Word: russia
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...Russia's laws have long been weak and unspecific when it comes to combating organized crime, part of the reason that the underworld has thrived in the country in the post-communism years. But the government may finally be getting serious about cracking down on the mafia. In the wake of the embarrassing release of the mobsters in September, President Dmitri Medvedev proposed harsh new legislation targeting organized-crime figures, making a rare admission that "the legal code does not have a response to the increasing social dangers of these crimes." Within weeks, the parliament approved the measures...
...summit with Western powers, Russia and China, Iran added fuel to the incendiary debate over its nuclear ambitions by revealing the existence of a new uranium-enrichment facility outside the holy city of Qum. News of the plant, the second of its kind in Iran, drew sharp criticism from Western leaders, including President Obama, who condemned Tehran for "breaking rules" and demanded that the country "cooperate fully and comprehensively" with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, insisted that plans for the plant were never secret and reiterated that Iran's nuclear...
...much anticipated E.U. report on last year's five-day war between Russia and Georgia held Tbilisi responsible for triggering the conflict but blamed Russia for creating conditions that helped spark it. Both sides claimed vindication from the 1,000-page document, which also found that Russian allies committed ethnic cleansing against Georgian civilians...
...growing differential in interest rates is only one element in this process. On the day Australia raised interest rates, Britain's Independent newspaper reported that the Gulf Arab states and China, Russia, Japan and France are working to end the use of the dollar in oil trading by 2018. Citing "Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong," the newspaper said the plan is to price oil using a basket comprising gold, euro, yen, renminbi and a new unified currency for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries...
...scratch his head at the notion of paper money. The dollar has no intrinsic value. It has become the world's storehouse of value because it is backed by the economic might of the U.S. If another super-economy emerges, be it the European Union, China, India, Brazil or Russia, then that new power's currency could replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency, just as the dollar replaced sterling in the last century. (See pictures of the best-selling cars in China...