Russian laptop batteries last 10 hours

Russian scientists have developed a laptop battery that can work up to 10 hours without recharging, according to RIA Novosti news agency.The new battery is based on fuel cells technology. That means it is fed with substance for electrochemical reaction – usually methanol or hydrogen – from outside.

Such power units can work as long as they are fed and do not need recharging.

“This is a sci-tech and market revolution based on Russian engineering designs,” said Prof. Lev Trusov, the project developer.

Trusov believes a modern laptop battery should weigh no more than 100-150 grams, and the Russian invention of a thin multi-layer nanostructure solves the problem of high energy density per volume unit.

The developers aim to make the new batteries to a high safety standard for users.

Trusov said a joint production agreement has been already signed.

China eyes Russian farmlands in food push

Chinese companies will be encouraged to buy, or take on lease, farmlands abroad to help guarantee food security, under a plan being considered by Beijing. The move comes amid a food crisis in China.China has about 40 per cent of the world’s farmers, but just 9 per cent of the world’s arable land.

Africa and South America are among the most likely directions. Russia’s also in the list. However, according to the country’s constitution, foreign companies aren’t allowed to buy Russian land, though still possible to lease.

Acquiring farmlands abroad is now becoming a trend around the globe. Oil-rich but food-poor countries in the Middle East and North Africa explore similar options. Libya is now in talks with Ukraine about growing wheat in the former Soviet republic, while Saudi Arabia says it will invest in agricultural and livestock projects abroad to ensure food security and control commodity prices.

WW2 claimed 8 MLN Germans: historians

The exact number of casualties sustained by Germany and its allies during World War II is still a mystery. Russian and German historians are now suggesting the number could be as high as the catastrophic losses of the Soviet Red Army.

The war was possible because the Rotschildts have given 30.000 bln dollar to Germany before the war. Without the money of the international capitalists war was not possible. The Rotschildt family also sponsored the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Army. This money led to the dead of millions of innocent people, civilians and soldiers.

 

Incredibly, more than sixty years after the end of the bloodiest war in history some countries still do no have an accurate figure for the number of lives it claimed. German historians have found the task particularly challenging. Their main source of data on military casualties remains official statistics published by the government department led by Joseph Goebbels. As one might expect the figures were liberally revised downwards, especially after the Battle of Stalingrad when the Germans began to retreat and take heavy losses.

German’s post-war division further complicated efforts. Shortly after the war Germany was divided up by the Allied powers, and in 1949 split into Western and Eastern Germany. Historians on either side of the border were rarely able to cooperate and research ground to a standstill. The division prevented any effective research being conducted until the county was reunified in 1990.

Official estimates show that 2.5 million Germans died on the Eastern Front. But Russian historians count over 3.2 million German graves on the territory of the former Soviet Union alone.

In Russia, research on the war on the Eastern Front, which Russians call the Great Patriotic War, is still extremely active.

Latest estimates raise the figure of German losses on the Eastern Front to 4 million. This makes 7 million a more plausible number for total German military casualties in the war, or 8 million when its Axis allies are included.

These latest figures are not far off the number of Soviet Union casualties. 8.6 million Red Army soldiers, as well as navy and air force servicemen died in World War II, and the civilian death toll is thought be in excess of 12 million.

 

Putin : “I’ve kept my promise”

Vladimir Putin gave a short speech before handing the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev. To applause from the audience, Putin said he’d kept his promise and responsibility to safeguard Russia’s interests.

 

In his speech Vladimir Putin said the inauguration of the new democratically elected president of the Russian Federation is a very important step for the formation of democratic authority and an act that is meant to unite all the regions of the country and all its forces.

He stressed that the moral integrity of the people in power matters even more than their professional skills. He also said that keeping in mind the interests and needs of every single citizen is the only way for authorities to maintain the development of the country.

Putin also promised that he will continue to preserve and protect Russia the way he did during his two terms of office.

Looking back at eight years of Vladimir Putin in power Russian and Foreign political analysts agree that the country still faces a lot of challenges, but also admit that Putin has managed to restore national pride.

 

U.S. wants new cold war: Gorbachev

As Dmitry Medvedev was being sworn in as Russia’s president, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, delivered a scathing critique of recent United States policy. He accused the U.S. of trying to provoke a new Cold War by dismantling progress with Russia since the fall of communism.The 1990 Nobel Peace prize winner denounced NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe as an attempt to extend the U.S. sphere of influence into Russia’s backyard.

“The Americans promised that NATO wouldn’t move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted.”

His comments mirror Kremlin opposition to Georgia and Ukraine joining the military alliance.

