But Russia’s own state-run defense industries, experts say, face a crumbling manufacturing base and pervasive corruption; they have produced little in the way of advanced armaments in the Putin era.
The Victory Day parade in Red Square in May was intended to showcase the nation’s military might. Instead, Russia’s arsenal showed its age. Most of the [...]

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China and Saudi Arabia have signed a declaration to strengthen strategic cooperation during a visit to Saudi Arabia by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and likely successor to President Hu Jintao.
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Chinese dragon in Mideast politics
Washington Times, DC - 4 hours ago
The relationship between China and Saudi Arabia, as well as with other Gulf countries, are based [...]

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Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened its doors on February 26, 2008 to the world.
This ‘Doomsday Vault’ is part of an effort to protect the planet’s diminishing biodiversity.
The facility was dug deep into the frozen rock of an Arctic mountain on Spitsbergen, one of 3 Arpichelago Islands in Norway. Any seeds stored here will be secure [...]

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BRIC shows signs of emerging as an alliance in an exercise seen as a challenge to the U.S.-dominated unipolar world order.
BRIC, an acronym coined by Goldman Sachs a few years ago to define a group of large emerging economies with fast growth rates, was born in May this year as a formalised grouping aspiring to [...]

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Dmitry Medvedev may be the new president, but his predecessor is still the one with power.
We can expect a few proclamations and perhaps even token policy changes. Unfortunately, the early signs show that Medvedev’s statement about developing civil freedoms and ending “legal nihilism” were only a show for the West. Such displays are needed to [...]

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It has fuelled a 17-year economic boom in which truck drivers can earn £60,000 a year, property prices have soared and there are not enough pilots to fly desperately needed mining engineers into dusty desert camps.
Australia is growing rich from China’s insatiable appetite for raw materials, selling billions of pounds worth of iron ore, coal [...]

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China’s Health Ministry issued a nationwide alert Saturday calling for heightened efforts to control a virus that has caused the deaths of 22 children in one city and shows signs of spreading.
Health bureaus around the country must step up monitoring for hand, foot and mouth disease following a “relatively large” outbreak in the central city [...]

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So far the threat of a global food crisis has not affected Australia, but there are worrying signs appearing in the United States where some worried locals are beginning to hoard supplies.
Two bulk US retailers are rationing some sales of imported rice and that’s been enough for some Americans to begin stocking up.
It has also [...]

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