Sharapova wins Madrid Open title

Maria Sharapova fought back to defeat Simona Halep 1-6, 6-2, 6-3 on Sunday to win her second clay title of the season at the Madrid Open, AFP reports. The Russian eighth seed, who also claimed a third straight victory last month in Stuttgart, improved to 3-0 over Romanian fourth seed Halep and 16-4 at the event where she lost the final a year ago to Serena Williams. Sharapova will rise to seventh in the rankings as a result of her 31st career trophy. Eight of her last ten titles have come on clay. Source: Article

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Russia could overrun Ukraine in 3-5 days: NATO

Russia has massed all the forces it needs on Ukraine’s border if it were to decide to carry out an “incursion” into the country and it could achieve its objective in three to five days, NATO’s top military commander said on Wednesday.

Calling the situation “incredibly concerning”, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said NATO had spotted signs of movement by a very small part of the Russian force overnight but had no indication that it was returning to barracks. Russia’s seizure and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region has caused the deepest crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War, leading the United States and Europe to impose sanctions on Moscow. They have said they will strengthen those sanctions if Russia moves beyond Crimea into east Ukraine. NATO military chiefs are concerned that the Russian force on the Ukrainian border, which they estimate stands at 40,000 soldiers, could pose a threat to eastern and southern Ukraine. “This is a very large and very capable and very ready force,” Breedlove said in an interview with Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. The Russian force has aircraft and helicopter support as well as field hospitals and electronic warfare capabilities. “The entire suite that would be required to successfully have an incursion into Ukraine should the decision be made,” Breedlove said. “We think it is ready to go and we think it could accomplish its objectives in between 3 and 5 days if directed to make the actions.” He said Russia could have several potential objectives, including an incursion into southern Ukraine to establish a land corridor to Crimea, pushing beyond Crimea to Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa or even threatening to connect to Transdniestria, the mainly Russian-speaking, separatist region of Moldova. Russia accuses NATO of reverting to Cold War language Russia accused NATO on Wednesday of reverting to the language of the Cold War by suspending cooperation with Moscow, and said neither side would gain from the move. It said the decision by NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday to suspend all practical cooperation with Russia, in protest at its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, created a sense of “deja vu”. “The language of the statements rather resembles the verbal jousting of the ‘Cold War’ era,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement. “It is not hard to imagine who will gain from the suspension of cooperation between Russia and NATO on countering modern threats and challenges to international and European security, in particular in areas such as the fight against terrorism, piracy and natural and man-made disasters.” Source: The Indian Express

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Farce and politics at Ig Nobel ceremony

Harvard University has awarded its 23rd annual batch of Ig Nobel Prizes at a farcical ceremony held in its Sanders Theatre.

Each Ig Nobel distinction comes together with a hammer and 10 trillion toy dollars. This year’s winners include Chinese and Japanese scientists who studied the impact of opera on post-heart-transplant mice, Scottish scientists who assessed probabilities of a grazing cow lying down or standing up, international scientists who discovered astronavigation in dung beetles, American scientists who found out which parts of a shrew cannot be digested by humans, a Russian scientist, named Yuri Ivanenko, who proved that the presence of water would help astronauts walk on the Moon, and, rather unexpectedly, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who outlawed public applause. This story dates from 2011, when Belarusian pro-democracy activists loudly clapped hands in the streets to protest against some of his controversial policies. Ridiculously, the people detained for clapping hands included Belarusian journalist Pavel Sheremet, who has only one hand. Alexander Lukashenko was the only Ig Nobel winner who did not turn up for this year’s award ceremony. Although ridiculous, Ig Nobel prizes sometimes turn out to be excellent predictors of scientific breakthroughs. Many years ago, Russian-born physicists Drs Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won Ig Nobels for studying the behavior of frozen frogs in magnetic fields and for scrutinizing marks left by cylindrical graphite rods rolled against sticky tape. In 2010, these guys won the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering graphene, a monomolecular carbon film promising breakthroughs in microelectronic technology. Source: Article

