| February 2012 |
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“I really like this guy, but I couldn't possibly vote for him because he's a single at his age, it's just so suspicious!”
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I’m no expert of course, but security at the Tehran nuclear reactor where I spent last Valentine’s Day seemed a touch on the lax side. Aside from a metal detector and a poster of the late Ayatollah Khomenei, there didn’t really seem to be much else safeguarding the facility ahead of what promised to be a milestone event for Iran’s disputed atomic program.
Even though Whitney Houston’s sad demise at the age of 48 was no great shock, the Russian reaction to the news still managed to surprise me.
With the world currently rocked by political unrest and open rebellion, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan on his resounding victory in last week’s elections. Apparently he won 97% of the vote!
The presidential election is still two weeks away and the inauguration of the next president more than two months off, but we can already analyze the results of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency.
Russia’s groundbreaking achievement in the realm of elections is the idea of presidential candidates’ debates conducted not by the candidates themselves but by their representatives. This is the result of the race’s favorite decision. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin decided not to take part in the debates.
I remember as a child learning how to draw pictures and color in shapes. I have to confess I was anything but a gifted artist. When it came to drawing, I was hopeless except when I was drawing a dot-to-dot picture. A dot-to-dot picture was one where you draw starting at number one and connect the dots in ascending numerical order.
“Salam!” from Tehran, where I’m writing this week’s column. Iranian officials say I’m the first British journalist here since the U.K. embassy was stormed last November. They didn’t give me a badge or anything though, but I have had some fairly quizzical looks.
When he heard about this, Russia’s former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov tweeted bitterly: “Khodorkovsky and I suggested this. His reaction: I was sacked, Khodorkovsky sent jail.” But will Vladimir Putin try to heal one of the deepest wounds of the post-Soviet Russian psyche?
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Learn English! It will lead to better employment opportunities! It will aid you on your travels! It will help you appreciate works of art and countless internet memes! It will make your teeth straighter and your butt firmer!
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There has been an uptick in anti-American sentiment in the Russian blogosphere recently. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that the failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission – far from the only Russian space mishap in recent years – could have been caused by emissions from an American radar station. The response was powerful – we knew they were to blame!
Whenever something major happens in Russia, I wish it were a lot easier to get over there and witness conditions on the ground. For instance when Boris Yeltsin died, I really wanted to visit his corpse as it lay in state in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to see for myself how people were reacting to this man who had caused so much chaos in his 8-year rule.
Are men hunters no more? Is it up to women nowadays to make the first move?
Russia’s chief doctor was right. Going to a protest rally in near-Arctic like conditions is bad for your health. Especially if you were already ill. As I was when I joined some 120,000 people on Saturday at an anti-Putin march that ended up within shouting distance from the Kremlin.
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Following recent street protests in Russia, international attention has been focused on the country’s political scene.
The bitter cold that has gripped the European part of Russia these last few weeks is certainly a case for concern as people come out for political rallies but there is another group of people who don’t get as much press, yet their lives literally hang in the balance when the weather gets extreme.
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Those who hoped that the IAEA visit to Iran would open the door to resuming talks on Tehran’s nuclear programs must be disappointed. Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency spent three days in Iran, whose news agency published only a few short notices about their visit.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili finally got what he couldn’t get for several years: an official visit to the White House.
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Whether there were eight or fourteen thousand of them (figures differ even in official reports), the massive rally held in Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals region, in support of “stability” (read – PM Vladimir Putin) was an impressive affair, especially by Russia's provincial standards.
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