe becuse he is afected by global warming!that\’s why they warm up so quickly!and chill with the same speed!i swo in georgia now the clasical type of war, it was like seeing a good movie from the second world war!:))))), poor army,poor strategy, agresive type, nothing really prossional, it\’s so obvies that they are not ready for war and they do not have the enought exercise.Maybe in ten yars, or so?!somebody should watch pravda newspaper online edition, the english version , to see the clasic manipulation thru propaganda, the russian people do not have knowledge of international languages!
again all the respect for reuters global news today with this title

“August Syndrome” strikes new Kremlin chief

“April is the cruellest month” wrote T.S. Eliot, but had “The Waste Land” been written by a modern Russian poet, August would have won the title hands down.

”He kind off looks ill i think is the defence absance of money problem and also the summer earthquake from siberia” by BAL

Over the past two decades, coups, wars, floods, economic collapse and air disasters have blighted the eighth month of the year, when government and business largely shut down for the long school summer holidays, fixing the “August Syndrome” in the popular psyche.

Like his predecessor Vladimir Putin, the syndrome has bitten President Dmitry Medvedev in his first year in office with the war over Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia.

He sent in Russian tanks and troops this month to crush Georgia’s attempt to retake the province and recognised the pro-Moscow region and another secessionist province as independent states on Tuesday, sparking a major crisis in relations with the West.

But the syndrome itself dates back to August 1991, when Communist hardliners tried to depose Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in a botched putsch which set the pattern for much of the ensuing post-Soviet period.

In August 1993 Gorbachev’s successor in the Kremlin, Boris Yeltsin, locked horns with the Soviet-era parliament, a showdown that saw him dissolve the legislature the following month and eventually shell deputies into submission with tanks.

In August of 1996, separatists in Chechnya took the capital Grozny by storm from Russian troops, a humiliation which resulted in a truce that gave the rebel province de facto independence.

Two years later, a combined domestic debt default and effective rouble devaluation in August ripped the heart out of Russia’s financial system and led to a prolonged economic crisis.

Insurgents attacked the southern Russian republic of Dagestan from neighbouring Chechnya in August of 1999, leading to a Russian clampdown in the separatist republic that heralded the start of the second Chechen war which saw Moscow eventually reimpose its rule.

Putin fell victim to the syndrome in his first year as president and was roundly criticised for his slow response to the August 2000 sinking of a Russian nuclear submarine with all 118 crew.

Fate gave Russia a break in 2001, only to come back with a vengence 12 months later. August floods in the southern Novorossiik region killed 60 people, a gas leak destroyed a Moscow block of flats, killing nine more, and 90 soldiers died when their helicopter transporter was apparently shot down by Chechen militants.

In the same month the following year, 20 people, most of them local officials, died in the Far East region of Sakhalin in a plane crash and two air disasters in August 2004 left 90 people dead.

This extraordinary litany of summer disasters would have sorely tested any nation and perhaps it says something about this enormous country, spread over 11 time zones, that it can absorb these body blows. Perhaps the fact that this unhappy sequence of events has a name, somehow helps…

reuters global news

this is spectacular!it’s must have of reuters blogs!:)))))))

By Burca Alice Larisa

27 August/août 2008

COMMUNIQUE PR/CP(2008)108

NAC Statement on the Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia

The North Atlantic Council condemns the decision of the Russian Federation to extend recognition to the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia and calls upon Russia to reverse its decision. Russia’s decision violates the many UN Security Council resolutions it has endorsed regarding Georgia’s territorial integrity, and is inconsistent with the fundamental OSCE principles on which stability in Europe is based. Russia’s actions have called into question its commitment to peace and security in the Caucasus. Georgia’s recovery, security and stability are important to the Alliance. NATO calls on Russia to respect Georgia’s territorial integrity and to fulfill its commitments under the six-principle agreement signed by President Saakashvili and President Medvedev.

NATO Press Release (2008)110

28 August 2008

NATO ships in Black Sea on routine visit, unrelated to Georgia crisis

The Standing NATO Maritime Group One (SNMG1), a group of NATO warships, conducts routine port visits and exercises with NATO member nations bordering the Black Sea since 21 August.

This deployment is routine in nature and has been planned for over a year, notification of the requirement to transit the Turkish Straits was given in June well before the current Georgia crisis and is completely unrelated. In accordance with the terms of the Montreux Convention, the ships will stay no longer than 21 days in the Black Sea.

SNMG 1 currently comprises the Spanish SPS Adm Juan de Bourbon, the German, FGS Luebeck and the Polish, ORP General K Pulaski and the US frigate, USS Taylor.