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Ice Hockey World Championship in Belarus 2014

In January 2012, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko signed a decree according to which for the official world championship and set foreign tourists visa-free entry to the territory of Belarus in the period from 25 April to 31 May 2014. The basis for the visa waiver for tourists is the presence of the original or an electronic ticket to the championship matches. The official mascot of the World Cup Hockey 2014 became bison named Volat playing hockey. During the tournament officials and participants will receive a free travel on public transport, while fans will have to pay the full fare . At the time the championship will operate 12-13 additional public transport routes for communication hockey arenas with hotels and hostels. September 30, 2013 were announced ticket prices for all matches of the World Cup and for different tickets. Tickets for the group stage games range in price from 78 to 650 thousand rubles (from 6 to 50 euros) depending on the location of the place and the rating game. Tickets for the final game - from 780,000 to 5.2 million (from 64 to 424 euros). For arranging accommodation in Minsk was initiated reconstruction of existing and construction of new hotels . Also part of the fans will be located in the university dorms , because of what may be shortened school year. Total expected to arrive up to 20 thousand people. According to the latest information apartment prices in Minsk will increase up to 3 times during the championship: Source: Article

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Has there been a fraud during Russian Elections?

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By Ricardo Young, The elections in Russia came to and end but now some of the monitors report that there were serious problems that they observed during the vote over this weekend and that they feel that there maybe some electoral violations. That found response among the protesters who are now planning to organize another rally against Vladimir Putin, who won the election. We will discuss this and other related issues with Vyacheslav Tetyokin, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and a Member of Parliament, and Sergey Markov, the Putin Representative for the March 4th election. Tags: Russian presidential election 2012, Russian presidential election 2012, Commentary, Politics, World, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Russia to introduce luxury tax

By Lada Korotun, Whether or not “luxury tax” should be introduced is one of the most hotly debated topics in Russian society these days. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed to impose a tax on expensive properties, large estates, aircraft, expensive yachts and luxury cars. The relevant draft bill will be submitted to the Lower House of Russia’s parliament next year.The key problem facing the MPs is to determine precisely who should pay this tax. They have to decide who is rich and who is simply well off. Is there a possibility that the middle classes will fall victim to the new law? The head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Alexander Shokhin believes first of all, one of the taxes that need to be introduced is a tax on the real estate a person owns.Tags: luxury , Commentary, Society, taxes, Russia, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Part of Antarctica to be named Queen Elizabeth Land

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The British Government thought long and hard about what to give the Queen as a Diamond Jubilee gift. The cabinet gave her a set of place mats decorated with pictures of Buckingham Palace, but the Foreign Office have been a bit more imaginative. They've named a large piece of Antarctica Queen Elizabeth Land - an area twice the size of the UK. Professor Julian Dowdeswell is the Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University. Of course, Queen Land is ice for the most part. And, in fact, the two edges of it converge on the South Pole. The both of it is covered by ice up to about 3,5 km in thickness, but there’re also several mounting ranges that also poke their way through to the surface. In some areas there are mountains that we call nunataks. And it doesn’t have a coast line, does it? I heard from the reports that it’s one of the most inaccessible spots left on Earth. Yes, that’d be true, partly because that area of Antarctica is covered by sea ice, a very thick sea ice. And it makes it hard for the ships to get there. It was the part of Antarctica that Shackleton was hoping to cross during his expedition when he suggested the first trans-Atlantic crossing 100 years ago. But of course he failed either. And I suppose the other problem for the Queen to get there and have a look at the place is that there’s an international disagreement on whether anybody has a right to claim any portion of Antarctica as a national territory. A number of countries have made claims to parts of Antarctica. Those claims including that of U.K. were held in the bans under the Antarctic Treaty system of which the U.K. is a signatory. I don’t think there’s any kind of immediate controversy about the area. What about the actual registering of that name of maps? Who is likely to adopt it? Will everybody go along with it? Not necessarily. There’s a Place-names Committee for the British Antarctic Territory. And we make a series of recommendations to the commissioner of the British Antarctic Territory who has adopted this suggestion as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. And therefore on British maps the name will appear. There’s no compulsion for any country to use the name at all. The name will also be submitted to the scientific committee on Antarctic research and we hope to adopt it there which will make it more likely for the other countries to use it. I think there’s already a piece of Antarctica which was named after her before she came to the throne. That’s right. It was named in the 1930s by Sir Douglas Mawson. There were also one or two other royal names in Antarctica – Victoria Land is clearly named after Queen Victoria. And there’s Princess Royal Range elsewhere on the British Antarctic Territory. Source: Voice of Russia, 

