U.S. Vice President Joe Biden travels to Georgia and Ukraine next week, Reuters reports. He will reassure the two U.S. allies that the Obama administration has not abandoned them in its efforts to “reset” ties with Russia.
Posts Tagged ‘Ukraine’
Jim Selman: California Rising
July 17th, 2009 |
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In many ways, California has always been an ‘early adapter’ in terms of social and technological trends. It has also been early in having its share of the problems we are now facing everywhere.
Iran plane black boxes ‘damaged’
July 15th, 2009 |
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Damaged black boxes have been recovered from a Caspian Airlines plane that crashed in north Iran with the loss of all 168 people on board, say officials.
Investigators who scoured scattered body parts and metal fragments for the data recorders hope they will salvage a clue as to the cause of the crash.
The wreckage was spread over a large area of farmland in Qazvin province, 120km (75 miles) north-west of Tehran.
The Tupolev plane was flying from the Iranian capital to Yerevan in Armenia.
In pictures: Iran plane crash
Witnesses said the 22-year-old Russian-made aircraft, which had 153 passengers and 15 crew, nose-dived from the sky with its tail on fire.
Flight 7908 crashed 16 minutes after take-off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran, officials said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered his condolences to the bereaved families and ordered a transport ministry investigation into the tragedy.
‘Heads, fingers, passports’
Farsi Majidi, head of the investigating committee, told Associated Press TV News: "Thank God, we succeeded in finding two of the three flight data recorders or black boxes.
ANALYSISJon Leyne, BBC NewsIran has a notoriously bad air safety record. Because of sanctions imposed by the United States, Iran relies on an increasingly ageing fleet of airliners, and has trouble buying spares.
There are tales of aircrew buying spare parts on flights to Europe, then sneaking them back to Iran in the cockpit. While those sanctions don’t apply to aircraft from Russia and Ukraine, many planes from those countries in the Iranian fleet also appear well past their best.
For some people, flying in Iran can be a nerve-wracking experience. Stepping on board, it often becomes quickly apparent you are in a plane that has done many years service.
There are also frequent delays because of the shortage of aircraft. Iranian engineers and aircrew do their best to keep their fleets in service.
"Although they are damaged we are hopeful that we can extract information from them."
Eight members of Iran’s national junior judo team and two coaches were on the flight, heading for training with the Armenian team.
Among the mainly Iranian passengers were about five Armenian citizens and two Georgians.
Search teams picked through an area 200m (660ft) wide in a field at Jannatabad village, where the plane gouged out a huge smoking crater.
A relief worker, standing next to a body bag of human flesh, told AFP news agency: "There is not a single piece which can be identified."
Mostafa Babashahverdi, a local farmer, told Reuters news agency: "We found severed heads, fingers and passports of the passengers."
Witnesses said the Tu-154 had circled briefly looking for an emergency landing site. One man described it exploding on impact.
"I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake," Ali Akbar Hashemi told AP news agency.
IRANIAN PLANE CRASHES- Feb 2006: Tupolev crashes in Tehran, kills 29 people
- Dec 2005: C-130 military plane crashes near Tehran, kills 110
- Feb 2003: Iranian military plane crashes, kills all 276 on board
- Feb 2002: Tupolev crashes in west Iran, kills all 199 on board
At Yerevan’s airport, one woman wept as she said her sister and two nephews, aged six and 11, had been on the flight.
"What will I do without them" said Tina Karapetian, 45, before collapsing.
It was the third deadly crash of a Tupolev Tu-154 in Iran since 2002.
The BBC’s Jon Leyne says Iran’s civil and military air fleets are made up of elderly aircraft, in poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance.
Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, trade embargoes by Western nations have forced Iran to buy mainly Russian-built planes to supplement an existing fleet of Boeings and other American and European models.
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Russian rights campaigner murdered
July 15th, 2009 |
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Natalia Estemirova found shot dead after being abducted outside her home
Russia’s human rights record tonight came under severe criticism after one of the country’s most famous human rights campaigners was abducted from her home in Chechnya and brutally murdered.
Natalia Estemirova was seized by four unknown men this morning as she left for work. Neighbours at her house in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, heard her shout: “I’m being kidnapped.”
Her body was found near Gazi-Yurt village, in neighbouring Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head and chest, police said, adding that her corpse had been dumped on the main road.
