Iran is paying Russian women working at a nuclear plant to cover their bodies, so as to comply with sharia dress codes, an Iranian member of parliament told the outlet ISNA.
In the middle of the night at a U.N. conference in Dubai, the presiding chairman of the International Telecommunication Union conference surveyed the assembled countries to see whether there was interest in having greater involvement in the U.N. governing the Internet. A majority of countries gave their approval.
Russian president Vladimir Putin claims President Barack Obama is planning to visit Russia, the outlet RIA Novosti reports.
"US President Barack Obama has confirmed plans to visit Russia at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the Russian president’s spokesman said on Tuesday," the Russian outlet reports. "Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Obama made the statement when Putin called a second time to congratulate the US president on his reelection."
Polls have closed in Georgia, the small Caucasus Republic that took center stage in the 2008 presidential campaign when Russian troops poured over the border there and threatened to topple the country's pro-American government. With bothsides claiming victory, the country of 4.5 million people may once again feature prominently in an American presidential campaign.
A group of protestors gathered this afternoon outside the Russian ambassador’s Washington residence to protest the jailing of the three Russian punk rock musicians from the group Pussy Riot. The musicians—Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29—were sentenced to two years in prison today for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” the BBC reported.
At the entrance to Red Square, a large, striking statue greets visitors. Erected in 1995 in time for the 50th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, it depicts Marshal Georgy Zhukov on his Arabian horse during the 1945 victory parade—and confirms his status as Russia’s national hero. The British historian Geoffrey Roberts is convinced that Zhukov deserves this place of honor, since he was “the best all-around general of the Second World War.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin made his second visit to Israel last week. His brief trip included high-level talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they agreed at least in the abstract that Bashar al-Assad should stop slaughtering civilians in Syria and that the world would be a better place if Iran did not get a nuclear weapon. But the real purpose of Putin’s visit was to attend the unveiling of a memorial to the Soviet soldiers who fought against Nazi Germany in World War II.
CBS reports that when Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin met with the press after their long private discussion, "The two men barely looked at each other. You could just feel, sort of, the tension between them. And the body language really represented how far apart the two leaders remain on the issue of Syria."
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