Communist Tax Lawyer

Russia has agreed to build Venezuala’s first ever nuclear reactor.

The Guardian reports:

President Dmitry Medvedev is expected to sign a nuclear cooperation agreement with his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chávez, during a visit to Latin America next week, part of a determined Russian push into the region.

The reactor is to be named after Humberto Fernandez Moran, a late Venezuelan research scientist and former science minister, Chávez has announced. It is one of many accords he hopes to sign while hosting Medvedev in Caracas next week.

This will no doubt lead to increased strains on the already fragile Venezuelan-U.S. and Russian-U.S. relations.

Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov on Tuesday warned Georgia that any efforts to strengthen its military would be punished more severely than during the countries’ brief August war.

“We are concerned over the continuing desire of the Georgian administration to develop its military potential,” Serdyukov said through an interpreter after talks with his Turkish counterpart Vecdi Gonul.

“We believe this policy would bring about consequences more serious than those in August,” he told the AFP.

Those looking to get away from the global economic crisis for awhile should head to North Korea.

“We know many countries are struggling due to the financial crisis … we have no problem here,” said a North Korean guide working with a visiting aid group from the South, whose economy has been among the hardest hit as financial markets tumble around the world.

North Korea’s centrally planned economy, built around the state ideology of self-reliance, has little time for capitalism and has only in recent years grudgingly allowed even street markets to emerge.

Reuters on how Russia may approach the Obama presidency:

After Barack Obama’s election win, Kremlin officials argued over whether Russian President Dmitry Medvedev should congratulate him with a warm, handwritten letter or an impersonal note, according to one analyst.

Russia’s intense dislike of U.S. policies and its resolve to stand up to them are not in doubt but the anecdote illustrates a dilemma the Kremlin is wrestling with about what tactics to use in dealing with an Obama White House. Read the rest of this entry »

From The Guardian:

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon’s plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev’s previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact.

Both presidents concluded a Russia-EU summit, in Nice in the south of France, with an agreement to convene a major international conference next summer at which the Americans, Russians and the 27 countries of the EU should come up with a blueprint for new post-cold war “security architecture” in Europe.

Vietnam’s central region has seen many investment projects remain incomplete as investors fail to finish the work they started.

In the ancient city of Hue in Thua Thien-Hue Province, a dozen projects involving residential areas and tourist and greenery parks are left only half-complete after several years of construction. Examples include the 199-ha urban area in An Dong Ward, the 32-ha urban area in An Tay Ward, the 84-ha Xuan Phu Urban Area and the 31-ha Dong Nam Thuy An.

Moreover, none of the 31 hotel and entertainment park projects licensed since 2003 along the Hoi An-Dien Ban coastline in Quang Nam Province has been finished.

The state-run energy companies of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have agreed to set up an oil transport system across the Caspian Sea to help move Central Asia’s energy reserves to Western markets.

The system would use tankers and barges to bring oil from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, the starting point for the Western-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which bypasses Russia to deliver oil through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey.

Reports say shipments are planned to start in 2013.

The announcement was made as the leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and senior officials from other nations held an energy summit in Baku. Read the rest of this entry »

Much has been written about China’s adventures in Africa, but now the growing economic powerhouse is using its new-found clout in another region of the world, Latin America. In a region long accustomed to the influence of the United States, China’s entry into the politics of the Americas should prove to very interesting.

UPI reports:

Chinese President Hu Jintao Monday proclaimed his huge nation’s commitment to boosting its power in the Western Hemisphere by paying a state visit to Cuba.

To add insult to injury for lame-duck U.S. President George W. Bush, Hu flew to Cuba, a nation Bush has tried to keep in quarantine during his eight years in office, immediately after attending the Group of 20 major nations’ emergency financial summit in Washington. He flew there via a short visit to Costa Rica.

Brazil, Russia, China and India, the so called BRIC countries, were the foundation of the emerging markets trade during the global bull market from 2002 to 2007, as the financial crisis went global, they have also led the decline on the way down as well. Seeking Alpha provides an updated chart of the declines from their peaks for Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

As shown, Russia is down the most at -76%, followed by China (-67%), India (-56%), and Brazil (-52%).

Quite an interesting article in Chemical and Engineering News on how EU membership has helped the former Soviet states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

An excerpt:

Although Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are often grouped together, the nations speak different languages, and before being absorbed behind the iron curtain after World War II, they did not share the same geopolitical past. Estonia and Latvia spent all but 30 of the past 800 years occupied by Swedes, Germans, and Russians. On the other hand, Lithuania shared political power in Europe with Poland during parts of the past millennia.

Latvia hosted one of the Soviet Union’s most prestigious chemical research institutes, called the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis (IOS). Its laboratories were responsible for developing some 17 new drugs and, in total, producing some 25% of drugs taken in the Soviet Union. In particular, the Riga-based institute developed the cardiovascular drug Mildronate and the anticancer drug Ftorafur, both of which remain on the market today.

“The Soviet system was too big to manage science carefully,” says Margus Lopp, the chair of organic chemistry at Tallinn Technical University, in Estonia. “So many scientists were free to do what they wanted.” But Lopp suffers no nostalgia for the old system either.

Although he did the research he wanted, Lopp says he felt a frustrating isolation. “During the Soviet times we only published three times in Western journals. To get permission to do so, we had to write to Moscow and say that the research wasn’t good enough to publish in Russian journals.” It’s a prime example of “the madness of the system,” Lopp says, “because, of course, it was our most interesting work.”