Human rights activists expressed outrage at her murder, reminiscent of the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist, writer, and bitter Kremlin critic shot dead outside her Moscow apartment in 2006.
Estemirova, 50, was a close friend of Politkovskaya’s. The two had collaborated on numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Chechnya. Both were scathing opponents of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin president.
“Natasha was at the forefront of some of the most intense human rights investigations in Chechnya,” said Allison Gill, director of Human Rights Watch in Russia. “She was targeted because of her work. I have no doubt her killing was to silence her. One of the most amazing things about Natasha is that she never stopped doing what she was doing. She never checked herself. She was highly public in her calls for accountability.
“I think the human rights situation is in crisis in Russia,” she added. “We have a deathly silence from the authorities whenever activists, lawyers or journalists are murdered. Not a single person is brought to justice.”
Estemirova was the Chechnya-based head of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group.
Operating out of a small office in Grozny, she doggedly pursued stories of human rights abuses in the face of official intimidation and hostility.
She recently collaborated on two damning reports into punitive house burnings and extra-judicial killings in Chechnya, allegedly carried out by Kadyrov’s forces. The reports documented how on 2 July his troops allegedly shot 20-year-old Madina Yunusova and her husband near Grozny.
Chechen officials claimed her husband had been involved in a plot to kill Kadyrov. Yunosova died three days later in hospital under mysterious circumstances.
“Natasha was always involved in the most sensitive cases. She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks,” Shamil Tangiyev, a former Memorial colleague said. “She was extremely brave. It was in her nature to be an activist.”
Estemirova made no attempt to hide her work. Her office near the newly renamed Putin avenue was well known.
The timing of her murder follows Barack Obama’s first visit to Moscow last week as US president. Obama met with Russian human rights activists and set out the US’s commitment to “universal values”.
The Kremlin responded with hardline pronouncements, with the president, Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia on Monday. The trip appeared to be a direct rebuff to Obama who had said that both Georgia and Ukraine should be free to choose their own leaders.
Estemirova, who leaves a 15-year-old daughter, was probably the best-known human rights activist in Russia’s provinces.
Earlier this year she attended the trial in Moscow of four people – two of them Chechens – accused of involvement in Politkovskaya’s murder.
Speaking to the Guardian in February, Estemirova called the Politkovskaya trial a “farce”.
Kadyrov, a close ally of Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has denied accusations he was involved in Politkovskaya’s killing, remarking: “I don’t kill women.”
Recently the Kremlin has given Kadyrov unprecedented powers for counter-terrorist operations in Ingushetia, amid a worsening Islamist insurgency across the entire North Caucasus.
Estemirova was also a close colleague of Stanislav Markelov, the human rights lawyer murdered in Moscow in January. A masked assassin shot Markelov in the back of the head, not far from the Kremlin, along with Anastasia Baburova, a journalist with the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Tonight human rights activists urged the west to place human rights at the centre of any dialogue with Russia. Gill said: “We can’t talk about trade or energy without mentioning the rule of law.”
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Ukraine’s Tymoshenko calls for “reset” of ties with Russia
July 14th, 2009 |
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Kiev should build relations with Moscow on principles of equality without sacrificing national interests, which would require a “resetting,” says Ukraine’s PM. Yulia Tymoshenko said leading countries “have declared a policy of resetting relations with Russia” and that Ukraine should also “build a harmonious and balanced relationship with our largest neighbor in an honest and transparent way.”
Cyber crooks get business savvy
July 14th, 2009 |
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By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
Cyber crooks are increasingly operating like successful businesses, deploying the same tools legitimate companies use to boost their profits.
Networking giant Cisco said online criminals were increasingly using proven business practices.
In its mid-year security report, Cisco said this new approach puts the bad guys way ahead.
"When your enemy is financially motivated you have to be on alert," said Cisco fellow Patrick Peterson.
"Capitalism is a powerful force and these criminal types are collaborating with one another and sharing resources, renting out botnets and forming alliances."
He pointed to the popular model known as "software as a service," or SaaS, where a provider licences an application to a customer for use as a service on demand via the web saving costs for the user.
He said cyber-criminals were increasingly acting like virtual MBA (Master of Business Administration) students.