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Steve Jobs - the genius of inspiration

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Eugeny Hvostik, journalist of the Russian publishing house “Kommersant”: Many experts consider Steve Jobs a software engineering genius but other experts consider him to be just a marketing genius, a person who could inspire other people to create and promote consumer products. Steve Jobs was the genius who could inspire other people to create and promote consumer products and gather talented people around him. Just take Steve Wozniak who created the first Apple computers and Steve Jobs was able to promote and to distribute these computers, even though they were just students at the time. And if we look at the person who is behind the modern Apple design, English designer Jonathan Ive, Steve Jobs promoted him to a Senior Vice-President of Apple industrial design. So, many experts think that Steve Jobs' main success was to create a product not through engineering it but by inspiring people to create a unique philosophy and create a community of people who admire Apple products. Source: Voice of Russia, Image: photobucket.com

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The most scandalous web site

By: Pershkina Anastasiya, The WikiLeaks web site, which appeared in 2010,

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became one of the main sources of scandal in 2011. In some countries its work resulted in the harsh resistance of government organisations which tried to establish control over the Internet and prevent the appearance of similar projects. Court proceedings against the founder of the WikiLeaks and the main informer of the web site caused a sharp and ambiguous response from the public.Experts say that the appearance of WikiLeaks became an important landmark in the history of today’s Internet. Both ordinary users and the authorities started seeing the Internet as an effective instrument of forming public opinion, rather than just a gaming, communication and information resource. With the appearance of WikiLeaks and similar web sites, freedom stopped being the only main characteristic feature of the world net; now it is accompanied by “the truth”, the business development director of the Grotek company Alexander Vlasov believes. Tags: Politics, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange , Commentary, Wikileaks, World, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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The mysterious “dark matter”

By Yelena Kovachich, Recently, a group of scientists from Zurich announced about their discovery that the Sun is surrounded with the so-called “dark matter”. “Dark matter” is a special type of matter, which was discovered (theoretically and hypothetically, because it is not feasible) several decades ago. Its nature still, to a big extent, remains a mystery to scientists.For some people, the very words “dark matter” sound scary, because they are associated with a certain dark, evil force. Tags: Sun, Russia, World, astronomy, space, Sci-Tech, Opinion & Analysis, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Record 7.5 mln litres of beer consumed at Oktoberfest

More than 7.5 million litres of beer were consumed during the 17-day Oktoberfest in Germany`s Munich.This time the festival attracted some 6.9 million visitors. Source: Voice of Russia. 

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50 years without Marilyn Monroe

Today marks 50 years since the death of Marilyn Monroe, one of the most outstanding actresses of the 20th century. Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson) died on August 5, 1962, reportedly of overdoseof sleeping tablets.The circumstances of her death are, however, have not been cleared up until now. Tags: World, News, Marilyn Monroe, Culture, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Human Immortality by 2045?

