A Russian court has dismissed a criminal case against a village school teacher accused of using pirated Microsoft software.
Aleksandr Ponosov, the headmaster at a school in the Perm region, went on trial after prosecutors accused him of violating Microsoft's intellectual property rights. Radio Free Europe
..."The strategic map has changed. We must now analyse what resources are needed here at home, if tension in the north of Europe were to grow", said Colonel Stefan Gustafsson in a recent interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
As Gustafsson sees it, Russia’s armed forces have passed their nadir, and Russia is now able to invest more in its military. According to Gustafsson, Russia also has new energy interests to protect in the Barents Sea, and in the Baltic Sea gas pipeline, which is a cause for concern in Sweden.
... Foreign Minister Carl Bildt noted in a foreign policy speech made on behalf of the government that development in Russia has taken a few backward steps. He said that the political system and the media atmosphere are not as free as before, human rights continue to be violated in Chechnya, and that the unsolved murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the circumstances surrounding the death of Aleksandr Litvinenko "cast dark shadows".
Bildt did not want to take an immediate stand on the new assessments from the military. "I have only read what the newspapers have written. I need to examine the situation better", Bildt said to journalists. HELSINGIN SANOMAT
THE streets of Iran are festooned this week with revolutionary bunting. Black and green banners commemorating the martyrdom of the third Shia imam, Hussein, still flutter from lamp-posts, even though the mournful Ashura rites of late January are over. They now hang beside flags looking forward to February 11th, when Iranians mark the anniversary of the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Such celebrations usually go unnoticed in America. But not this time. The two countries are moving slowly towards confrontation, both over Iraq—where Iran is meddling—and over Iran's nuclear programme. Its provocative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (above right), has hinted that February's celebrations will include “good news” about the progress of nuclear work. Iran says it is fiddling with uranium and plutonium to produce more electricity. But America and many other countries suspect it is building a bomb.
...Inside Iran a heated debate is now under way over how to respond to its growing isolation and the prospect of more sanctions to come. There are signs of rising popular discontent with Mr Ahmadinejad's firebrand rhetoric and his capricious management of the economy—as well as worries about sanctions, and how much the nuclear programme will cost Iran. More pragmatic politicians, such as Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, would prefer to re-open negotiations with the West to avoid open confrontation.
When Mr Ahmadinejad and his allies did badly in recent local elections, criticism came into the open. Last week, for the first time, a newspaper editorial even argued the case for suspending nuclear work, as the UN has demanded. Mr Ahmadinejad's wings have been clipped a little. But there is no sign yet that Iran's leaders will reconsider their nuclear ambitions. Economist
JUDGING by the loud howls of concern this week, the lot of children in Britain and America is a rather terrible one. On Wednesday February 14th Unicef published a report comparing the well-being of young people in 21 rich countries, and concluded that British and American youths endure the worst quality of life of any. In contrast, North European children, especially the Nordics, apparently have a lovely time. Cue hand-wringing from a lot of worried Anglo-American parents.
...there is much in the report that is worth noting. The authors drew on 40 different indicators of child welfare, divided into six general categories, and ranked the countries accordingly. Anglo-Americans with many single-parent families, greater household-income inequality and worse social habits consistently scored badly on almost every measure. What is particularly instructive, however, are the clues to why this is the case. ,a href=" Economist
An often-repeated quotation believed to date back to the 1970s, and attributed to Nokia director Harry Mildh, states that "there is no person so insignificant as to not be worth bribing."
... For years, Finland has been at the top of the list maintained by Transparency International of the world's least corrupt countries. So we are incorruptible.
However, the problem with these comparisons is that corruption manifests itself in so many forms. The TI report mainly tells us that the Finnish civil service is no longer bribe-driven.
... The bribery scandal that emerged in Siemens not long ago was a rude awakening to many. Former and present employees of the prestigious German electronics manufacturer have spoken in police interrogations of systematic transfers of funds to bribe accounts - a practice that has continued for years. This was used to grease the palms of buyers of telecommunications networks - especially in developing countries.
Examples can be found closer to home as well. In one case that was made public, Wärtsilä and Instrumentarium have at the very least turned a blind eye to obvious bribery in their foreign dealings. HELSINGIN SANOMAT
In much of Istanbul, place names come and place names go. But when the name change proposes replacing “Pierre Loti,” the famous French poet who etched Istanbul into the minds of generations of Europeans, well, that means controversy.
“Let Pierre Loti's name may become Eyüp Sultan,” read the headline in Tuesday's mass daily Vatan, telling the story of a name change that quickly migrated to television news reports. The name change has divided locals who live or work around the historic hilltop site and even pitted the mayor of Istanbul's greater municipality against the mayor of the smaller sub-municipality who ordered the change. Turkish Daily News
New evidence is emerging on the ground of an Iranian hand in growing violence within Iraq, but not necessarily as the US claims Tehran is involved, that is, by providing arms to Shi'ite Muslim militants.
The massacre in Najaf last month indicates that Iran could be working through the Iraqi government, local leaders in Najaf say. The killing of 263 people in Najaf by Iraqi and US forces on January 29 provoked outrage and vows of revenge among residents in and around the sacred Shi'ite city in the south.
.... most people in the area believe the US military was told by Iraqi security forces loyal to the pro-Iranian government in Baghdad that "terrorists" or the "messianic cult" were attacking Najaf. They say the misinformation was intended to mislead occupation forces into attacking the tribe.
Many Shi'ites in the southern parts of the country and in Baghdad now say they had been fooled earlier by US promises to help them, but that the Najaf massacre has dramatically changed their views. Asia Times