A fifth member of SNMG1, the Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec, was recently detached from the group to escort World Food Programme shipping off the coast of Somalia under Canadian national authority.

The ships are currently in Constanta, Romania and will conduct exercises with Bulgarian and Romanian ships as well as paying a port visit to Varna, Bulgaria before leaving the Black Sea.

SNMG 1 is one of NATO’s standing elements, a group of member nations’ frigates and destroyers, who exercise together year round to promote interoperability.

Vice-Admiral Pim Bedet, Deputy Commander Allied Maritime Component Command Headquarters Northwood stated “SNMG1, as a standing core element of the NATO Response Force, is conducting a pre-planned routine visit to the Black Sea region to interact and exercise with our NATO partners Romania and Bulgaria, which is an important feature of our routine planning in order to maintain high levels of interoperability and cohesion within the Alliance.”

Analysis: Russian budget suffers corrosive effects of inflation

Soaring oil prices have enriched Russia and seemingly allowed the Kremlin to raise defence spending to a post-Cold War high, with official expenditure on course to break RUR1 trillion (USD42 billion) in 2009.

But dig below the surface of the official figures and it quickly becomes apparent that this spending bonanza is far from the full story. In fact, Russia’s inability to control its oil and credit-fuelled inflationary problems has seen defence spending growth falter in real terms.

Comparing Russia’s inflation-adjusted defence budget growth to nominal figures demonstrates the problem. From the accession of Vladimir Putin as president in 2000, the budget increased substantially in real terms from RUR201 billion to RUR322 billion in 2006, marking a rise of 60 per cent, but since then growth has slowed. 2006 was in fact the peak year and real-terms budgets are not programmed to exceed it again until 2010 at the earliest.

This is primarily because high levels of inflation in the Russian economy have eroded the real-terms buying power of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). According to GDP inflation data published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Russian government has been consistently unable to control price rises in recent years.

Although 2004 and 2005 saw the highest inflation with rates of 20 per cent annually, since 2004 energy prices have soared even further, enriching Russia, but at the same time further feeding inflationary pressures. This resulted in annual GDP inflation of 17.5 per cent in 2006 and 13.5 per cent in 2007. By the end of 2008, the IMF estimates inflation will have risen again to more than 16.5 per cent. This is substantially higher than CPI inflation reported by the OECD, which peaked in 2001 and currently sits at about 10 per cent.

http://www.janes.com/news/defence/triservice/jdi/jdi080811_1_n.shtml

Afghanistan seeks funding to increase army strength

The Afghanistan government has requested funds to increase the size of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to 120,000 by 2013.

A US Department of Defense (DoD) spokesman announced on 8 August that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was backing the plan, which is yet to be officially approved. The ANA’s expansion would cost an estimated USD17 billion, he said, although that figure also takes into account the financing of ANA operations over the next five years and investment in the Afghan Air Corps.

The spokesman added that the US would seek to share the cost of building up the ANA with other NATO allies.

In April Afghan government representatives attending the NATO summit in Bucharest lobbied hard for the ANA’s strength to be increased to 120,000. The ANA currently has around 65,000 troops and is on course to reach 86,000 – its original mandated strength – in 2009.

According to David Livingstone, associate fellow of the international security programme at Chatham House, investing in the ANA is the right thing to do so long as it results in NATO forces “going back into barracks” and translates into “a reduction of US forces on the ground”.

Taking foreign troops out of the equation at the earliest sensible opportunity is key to restoring security, he said, while acknowledging that NATO forces would have to “continue to sit on the ANA’s shoulder” at least in the medium term.

Image: Afghan National Army soldiers will increase in number to 120,000 over the next five years

http://www.janes.com/news/defence/jdw/jdw080813_1_n.shtml

WHO study backs universal health care

Major inequalities in health and life expectancy persist worldwide, according to an independent World Health Organization commission which on Thursday called for all countries to offer universal health care.

Huge discrepancies also exist within countries, including Scotland where a boy born in the poor Glasgow suburb of Calton can expect to live to 54, 28 years less than one born in affluent Lenzie, just across town, it said.

“The health inequities we see in the world are absolutely dramatic in their scale,” Michael Marmot, a WHO health researcher, who chaired the commission, told reporters.

“Between countries we have life expectancy differences of more than 40 years. A woman in Botswana can expect to live 43 years, in Japan 86 years.”

The Commission on Social Determinants of Health, composed of 19 independent experts, handed over its three-year study to the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency.

“Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale,” it declared.

