The appearance of a powerful military bloc on the
Russian borders will be seen as a direct threat to Russia’s security,
Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters today following a
NATO-Russia Council meeting. He said Moscow could not be satisfied with
statements that the deployment of a missile defense shield near
Russia’s border was not aimed against Russia.
Putin said there were serious tensions in Russia’s
relations with NATO, including over the alliance’s continuing eastward
expansion, the creation of military infrastructure on the territory of
NATO's new member states, problems with the Treaty on Conventional
Forces in Europe (CFE), the issue of Kosovo and Washington’s plans to
deploy its missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.
Royal DutchShell Plc, Europe's largest oil company by market value, plans to expand the capacity of its liquefied natural gas import terminal in India
to 3.5 million tons. The expansion will cost "less than $100 million,"
Vikram Singh Mehta, chairman of Shell India Ltd., told reporters in New
Delhi Friday. The unit imports 2.5 million tons a year. Capacity expansion at the...
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - A private firm funded by Google Inc
launched its Web-based DNA test in Europe on Tuesday, hoping to build
on a successful start in the United States, where the $999 service went
on sale in November.
Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki, co-founders of
23andMe, will showcase their service at the annual meeting of the World
Economic Forum in Davos, which starts on January 23.
Charles Spencer was in Cape Town with his four young children
when he learnt his sister had been in a car crash in Paris. A few
sleepless hours later, he got a phone call confirming the worst. He
braced himself to deliver the news to his children.
"I said, 'I've got some dreadful news'," Spencer recounts. "
'I'm afraid Aunt Diana's been killed.' They looked at me,
absolutely incredulous, and then Eliza, who's the elder of my
twins, said, 'But not in real life, Daddy?' "
The reaction of Eliza Spencer, then 5, was the same as many upon
hearing reports that the Princess of Wales was dead. It didn't
quite feel like real life.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia
will challenge Europe and the United States in aerospace as the country
rebuilds an industry that once rolled out a quarter of the world's
commercial aircraft fleet.
Russia "has new economic possibilities" to
gain a greater share of the global market for civilian passenger and
transport airplanes and "keep its leadership in producing combat
aircraft," Putin said at the opening of the Moscow Air Show. More than
780 domestic and foreign producers from 110 countries are participating
in the biennial event, Putin said yesterday at the once-secret Zhukov
airfield near the Russian capital.
Russia, the biggest arms
supplier to developing countries, plans to manufacture and sell 4,500
civilian and military planes worth US$250 billion (HK$1.95 trillion)
over the next 18 years, Alexey Fyodorov, chief executive of Unified
Aircraft Corp, said last week. By 2025, annual output will reach 300
airliners, 100 transport planes and more than 100 combat aircraft.
Nicolas Sarkozy
said that he would make the French work harder, starting with his own
government. True to his words, he has lopped 10 days off the
traditionally somnolent month of August and begun the political
"rentrée" almost two weeks early.
While half of France still lay on the beaches of the Med, and the rest
of the country dodged showers in Brittany or the south-west, Sarkozy
was back behind his desk at the Elysée Palace yesterday. The
"Omnipresident", aka the "Tsarkozy", called three ministerial meetings
on his first day in the office. Two of them were emergency meetings.
One was merely urgent,
BAGHDAD - As French President Nicolas Sarkozy was returning home
from a two-week holiday in the United States, his Foreign Minister was
arriving in Baghdad.
If Sarkozy's American vacation, with its
boat ride with US President George W. Bush, was an indication of a new
direction for French-American relations, Bernard Kouchner's trip to
Iraq signalled a new French approach to US foreign policy.
Kouchner
is the first top French official to visit Iraq since the beginning of
the US-led war in 2003, which France vigorously opposed, causing a
bitter division between the countries.
Turkey's new parliament, divided along party lines, could not elect a president Monday, as frontrunner Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul failed to secure the two-thirds majority needed in a first round of voting. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has failed
to win enough support to be elected president in the first round of
voting in Turkey's parliament.
Mr. Gul, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AK
party, received 341 votes in parliament Monday, short of the 387 needed
for the two-thirds majority required for a first-round election.
The appearance of a powerful military bloc on the
Russian borders will be seen as a direct threat to Russia’s security,
Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters today following a
NATO-Russia Council meeting. He said Moscow could not be satisfied with
statements that the deployment of a missile defense shield near
Russia’s border was not aimed against Russia.
Charles Spencer was in Cape Town with his four young children
when he learnt his sister had been in a car crash in Paris. A few
sleepless hours later, he got a phone call confirming the worst. He
braced himself to deliver the news to his children.
