RTFA: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/world/europe/11g…

TBILISI, Georgia - Russia expanded its attacks on Georgia on Sunday, moving tanks and troops through the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and advancing toward the city of Gori in central Georgia, in its first direct assault on a Georgian city with ground forces during three days of heavy fighting, Georgian officials said.

The maneuver - along with bombing of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi - seemed to suggest that Russia’s aims in the conflict had gone beyond securing the pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to weakening the armed forces of Georgia, a former Soviet republic and an ally of the United States whose Western leanings have long irritated the Kremlin.

Russia’s moves, which came after Georgia offered a cease-fire and said it had pulled its troops out of South Ossetia, caused widespread international alarm and anger and set the stage for an intense diplomatic confrontation with the United States.

Two senior Western officials said that it was unclear whether Russia intended a full invasion of Georgia, but that its aims could go as far as destroying its armed forces or overthrowing Georgia’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

just saying, is all…

RTFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Medvedev

the President of Russia, inaugurated on May 7, 2008. He won the presidential election held on March 2, 2008 with about 70% of the vote.

Medvedev was appointed first deputy prime minister of the Russian government on November 14, 2005. Formerly Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, he was also the Chairman of Gazprom’s board of directors, a post he has held (for the second time) since 2000. On December 10, 2007, he was informally endorsed as a candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections by the largest Russian political party, United Russia, and officially endorsed on December 17, 2007. Medvedev’s candidacy was supported by former President Vladimir Putin and pro-presidential parties.[3] A technocrat and political appointee, Medvedev had never held elective office before 2008.

Meet the new Russian president. Don’t worry. Putin is still overlord.

RTFA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic…

Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster and relentless critic of President Vladimir Putin, has ended his long-shot presidential bid, citing official harassment he said prevented him from holding a legally required nomination meeting.

“There is no choice in Russia,” Kasparov said, speaking to reporters Thursday in a town about 60 miles south of Moscow where he attended the funeral of a supporter who died after allegedly being beaten by police at an opposition rally. “March 2 will just be the calendar date when the victor of the Kremlin power struggle is declared.”

Kasparov said his supporters were unable to rent a large hall in Moscow to hold a convention to nominate him — either because landlords were afraid of being associated with him or because they were directly threatened by the authorities.

RTFA: http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/09/26/1015…

Moscow: An experiment that envisaged sending a parcel from space to Earth on a 30-kilometre tether fell short of its goal yesterday when the long fibre rope did not fully unwind, Russian Mission Control said.
The YES2 experiment was prepared by almost 500 students from all over Europe and put on board the Russian Foton-M3 unmanned spacecraft, which also carried other European Space Agency experiments.
It was intended to deliver a spherical capsule, called Fotino, attached to the end of the tether back to Earth - a relatively simple and cheap technology that could be used in the future to retrieve bulkier cargoes from space.
The tether was to be deployed from the spacecraft and gradually unwound, putting the capsule into a lower orbit and swinging to provide momentum, before the re-entry capsule was released.
The capsule was to glide through the atmosphere for some 20 minutes and then a parachute was to be deployed.

Wild space launch.

RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070926/wl_nm/russia_g…

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned Russians on Wednesday of the risk of a rebirth of Stalinism, saying their country was in danger of forgetting its tragic past.

“We should remember those who suffered, because this a lesson for all of us,” Gorbachev told a conference marking 70 years since the start of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s Great Terror.

“We must squeeze Stalinism out of ourselves, not in single drops but by the glass or bucket,” Gorbachev added. “There are those saying Stalin’s rule was the Golden Age, while (Nikita) Khrushchev’s thaw was sheer utopia and (Leonid) Brezhnev’s neo-Stalinism was the continuation of the Golden Age.”

During the Great Terror, 1.7 million Soviet citizens were arrested between August 1937 and November 1938, of whom 818,000 were executed, the human rights group Memorial said.

Historians estimate that up to 13 million people were killed or sent to labor camps in the former Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953, the year Stalin died.

Despite Stalin’s record, recent polls have shown many young Russians have a positive view of the former Soviet leader and there have been attempts this year to play down his excesses, which have found an echo among the country’s youth.

Fifty-four percent of Russian youth believe that Stalin did more good than bad and half said he was a wise leader

RTFA: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMYTC13J6F_index_1.html

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.

RTFA: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-09-11-russ…

Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the “dad of all bombs” is four times more powerful than the U.S. “mother of all bombs.”
“The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability,” said Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, said in televised remarks.
Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn’t hurt the environment, he added.

The statement reflected the Kremlin’s efforts to restore Russia’s global clout and rebuild the nation’s military might while the ties with Washington have been strained over U.S. criticism of Russia’s backsliding on democracy, Moscow’s vociferous protests of U.S. missile defense plans, and rifts over global crises.
The U.S. Massive Ordnance Air Blast, nicknamed the Mother Of All Bombs, is a large-yield satellite-guided, air-delivered bomb described as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in history.

maintain… must not forget cold war… must maintain supremacy in bomb title over the reds…