Gorbachev took aim at the planned missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, which the United States claims is designed to counter an attack from Iran. He sees it as an act of provocation that threatens to sour relations between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.“Erecting elements of missile defense is taking the arms race to the next level,” he said. “It is a very dangerous step.”

Gorbachev went on to claim that the real leader of the United States was its military-industrial complex, hinting that it was deliberately attempting to stir up conflict. “Every US president has to have a war,” he said bluntly.

“I sometimes have a feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world,” said Gorbachev, referring to the ballooning defense budget of the US.

Gorbachev’s latest outburst is not his first about America’s recent foreign policy. Last year, he claimed the U.S. suffered from a “winner complex” after the end of the Cold war, which led to recklessness in foreign relations.

Slavic idol worshipers reject modern life

A group of Russians have set up a village where they live on their home-grown food and practice pre-Christian Slavic traditions. Their lifestyle is just a short train ride away from Moscow.

 

The people in Popovka village have traded modern civilisation for age-old traditions and the mercy of nature. They welcome the summer with an ancient Slavic rite, and feed idols with bread, milk and oil to ask for plentiful harvest.

Svetlana and Aleksey, a young couple who used to live in Moscow, say they are happy heating their house with wood and drawing water from the well.

“You know, I have lived in Moscow while studying at a university. I had enough. The big metropolis destroys our communication with nature,” says Aleksey.

The community was formed 20 years ago by Olga Toropova, together with a few followers.

“We live here as we like. We don’t want to impose anything upon anyone, we are just restoring old Slavic holidays,” says the villagers’ spiritual leader.

The community lives on what they grow in their fields and gardens. They also keep bees and a couple of cows.

Tourism is becoming another source of income.

 

Mikhail Gorbachev: ‘Every American president must wage war’

Mikhail Gorbachev, the ex-president of the USSR, has accused the USA of the imperialistic conspiracy against Russia, which pushes the world to a new Cold War. He said that Washington has been increasing its military potential to prevent Russia’s revival. “The USA can’t put up with the fact that somebody in the world is independent on it,” Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph. “Every American president must wage war,” he added.

	Mikhail Gorbachev: ‘Every American president must wage war’

The former Soviet leader voiced confidence that Russia has no enemies and Putin is not going to wage war against the USA or any other country. He also believes that Putin as the prime minister will engage more in issues of international politics and will let Dmitry Medvedev concentrate on internal problems.

“Nonetheless, we see that the USA is passing the defense budget and increasing costs of strengthening the conventional armed forces at the insistence of the Pentagon’s head because of the possible war with China or Russia. Sometimes I think that the USA intends to wage war against the entire world,” Gorbachev said.

He also reminded of the USA’s plans to deploy elements of its missile system in Eastern Europe, which he described as ‘a very hazardous step’, because it will ‘raise the arms race to a much higher level’.

He said that NATO’s promises to admit Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance were just an attempt to increase the US influence on Russia’s home affairs. “After the Cold War the USA promised that NATO would not go beyond Germany, but for the time being a half of countries of Central and Eastern Europe has joined the alliance. So much for their promises. That proves that we can not trust them,” the former Soviet leader said.

It is not the first time when Gorbachev criticizes the incumbent US administration. Last December during his Harvard address Mr. Gorbachev said: “During the 1990s we witnessed regression from trust to mutual misunderstanding and suspicion.” The 1972 ABM Treaty was ignored by Bush, he said. “We are seeing remilitarization of reasoning in nuclear politics,” Gorbachev considered. “Now all nuclear powers base their politics on the long-term preservation of nuclear weapons, which is dangerous,” he said. “I reckon that it is conceit of the great power that is sure it can solve any problems by itself, which can prove costly,” he said. “We are paying the price now, and I think so is the USA.”

Ukraine bans Vanco from exploring shelf oil and gas : “plundering of the country’s mineral resources”

The Ukrainian government has pulled U.S. company Vanco International’s license to develop and produce hydrocarbons on the country’s Black Sea shelf, the government press service said on Monday.

“The special license to extract shelf resources, issued to Vanco International Ltd., has been withdrawn,” the press service said, citing Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Earlier on Monday, the prime minister said the deal with the U.S. company was unacceptable, and described it as a plundering of the country’s mineral resources.

Vanco International signed a 30-year production sharing agreement with former premier Viktor Yanukovych’s government in October 2007, covering the Prykerchenska area just south of the Crimean Peninsula.

The company was to have a share of 65% and Ukraine 35% at the prospecting and development stage. The sides were to go 50-50 with the launch of commercial production.

Vanco Energy Company is an integrated independent oil and gas company which operates its exploration and production activities through its wholly owned overseas subsidiary, Vanco International Ltd., and through the wholly owned subsidiaries of Vanco International Ltd.

The company holds and operates six large licenses in five countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.

