Word: easterner
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...everyone is pleased with the way Australia has changed. While the reflexive xenophobia of conservative politician Pauline Hanson, who warned in 1996 that Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians," has retreated from politics, Asia's presence and influence in Australia still provoke controversy. Some Asian, Middle Eastern and African Australians complain that they are somehow considered less truly Australian than those who came from, say, Italy, Greece or Croatia. An influx of foreign students into Australian universities - many of them Asian - has heightened tensions. In an ugly series of incidents in Victoria in recent months, Indian students...
Recently, however, Medvedev and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, have said nuclear-weapons reductions are possible only if the U.S. drops its plans to expand its missile-defense shield into Eastern Europe. The U.S. argues that such defenses, including installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, are necessary to protect the West from a possible missile strike by Iran. The Russians don't buy that. The shield, it thinks, is designed to give the U.S. an edge against Russia. "We don't believe that any plans for [missile defense] have anything to do with the 'Iranian threat,'" Sergei Ryabkov, Russia...
...efforts to draw the countries that lie between the E.U. and Russia closer into its orbit. Russia has traditionally regarded Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and other former Soviet states along its border as its "privileged sphere of influence," in the words of President Dmitry Medvedev. The E.U.'s new "Eastern Partnership" initiative, launched in May, offers these countries economic integration and stronger political ties. Although the E.U. has shied away from talking about the prospect of membership, however distant, it hopes to help its eastern neighbors to become richer, more stable and more democratic. This would leave them better equipped...
Moscow is particularly unhappy about the E.U.'s offer to include Belarus - traditionally a staunch Moscow ally - in the Eastern Partnership, albeit on the condition that Minsk improve its shoddy human-rights record. When the E.U. recently offered a multibillion-dollar loan to help modernize the Ukrainian pipeline system - conduit for 70% of Russian gas sales to Europe - Russian leaders were furious. Moscow has also tried to foil European attempts to build stronger energy links with Azerbaijan. Potential for conflict exists in Georgia, where E.U. observers are the only ones left after Russia forced Organization for Security and Cooperation...
...Born in 1949 into a lower-middle-class military family in eastern Java, Indonesia's most densely populated island...