The US will pay $US2.2 billion ($A2.6 billion) it owes to fund the United Nation's far-flung peacekeeping operations, an announcement the UN peacekeeping chief hailed as "extremely good news". US ambassador Susan Rice made the announcement at a meeting of the Security Council yesterday. The United Nations has nearly 115,000 troops, police and civilians deployed in 16 peacekeeping missions from Africa and the Middle East, to Cyprus, Kosovo and Haiti.
The United Nations reported “good progress” in the latest round of talks today between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders in efforts to unify the Mediterranean island. Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat discussed issues of citizenship, aliens, immigration and asylum and will focus on governance and the executive at their next meeting on 3 September in the UN-backed talks. They will also revisit areas where points of disagreement have arisen in previous discussions. Other issues yet to be discussed include property on the island, where UN peacekeepers have been deployed since 1964 to prevent fighting between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. In May 2008, Mr. Christofias and Mr. Talat committed themselves to working towards “a bicommunal, bizonal federation with political equality, as defined by relevant Security Council resolutions.”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan signed on Thursday agreements on cooperation in the gas sphere. The gas cooperation agreement stipulates, in particular, Turkish consent for the construction of the South Stream pipeline in its territorial waters. The South Stream project is designed to annually pump 31 billion cubic meters of Central Asian and Russian gas to the Balkans and onto other European countries along the bed of the Black Sea, with the pipeline's capacity expected to be eventually increased to 63 billion cubic meters. Russia and Turkey will also build the second leg of the Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, linking the two countries via the Black Sea, to export Russian gas to Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus via Turkey. The two parties also agreed to build large underground gas storage facilities in Turkey to protect the country against interruptions in gas supplies.
Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi is expected to attend talks between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, in Ankara on Thursday. Putin and Erdogan will start the 'one-on-one talks' that Berlusconi will join a bit later. His participation is linked with joint energy projects, in the first place, the South Stream gas pipeline project. The South Stream project is designed to annually pump 31 billion cubic meters of Central Asian and Russian gas to the Balkans and onto other European countries along the bed of the Black Sea, with the pipeline's capacity expected to eventually increase to 63 billion cubic meters. The pipeline will run to Bulgaria on to Greece, Serbia, Hungary and Italy.
The annual Operalia competition is one of the most cherished personal projects of Plácido Domingo, who has seemingly built an entire side career out of seeking and championing young, aspiring opera stars. Held this year in Hungary, Operalia concluded Saturday with the top prizes going to Russian singers soprano Julia Novikova and tenor Alexey Kudrya. Two Americans received the second-prize slot -- soprano Angel Blue and bass Jordan Bisch -- along with tenor Dimitrios Flemotomos of Greece. (Blue and Flemotomos shared the top Zarzuela prize, given for a specialized form of Spanish operetta.) Four performers shared third place: soprano Auxiliadora Toledano of Spain, soprano Anita Watson of Australia, bass-baritone Kostas Smoriginas of Lithuania and bass Wenwei Zhang of China.
A year after the war with Georgia, South Ossetia is slowly rebuilding itself amid fears of new aggression from Tbilisi. To start large-scale construction work, South Ossetia needed to secure its borders from future attacks. With Russian peacekeepers in the republic security was not an issue. However, in order to maintain a prolonged presence of Russian troops, the two countries needed a new cooperation framework, which was found in May when a five-year agreement delegating border protection to Russian troops was signed. Earlier the construction got another boost when the gas supply to South Ossetia was resumed in late January, solving the key problem of energy supply. Still, there is a long way to go. According to estimates, in Tskhinval along nearly 70% of the buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged during the August fighting. Despite this and other problems, like the absence of a large-scale water supply to Tskhinval that authorities vow will soon be restarted, refugees are already returning in scores to the republic. As South Ossetia’s ombudsman claimed in January, many of those who left the republic in the 1990s are coming back.
For those of you who have wondered what the Orthodox Church believes compared to what yours does, then this article is for you. To many, the claims of the Orthodox Church are offensive. How can anyone claim to be the true Church? History and the constant 2,000 year Christian presence witnesses to these claims. But it does not make these claims out of arrogance or pride, but in love. In my experience, no one tried to convert me. No Orthodox Christian came up to me and told me about their Church. In reading about the early Church, the same one talked about in Acts, the same one with the thousands of martyrs and Saints basically "sold itself" to me. While it is not an in-depth theological explication, it certainly serves to "scratch the surface" on this topic. The chart below compares the three Christian groups: The Orthodox Church, the Protestants, and the Roman Catholic Church. Objectively, the chart is pretty straight forward. It places the beliefs that each group holds on a certain topic side by side with the other two.