Those of us young enough to hang on for another 33 years may be able to extend those three decades into eternity. Of course, you'd have to be okay with living out the rest of your endless days as something better suited to a James Cameron movie. But if transforming into a cybernetic humanoid robot sounds like the thing for you, Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov's 2045 Initiative could use a little help from your personal chequing account in order to fund his dream of humans becoming immortal. The 31-year-old claims he has assembled a team of top scientists to work on the initiative — a six-stage project that would ultimately see our brains housed in a fully functional holographic human avatar by the year 2045. Itskov claims his idea will "free" the majority of people on the planet from "disease, old age and even death" through advanced neuroscience, nanotechnology and android robotics. Source: Article

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The interview that wasn't

By: Mikhail Aristov, The Voice of America radio station has apologized for what turned out to be a fake interview with a well-known Russian blogger and prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, after Navalny himself said that he had given no such interview.Two years ago, Navalny became widely popular across the Russian blogosphere as a vehement anti-corruption campaigner. He posted a lot of sharp and witty comments on political and economic matters, with many

now seeing him as less of a blogger and more of a politician. Navalny was one of the organizers of the post-election opposition rallies which took place in Russia in December. Tags: Alexei Navalny, mass media, Russia, World, Society, Commentary, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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No Internet censorship in Russia – official

The Deputy Russian Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications, Alexei Volsky, feels that the law on the websites that will be blacklisted, as it were, is full of drawbacks, but will not result in Internet censorship.The law had a good idea of protecting children, but the idea was distorted when translated into life, Volsky said when interviewed live by the Ekho Moskvy radio. According to Volin, the main problem is that the amendment was adopted without prior consultations with Internet providers. That some websites will be blocked does not mean that the government will censor the Internet, the Deputy Russian Communications Minister pointed out. Tags: internet, censorship, Russia, Society, News, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Male contraceptive and male fertility problems solved on gene level

By Yulia Monakhova , Maria Dunayeva, A gene vital for a final stage of sperm genesis has been recently discovered by the researchers at the Centre for Reproductive Health, University of Edinburgh. This discovery might lead to development of a male contraceptive, thus excluding women from the privilege of female birth control pills. This discovery, which might change our perspective on contraceptives, was actually made accidently. The scientists were researching possible causes of male infertility in mice. They altered the genetic code of the animal to see which one affected their reproduction system. They discovered that those who had a dysfunctional gene Katnal1 could not reproduce. Results were published in May issue of PLoS Genetics scientific magazine.Tags: World, medicine, Commentary, Sci-Tech, scientific researches, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Flight to Mars possible in the first half of 21st century – academician

A flight to Mars may take place in the first half of the 21st century, Russian Academy of Sciences Vice-President, academic chief of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems Anatoly Grigoryev said at an international symposium dedicated to the Mars 500 experiment. The symposium was held at the Russian Academy of Sciences on April 23-25.Humanity has long been dreaming about other planets, and the dream of interplanetary flights may soon come true, the academician said. Tags: News, World, Mars, space, Sci-Tech, Mars 500 experiment, Russia, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Are Americans too dumb for democracy?

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By Kim Brown, Are Americans too dumb for Democracy? – This is the question of the study that was conducted by a group of psychologists after Doctor David Dunning of Cornell University. And this is also a topic of an article that appeared on TheAmerican.com which is the online journal of the American Enterprise Institute written by Lee Harris, who is now on the line with us. Tags: Commentary, democracy, Society, World, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. 

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Picasso's "Seated Woman" auctioned off for $13.4 million

The 1949 oil painting “Seated Woman” by Pablo Picasso was auctioned off Wednesday at Christie’s in London for $13.4 million.The picture was one of the most sought-after works at the auction of impressionist and modern art, where paintings by Renoir, Signac and Gauguin were also on offer. “Seated

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How the lottery works in Russia?

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By: Donna West and Julia Reysner, The Mega Millions lottery jackpot of $656 million dollars is probably still fresh on the minds of our U.S. listeners. Today we’ve decided to take the opportunity to discuss how the lottery works in Russia and the history of gambling in the country. Source: Voice of Russia.

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