Nationalist MP suggests community work for foreign military fleeing to Russia

Nationalist MP suggests community work

A Russian lawmaker has prepared a bill which would make foreign military servicemen who arrive in Russia fleeing combat to do community service for up to a month. The MP says that it is aimed primarily at Ukrainian soldiers and officers.
Mikhail Degtyaryov of the populist nationalist party LDPR told the Izvestia daily that his bill would force all foreign military personnel who find themselves on Russian territory in the course of combat in border regions to do one month community service. Refusal would be punished with a fine of 300,000 rubles (about $7900) or 15 days of administrative

Read More

West should stop dragging Ukraine into NATO – Gorbachev

West should stop dragging Ukraine

Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has again blamed the ongoing turmoil in Ukraine on the hasty and thoughtless breakup of the USSR. He noted that a peaceful outcome could only be reached through resumed dialogue between Russia and the US.
The former Soviet leader expressed these opinions in the afterword to his latest book of memoirs called “After the Kremlin” - soon to be released. The afterword was published before the book by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Gorbachev writes that in his view the Ukrainian conflict can only be settled through dialogue, both inside the country and at an international

Read More

Argentina passes law to reclaim default debt from New York

Argentina passes law to reclaim

Argentina’s Senate has passed a law that will let the country continue paying off its default debt by transferring international bond payments from New York to local banks, which would let other investors buy Argentine debt.
The scheme, to get around a US judge’s order to immediately pay back $1.6 billion to “vulture” hedge funds in Manhattan, is the initiative of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. The bill passed by a vote 39 to 27.
The initiative proposes to begin challenging payments through third parties, and allowing them to trade their bonds for new debt issued under Argentine law. Argentina’s state Banco de la Nacion could become the

Read More

Russia’s Gazprom to fall under new EU capital ban – sources

Russia’s Gazprom to fall under new

Russia's Gazprom Bank and oil producer Gazprom Neft will fall under new sanctions approved by the European Union on Friday, Reuters cited an EU diplomat as saying. The sanctions reportedly include a new ban on raising capital in the 28-nation bloc.
The sanctions were agreed against Russia for its alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis, the diplomatic source said.
According to The Financial Times, which managed to obtain a document outlining the sanctions, all Russian state-controlled companies with assets of more than one trillion rubles (US$27 billion) that receive more than half their revenue from “the sale or transportation of crude oil or

Read More

Cameron must cooperate with Putin and Assad to defeat ISIS’ – former defense chief

Cameron must cooperate with Putin and Assad

Lord Richards, a former British defence chief, has advised David Cameron to form an unlikely alliance with Assad’s Syrian regime, Moscow and Iranian authorities to defeat Islamic State (IS) militants.
The former head of the British Armed Forces, who retired from the post in 2013, broke his silence on the prime minister’s failure to employ his strategic plan of containing President Bashar Assad along with fundamentalist militants in the region.
Lord Richard’s spoke with BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on Friday as global allied NATO leaders discussed tactical maneuvers to defeat IS

Read More

UK to send 1,000 troops for NATO Spearhead Force

UK to send 1,000 troops for NATO Spearhead Force

The UK will contribute 1,000 personnel to a new multi-national rapid reaction force, Prime Minister David Cameron has said. He suggested the NATO "multinational spearhead force" could be deployed anywhere in two to five days.
The British prime minister announced the force, to be based in Eastern Europe, will be launched in response to alleged Russian military involvement in Ukraine and instability in the Middle East.
"To the east, Russia is ripping up the rulebook with its annexation of Crimea and its troops on the sovereign soil of Ukraine. To the south, an arc of instability bends from North Africa to the Middle East," Cameron

Read More

Sierra Leone to enter ‘lockdown’ as Ebola death toll tops 2,000

Sierra Leone to enter ‘lockdown

Sierra Leone announced it will implement a four-day “lockdown” across the country in an attempt to contain the spread of Ebola. The Friday move came as the World Health Organization stated that the virus has so far claimed over 2,000 lives in Africa.
Beginning September 18, the nation will prohibit residents from leaving their homes for four days, with the hopes that health officials will be able to detect early-stage cases, Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential advisor in Sierra Leone, told Reuters.
“The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all,” he said.
Unfortunately, the news was accompanied by worsening statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), which announced on Friday that out

Read More