Month: November 2011

News

Passengers Asked to Help Airline Purchase Return Fuel.

Charter airline Comtel stranded hundreds of its own passengers on the runway in Amritsar, India, asking them for money to help pay for the cost of refueling. Passengers would not be allowed to leave until they gave the airline another $200 or about 10,000 rupees. This was not the first time Comtel extorted its customers […]

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News

iPhone Top Business Phone Ahead of Blackberry.

From ZDNet:   “While for the same third-quarter in 2010 when the iPhone’s share of the market was just over 31 percent, the BlackBerry in this past quarter dropped to just 32 percent. The iPhone excelled this past quarter by significantly increasing its enterprise user share to 45 percent. Android nearly doubled its share from last year, […]

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News

Oppression in Belarus Akin to Soviet Era: Aleksandr Lukashenko Europe’s Last Stalinist Dictator.

Without a doubt, Belarus is Europe’s most oppressive state with regards to civil and personal liberties. While many like to point to Putin’s Russia as an example of an emerging dictatorship, it is rather in the Soviet relic of Belarus that one will find an old school, Stalinist dictator in the form of Aleksandr Lukashenko. […]

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News

Russian General Nikolai Makarov Warns of Potential Increase in Conflicts with Russia’s Neighbors.

In an address meant to warn NATO away from further expansion eastward, Russian General Nikolai Makarov lamented the unfortunate situation likely in the future in which Russia sees increased conflicts and tensions with her neighbors. Not only does Russia see these conflicts as increasing in number but also in scope, with some even potentially involving […]

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News

Bond Prices on the Rise in Europe as Fears of Contagion Spread Across the Euro Zone.

European Commission President Manuel Barroso says that the euro zone is facing a “systemic crisis,” while Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean Claude Junker reiterated his call for the formation of euro bonds to save the continent from economic calamity. The interest rates on bonds rose dramatically in France, Belgium, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands, demonstrating lack […]

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News

Oscar Ortega-Hernandez Charged with Assassination Attempt on U.S. President Barack Obama.

Oscar Ortega-Hernandez, a 21 year-old from Idaho Falls, Idaho, has been charged with the attempted assassination of President Barack Obama. If convicted of the charges he could face life in prison. Ortega-Hernandez claimed Obama was the anti-Christ and was apprehended in western Pennsylvania after abandoning his vehicle by the National Institute of Peace back in […]

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News

Vladimir Putin Wins China’s Confucius Prize for Keeping World Peace.

China’s version of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Confucius Peace Prize, was awarded to current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for his efforts at keeping world peace. The former Russian president beat out German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Yuan Longping, an “agricultural scientist.” The prize’s administration is overseen by an association under the control of […]

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News

The Rise of Qatar: How a Tiny Emirate in the Middle East is Turning the Arab Spring to Its Advantage.

Qatar is probably best known in the west as the home of media outlet Al Jazeera and perhaps secondly as a less grand, Dubai-esque sheikdom in the Middle East. Recent events in the Middle East such as the uprising against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the fall of Qaddafi in Libya and the toppling of Mubarak […]

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News

Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in Africa: Scaling Back Expectations?

The Arab Spring has unsettled more than just the political establishment in the Middle East with dictators in Africa falling to change as well. Events like the fall of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime and Michael Sata’s ascendency in Zambia have upset the traditional stability African leadership has enjoyed for decades – a stability that is both […]

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News

State Capitalism: Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

Ten years after China’s official emergence as a world economic super power with its joining the World Trade Organisation, Chinese state-owned industries are still as powerful and influential as ever. This heavy involvement on the part of the Chinese state in its economy is a source of criticism against the regime for many of its […]

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