But here’s what is different this year: The rich and the powerful at Davos are already looking beyond the United States as present and future global leader. The talk is about whether emerging economies, primarily China, India, and resource-rich Russia, can pick up the economic slack if America falters and maintain global growth.
No one underestimates [...]

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Russia, whose space programme relies heavily on a base in neighbouring Kazakhstan, is to build its own launch site for manned flights by 2018, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted as saying Wednesday.
The new Vostochny base in the Amur region of southeast Russia, bordering China, will be an alternative to the Baikonur base, [...]

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NATO’s military expansion towards Russia’s borders is a throwback to the Cold war that only serves to cause antagonism, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.
In an usually tough attack on the alliance, Lavrov told a news conference there was no security justification for the enlargement and he warned ex-Soviet states they could hurt [...]

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Although Western attention has focused on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a potential threat to Western influence in Eurasia, another institution, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), currently represents a more serious near-term challenge.
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As power shifts from the old west, it is absurd that the world’s economic top table has a seat for Italy but no place for China
Wherever you turn in Davos, you see the World Economic Forum’s modest motto: “Committed to improving the state of the world.” Well, it needs it. So here’s one practical step: [...]

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But China’s behaviour over the past year - military, diplomatic and political - testifies to an increasingly assertive and confident mood among Chinese leaders in their dealings with Asia and the rest of the world.
China did not warn other users of space when it fired a ballistic missile to destroy an old weather satellite in [...]

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North Korea’s missed deadline on its denuclearization pact and new tough rhetoric revive diplomatic concerns about the regime’s sincerity and stability.
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Viktor Osipov, director of the Institute of Helioecology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that natural and man-made disasters will become one of the main threats for humankind in the 21st century. A dangerous trend has become evident recently - damage from disasters and expenses involved in their cleanup are implacably growing. In an [...]

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Iran is prepared to supply gas to the EU’s flagpship Nabucco gas pipeline, which is aimed at reducing the bloc’s reliance on Russia, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here Tuesday.
“The EU has already pointed out the need to diversify its gas supplies. One of the areas in which Iran can cooperate with Europe in the [...]

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From an isolationist nation at the end of World war One, the US today has bases in over ninety countries. No other nation has been able to project military power as the US does today. But is such an involvement sustainable? Despite its might, the US is shrinking in terms of population and economic power [...]

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The demographic Arab and Muslim weight in Europe is combining with the flow of Arab capital, the globalization of markets and the huge European financial investments in Arab lands to produce a gradual but inexorable movement toward the Islamification of Europe. The ascendancy of Islam in Europe began in response to the booming European economy [...]

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Through the Nabucco pipeline project, Bulgaria decides to reap the benefit of Europe’s energy demand.
The fat lady has finally sung — the operatically named Nabucco gas pipeline project, intended to carry Central Asian gas to European markets, avoiding Russia, appears to have been knocked out by an agreement between Bulgaria, Russia, and Italy’s ENI.
Negotiated on [...]

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Russia Again Warns Ukraine on NATO Plans
Voice of America - 16 hours ago
NATO’s last expansion in 2004 included Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, bringing the military alliance to Russia’s western border.
FM: Ukraine’s NATO membership to worsen relations with Russia Xinhua
Surprise! Russia against Ukraine NATO move Ukrainian Journal (subscription)
Russia to respond ‘appropriately’ to Ukrainian NATO membership RIA Novosti
RIA [...]

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But just as Russia proved more resilient than widely predicted at the bottom of the cycle, so it is probably far more fragile than it looks at the top. The country’s demographic, social, economic, and political challenges remain awesome.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of Russia’s position is its demographic decline. On some projections, the country’s [...]

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At the start of a year likely to be dominated by an extraordinary degree of uncertainty, it is worth setting out what some of the world’s top political and business leaders could reasonably predict for 2008, as they gather today in the Swiss resort of Davos.
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However, now the opposite dynamic is taking place at the other end of the Eurasian land mass. Outgoing South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is being replaced by the dynamic Lee Myung-bak. And President-elect Lee and his transition team have already sent their own strong signals that as part of their overall master-plan to revitalize the [...]

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The West views this Asian country as a new world economic dynamo, but also as a closed society captive to its dated Communist structure.
The year 2008 is likely to be the Year of China.
The Olympics will move China to the front of world attention, much as its rapid economic rise has already allowed it to [...]

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A defense source said Tuesday that the missile is meant to serve as the interceptor element of a defensive system called Magic Wand. The system is meant to provide a defense against missiles and rockets whose range is between 40 and 250 kilometers, like Hezbollah’s Zilzal and Fajr missiles.
The first layer of this defensive structure [...]

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RAF fighters scrambled to track Russian long-range bombers joining a naval task force yesterday as Moscow practised strike tactics off the coast of France and Spain and test-launched nuclear-capable missiles.
The fleet of Russian warships, supported by fighter jets and the bombers, engaged in Russia’s biggest naval exercises since the end of the Cold War.
The war [...]

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