Mr Peterson also cited an increase in investment by the criminal community and its ability to offer off-the-shelf spyware and services like those dedicated to checking how well a piece of malware is performing.
Trends
Big news stories were a goldmine for cyber crooks said Cisco who mapped a massive rise in spam as news like the death of Michael Jackson broke.
"One of the most important themes for a business is customer acquisition," said Mr Peterson who is Cisco’s senior security researcher.
"We use Michael Jackson as a quintessential example. When the media was in the air and scrambling to cover his death, the bad guys were coming up with creative news copy that tried to persuade users to click on a photo, video or memorabilia to trick the user onto an infected site."
Cisco also said in the coming months it expected the level of spam to climb to record levels. In May just over 249 billion spam messages were sent – the third highest volume day ever.
The company also predicted a surge in attacks on legitimate websites. Recent Cisco data showed that exploited websites were responsible for nearly 90% of web-based threats.
Mobile phones are another growing concern with over four billion handsets in the world.
"SMS offers a big advantage to the criminal," explained Mr Peterson.
"We know not to click on e-mail or links but when you get a text from your bank asking you to call to verify your account details, you trust it."
These so called "smishing attacks" are expected to soar over the coming years.
"Popular haunts"
Cisco also noted that "the cyber criminals go where the users are, which means social networking sites are becoming more popular haunts for attackers."
The Kaspersky Lab Research Centre found that cyber crooks who use sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to spread viruses and worms were ten times more successful in their attacks than if they had used e-mail.
Cisco noted that "the open, simple communication structure of web 2.0-based applications is also its key weakness."
"It’s unfortunate but in places like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter where generally good people hang out and share information quickly and freely, there will be those who are not as honest who take advantage," said Ken Silva, the chief technology officer of VeriSign, a company that secures the internet.
One security vendor, Unisys told BBC News that web criminals are attracted to these sites because of the level of trust that can be exploited among users.
"This is all about the bad guys using your relationships with others to get you infected or pass along infections," said Nathan Shanks, senior security architect of the company’s global outsourcing unit.
"In this world it means that active members with hundreds of friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter will become more of a target."
E-mail signatures
Cisco’s Mr Peterson painted a depressing picture for the future.
"There is a fair bit of doom and a fair bit of gloom," he said.
"But the last 12 months have been the most heartening with some successful law enforcement cases putting the bad guys out of business."
Mr Peterson did however admit that it is a bit like the famed "whack-a-mole" game because every time they take someone out, there is another crook ready to fill in the gap.
"What is happening is unprecedented in the history of the world where a criminal is able to sit in Italy and commit highway robbery in France. And that is what we have here."
He said that while collaboration between law enforcement, industry and governments works well in the western world, it does not in places like China, Russia and the Ukraine.
"We just don’t speak the same language and we don’t have the contacts to quickly call up our counterparts and ask for help. We need a long term strategic approach and we need to continue to whack the criminals and their partners where we can reach them.
"The bad guys are innovating like crazy and we need to give our customers and enterprises security that is good enough," said Mr Peterson.
VeriSign’s Mr Silva said there is one simple solution but, so far, few seem willing to grab at it.
"If we could attach a digital signature to our e-mails and communications then you would be able to trust that e-mail. Today we don’t really know if the person who says they sent an e-mail is really that person.
"I would never do business in the real world with someone if I couldn’t validate who they are so why do we do it online
"I don’t know how much money has to be stolen or how many people have to be hurt emotionally and physically before someone figures out there is a real problem here," said Mr Silva. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
‘Nazi guard’ Demjanjuk is charged
July 13th, 2009 |
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Prosecutors in Germany have formally charged alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder in World War II.
The prosecutors’ office in Munich said the charges had been filed on Monday.
There was no immediate word on when the trial of the 89-year-old retired car worker, who was deported from the United States in May, might begin.
Mr Demjanjuk has denied accusations that he was a guard at the Sobibor death camp and helped murder Jews.
He says he was captured by Germans in his native Ukraine while fighting for the Red Army and kept as a prisoner of war.
Deportation
The formal filing of charges on Monday came 10 days after medical experts at Munich’s Stadelheim prison declared that Mr Demjanjuk was fit to stand trial, provided that his questioning in court was limited to two 90-minute sessions per day.