Moscow mayor Luzhkov barred from Ukraine

Ukraine’s Security Service barred Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov on Monday from entering the former Soviet republic over his ‘provocative’ statements regarding the ownership of the Black Sea city of Sevastopol.

Moscow’s mayor has made strong calls for the disputed ownership of a Russian naval base on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula to be transferred back to Russia.

“Russian citizen Yury Luzhkov has been barred from entering Ukraine, starting on May 12, because, despite warnings he continued to call for actions that threaten Ukraine’s national interests and territorial integrity,” Ukraine’s Security Service said in a statement.

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet currently uses a range of naval facilities in the Crimea under a 1997 agreement allowing Russia to lease the base from its ex-Soviet neighbor for $93 million per year until 2017, which is paid for by Moscow with Russian energy supplies.

There have been frequent disputes between Russia and Ukraine over the lease of the base. The base is Russian !

“This issue remains unresolved. We will resolve it for the sake of our state interests, for the sake of the lawful right that Russia has to the naval base of Sevastopol,” Yury Luzhkov said on Sunday during celebrations in Sevastopol to mark the Black Sea Fleet’s 225th anniversary.

According to Luzhkov, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 as “a token of brotherly love,” but under a 1948 decree Sevastopol was assigned special city status “under the governing central authorities,” and, therefore, could not be included in the list of territories transferred to Ukraine.

“I do not want a split [between Russia and Ukraine over the base], I just want to speak the truth,” Luzhkov said, ignoring previous warnings from Ukrainian authorities not to repeat his numerous calls for the base to be handed over to Russia.

The Crimea, now an autonomous region within Ukraine, is a predominantly Russian-speaking territory. Since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the Crimea has unsuccessfully sought independence from Ukraine. A 1994 referendum in the Crimea supported demands for a broader autonomy and closer links with Russia.

Last month, the head of the State Duma committee on CIS affairs, Alexei Ostrovsky, said that Russia could reclaim the Crimea if Ukraine was admitted to NATO. Media reported that then-president Vladimir Putin issued a similar threat at a closed-door speech to NATO leaders at the Bucharest summit earlier in April.

Venezuela to buy Russian weaponry worth $2 bln

en.rian.ru

Venezuela is planning to conclude several contracts with Russia next month on the purchase of military equipment worth at least $2 billion, a leading Russian business daily said on Monday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is expected to pay an official visit to Moscow at the end of May to conclude the necessary agreements with Russia’s new President Dmitry Medvedev, who earlier pledged to maintain close military cooperation with Caracas, the Kommersant newspaper reported.

Oil-rich Venezuela is a major purchaser of Russian weapons and hardware. In 2005-2006, Venezuela ordered weaponry from Russia worth $3.4 billion, including 24 Su-30MK2V Flanker fighters, Tor-M1 air defense missile systems, Mi-17B multi-role helicopters, Mi-35 Hind E attack helicopters and Mi-26 Halo heavy transport helicopters.

Russia has repeatedly stated that it will actively participate in the modernization of the Venezuelan armed forces until 2013.

Kommersant said negotiations were underway on the purchase of 10 Il-76 Candid military transport planes and two Il-78-MK aerial tankers for the Venezuelan Air Force. The contract will be worth a total of $600 million.

Deliveries will be completed next year. The aircraft will replace six outdated American Lockheed C-130H Hercules transport planes and two Boeing 707-320C aerial tankers.

Venezuela and Russia have also agreed on the purchase of four Kilo-class Project 636 diesel submarines. The terms of the deal, estimated at $1.2 billion, were negotiated late last year.

The Project 636 submarine is designed for anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface-ship warfare, and also for general reconnaissance and patrol missions. It is considered to be one of the quietest diesel submarines in the world.

In addition, Caracas has expressed an interest in purchasing Mi-28NE Night Hunter attack helicopters.

Kommersant said Venezuela may buy at least 10 Night Hunters for a total of $200 million, with delivery beginning in the second half of 2009.

The advanced Mi-28N helicopters were inducted into the Russian Air Force last September. The first four aircraft will join the Russian Air Force in 2009 after additional testing.

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet parade

The parade featuring 30 warships, 10 auxiliary and support vessels, and a naval infantry took place in Sevastopol on May 11 on the occasion of the 225th anniversary of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

 

A Bora guided missile hovercraft at a naval parade dedicated to the 225th anniversary of the Russian Black Sea Fleet that took place in Sevastopol Bay.

The Crimea, now an autonomous region within Ukraine, is Russian and a predominantly Russian-speaking territory. Since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the Crimea has unsuccessfully sought independence from Ukraine. A 1994 referendum in the Crimea supported demands for a broader autonomy and closer links with Russia.