Marmot, head of the epidemiology and public health department at University College London, said the report recommended universal health care systems should be available to people regardless of their ability to pay.

“Virtually all advanced countries have universal health care systems but we don’t think that should be limited to high-income countries,” he added.

reuters news

Russia faces diplomatic isolation on Georgia

Russia faced diplomatic isolation over its military action against Georgia on Thursday, with its Asian allies failing to offer support and France saying EU leaders were considering sanctions.

Moscow accused the West of heightening tension by a naval build-up in the Black Sea, and said talk of punishing Russia for recognizing the independence of two breakaway Georgian regions was the product of a “sick” and “confused” imagination.

Russia’s powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a CNN interview he suspected someone in the United States provoked the Georgia conflict to make the situation more tense and create “a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of U.S. president.” He did not elaborate.

Moscow has defied pressure from the United States and European powers to pull out of Georgia and looked east to its Asian allies, including China, for support at a regional summit.

The grouping, meeting in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, repeated a regular call for the “respect of territorial integrity” and did not follow Russia’s lead on recognizing the two breakaway regions of Georgia.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Russia’s closest ex-Soviet ally, said the Kremlin “had no other moral choice but to” recognize the Georgian regions. His ambassador to Moscow said recognition could come soon, Russian agencies reported.

The crisis flared early this month when Georgian forces tried to retake the separatist province of South Ossetia and Russia launched an overwhelming counter-attack.

Russian forces swept the Georgian army out of the rebel region and are still occupying some areas of Georgia proper. On Tuesday Moscow announced that it was recognizing South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent states.

reuters news

Mankind may die under billions of tons of its own garbage

The government of Mexico decided to close the largest landfill in Latin America, Bordo Poniente, located not far from the capital of the country. The landfill is set to be closed in January 2009.

	Mankind may die under billions of tons of its own garbage

The garbage range taking about 1,000 hectares of land became a target for local environment activists long ago. The liquidation of the landfill will mark the end of their long-standing struggle.

No one in the world knows what should be done with tens of thousands of tons of garbage, which appear every day. If mankind does not find a revolutionary method to process its own garbage, the consequences will follow during the upcoming several years.

Not less than 60 million tons of household garbage have been dumped on Bordo Poniente during 13 years of its existence. The giant landfill comes second after the infamous Plastic Soup in the Pacific Ocean – the floating dump of up to 100 million tons of rubbish which takes about one million of square kilometers.

Ecologists say that the Mexican landfill shows an immense influence on the environment. It goes about subsidence first and foremost – the hole depth may reach 13 meters in some places. As a result, liquid products of decomposition penetrate into subterranean waters, making them absolutely unusable.

Such landfills are dangerous for several reasons. They poison ground waters and create hotbeds of decay, where methane often triggers massive fires which are very hard to extinguish.

The poisonous smoke emitted as a result of the open combustion of garbage produces a very harmful influence on people’s health. To make matters worse, landfills generate hundreds of extremely dangerous germs.

The international community does not have a clue to solving the recycling problem. The majority of people, who produce dozens of kilograms of garbage a day, sincerely believe that their garbage disappears itself immediately after they throw a garbage bag in a can.

An average person produces not less than 350 kilos of garbage a year. Ten percent of this amount will be burnt, eighty percent will be buried, and the remaining ten percent will be left on the ground surface. Mankind throws out up to 2.1 trillion tons of garbage a year. This figure continues to grow every year.

Specialists say that the garbage problem is as serious as the problem of the global warming or nuclear weapons.

The supervisor of the toxic program of Greenpeace in Russia, Aleksey Kiselev, said that the problem with garbage is very serious in Russia.

“Up to 97 percent of garbage is buried, and three percent is burnt. This approach is wrong, to put it mildly. Russia has both technological opportunities and financial means to solve the problems of recycling. Russian politicians need to realize the importance of this problem to give it a go,” he told RBC Daily.

pravda.ru

I give a 10 to pravda.ru for this article,i would like to see more info of this type and intrest.

By Burca Alice Larisa

Lebanon urges for more cultural ties with IRI

07:45:52 �.� Lebanese Culture Minister on Monday stressed need for broadening and strengthening cultural cooperation between his country and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tamam Salam proposed the matter in a meeting with the Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Beirut, Mojtaba Ferdowsipur. Iran’s Cultural Attache in Lebanon is sponsor of various levels of Persian language and Iranology courses, literary and poetry nights, publication and distribution of books and periodicals, translation and publication of selected Iranian books in Arabic language, holding exhibitions on various occasions, exchange of university students and professors, and some other cultural activities aimed at boosting cultural ties.