"We hope that the trial itself will be expedited so that justice will be achieved and he can be given the appropriate punishment"
Efraim Zuroff
Simon Wiesenthal Centre
Mr Demjanjuk’s family have said he is too frail to stand trial because he suffers from kidney disease, cancer and arthritis. In May, he was admitted to hospital for three days after developing gout.
Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which considers Mr Demjanjuk the world’s most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal, welcomed the move by German prosecutors.
"This is obviously an important step forward," he told the Associated Press. "We hope that the trial itself will be expedited so that justice will be achieved and he can be given the appropriate punishment."
"The effort to bring Demjanjuk to justice sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator."
Mr Demjanjuk arrived in the US in 1952 as a refugee, settling in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked in the car industry.
DEMJANJUKCASE TIMELINE- 1952: Gains entry into the US, claiming he spent most of the war as a German prisoner
- 1977: First charged with war crimes, accused of being "Ivan the Terrible"
- 1981: Stripped of US citizenship
- 1986: Extradited to Israel
- 1993: Israeli Supreme Court overturns conviction, ruling that he is not Ivan the Terrible
- 2002: Loses US citizenship after a judge said there was proof he worked at Nazi camps
- 2005: A judge rules in favour of deportation to his native Ukraine
- 2009: Germany issues an arrest warrant for him; deported by US; formally charged with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder
In 1988 he was sentenced to death in Israel for crimes against humanity after Holocaust survivors identified him as the notorious "Ivan the Terrible", a guard at the Treblinka death camp.
But Israel’s highest court later overturned his sentence, after documents from the former Soviet Union indicated that "Ivan the Terrible" had probably been a different man.
Mr Demjanjuk returned to the US, but in 2002 had his US citizenship stripped because of his failure to disclose his work at Nazi camps when he first arrived as a refugee.
In 2005, a US immigration judge ruled that he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.
And in March 2009, prosecutors in Munich issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of being an accessory in the deaths of Jews.
They said they had documents proving his Nazi background, including an SS identity card which showed he had been a guard at Sobibor between March and September 1943, and many witness testimonies.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Obama warns Russia on interference
July 7th, 2009 |
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US president goes on first trip to Russia and calls on Moscow to stop viewing America as an enemy
Barack Obama today set out his vision for a new post-cold war world, and urged Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states and to move on “from old ways of thinking”.
In a keynote speech during his first trip to Russia as US president, Obama called on Moscow to stop viewing America as an adversary. The assumption that Russia and the US were eternal antagonists was “a 20th-century view” rooted in the past, he said.
Obama delivered a tough, though implicit, critique of Kremlin foreign policy, rejecting the claim it has “privileged interests” in post-Soviet countries. He said the 19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and “great powers forging competing blocs” was finished.
“In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over,” he said, speaking to graduates from Moscow’s New Economic School.
He added: “As I said in Cairo, given our interdependence any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a ‘reset’ in relations between the United States and Russia.
“America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia.”
Obama acknowledged that the US needed to play its part in bringing about a fresh start with Russia – “a great power”. And he paid tribute to the achievements of Russian writers and scientists, even managing to quote a line from Pushkin when he told the students: “Inspiration is needed in geometry just as much as in poetry.”
Crucially, though, Obama indicated that Washington would not tolerate another Russian invasion of Georgia. Russia is winding up full-scale military exercises next to the Georgian border amid ominous predictions that a second conflict in the Caucasus could erupt this summer.
On Monday Obama reaffirmed Georgia’s sovereignty – severely undermined by last year’s war and Moscow’s subsequent unilateral recognition of rebel-held Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. Today Obama defended “state sovereignty”, describing it as “a cornerstone of international order”.
He also said that Georgia and Ukraine had a right to choose their own foreign policy and leaders, and could join Nato if they wanted. Russia is deeply opposed to Ukraine’s and Georgia’s accession, and wants the White House to rule out their future membership. Today Obama responded by saying that Nato sought collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.
Earlier, Obama had breakfast with Vladimir Putin, the man whom most people regard as Russia’s real ruler. Last week Obama described Putin, Russia’s prime minister, as having “one foot in the past”. Today, however, he talked to him for two and a half hours – longer than planned and an admission of Putin’s continuing importance. The meeting, their first, was “excellent”, Obama said.
During his speech, however, Obama delivered a withering assessment of Putinism. Without mentioning Russia by name, Obama spelled out the US’s commitment to “universal values”. These included the rule of law, the equal administration of justice, and competitive elections – all things missing from Putin’s vertically managed authoritarian state.
Obama also stressed the importance of “independent media in exposing corruption at all levels of business and government”. Russia’s state-controlled TV has largely snubbed Obama’s first trip to Moscow, apparently on Kremlin orders, either failing to mention him at all or relegating him to the lower regions of the news schedule.
On Monday Obama and Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, agreed a framework document that would see both sides cut their nuclear arsenals by up to a third. Today Obama warned again of the dangers of nuclear proliferation, and urged Moscow to join with the US to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and to end North Korea’s nuclear efforts.
He also reaffirmed that the US would only go ahead with its planned missile defence shield in central Europe – opposed by the Kremlin – if there was an Iranian nuclear “threat”. He said neither the US or Russia would benefit from a nuclear arms race in east Asia or the Middle East.
“In the short period since the end of the cold war we have already seen India, Pakistan and North Korea conduct nuclear tests. Without a fundamental change, do any of us truly believe that the next two decades will not bring about the further spread of nuclear weapons?” he asked.
“That is why America is committed to stopping nuclear proliferation, and ultimately seeking a world without nuclear weapons … And while I know this goal won’t be met soon, pursuing it provides the legal and moral foundation to prevent the proliferation and eventual use of nuclear weapons.”
The White House billed Obama’s Moscow address as a “major foreign policy speech”. It is the third in a series of major speeches that began in April in Prague, where he discussed disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, and continued in Cairo, where he offered a fresh US approach to the Middle East and Muslim communities.
Later, Obama met the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. He is due to meet business leaders and hold talks with civil society activists, including the opposition leader and former world chess champion Gary Kasparov.
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Nazi death camp accused fit for German trial
July 3rd, 2009 |
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John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old retired car worker, is fit to stand trial over murders at Sobibor death camp in Poland
Doctors have determined that John Demjanjuk, suspected of having been a guard in a Nazi death camp, is fit to stand trial as an accessory to murder, clearing the way for formal charges to be filed this month, prosecutors said today.
The doctors said the 89-year-old retired car worker, who was recently extradited from the US, can stand trial so long as court sessions do not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day, Munich prosecutors said in a brief statement.
They added that formal charges can be expected later this month.
Demjanjuk is accused of being an accessory to murder in 29,000 cases at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during the second world war.
He has been in custody in Munich since arriving there 12 May after losing a court battle to stay in the US.
Demjanjuk’s health was a key issue in that case. His son has said he is dying of leukaemic bone marrow disease. Dramatic photos in April showed Demjanjuk wincing in pain as immigration agents removed him from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio, during an earlier aborted attempt to deport him to Germany. However, images taken only days before and released by the US government showed him entering his car unaided.
Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier who spent the war as a Nazi prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.
But Nazi-era documents obtained by US justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at the Sobibor death camp and say he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki, also in Poland.
Efforts to prosecute the Ukrainian native began in 1977 and have involved courts and government officials from at least five countries on three continents.
Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison in Germany.
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ASBIS Ukraine Set up as Official Distributor of Corsair Memory
January 18th, 2006 |
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ASBIS Ukraine has been authorized to distribute the whole range of Corsair products including XMS eXtreme Memory Speed, ValueSelect and Server product lines. Philip Bakhramov of Corsair stated: “I see a great potential for our mutual business, and I am very much looking forward to a successful and mutually beneficial business with ASBIS!â€
ASBIS to Start Distribution of Corsair Memory
January 18th, 2006 |
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ASBIS has been set up as the official distributor of Corsair Memory in the territory of Ukraine. Corsair Memory, a US-based company, has been a leader in the design and manufacture of high-speed modules since 1994. The company focuses on supporting the special demands of mission-critical servers and high-end workstations, as well as the performance demands of extreme gamers and overclockers.
ASBIS Enhances ODD Product Offer Thanks to Distribution Deal with Pioneer
November 28th, 2005 |
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ASBIS has struck a deal with Pioneer Europe NV providing for the distribution of the whole range of Pioneer optical disc drives (ODDs) throughout the countries of ASBIS’ presence across Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, and Africa.