The city of Puebla, 120 km east of Mexico City, has inaugurated a taxi service for women by women who drive pink cars. In Puebla the drivers undertake 160 hours of first aid and self-defense training before they can drive a pink taxi. Their passengers can preen themselves in two mirrors in the back seat and drive in the knowledge that their whereabouts are tracked by GPS, reports Le Monde. Fares are about 10 percent higher than usual.
Other cities in addition to Mexico City are studying the concept with a view to copying it. Dubai and Moscow already have women-only taxis, reports the Korea Times, which says that Seoul is to introduce the concept in December 2009.
In 2008, 87 women reported being raped in taxis in Mexico City and a woman is murdered every six hours country-wide.
Shabtai Kalmanovich, who was accused of spying for the KGB in Israel in 1988 after 17 years in the country to which he had emigrated, was killed after being shot in central Moscow Monday 2 November. The Lithuanian-born Kalmanovich was shot more than 20 times by a passing car, according to Russian media, and his driver sustained serious injuries. Kalmanovich moved to Russia in 1993 after being given a medical pardon in Israel, and he became a successful businessman who owned a women’s basketball team and organized major international concerts, among other ventures.
Links to other sites: Jerusalem Post, Moscow Times, Novosti
Foreigners in Moscow are shying away from luxury apartments, while the number of Russians taking them has tripled, reports the Moscow Times, while noting that foreign companies with offices in the city are shocked at sudden unexplained increases of up to 50 percent in their rent. “Elite” apartments still have a majority of foreigners living in them, says the newspaper, but the number has fallen by 18 percent in the first nine months of 2009, a change attributed to foreign companies pulling out top expatriate managers because of the economic crisis. Top apartments, which start at $10,000 a month, remain in demand.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on his weekly radio show Sunday 13 September that his government was buying 92 Russian T-72 tanks and several Russian S-300 surface-to-air (SAM) missile systems. Chavez was in Moscow, Russia a week ago. Venezuela views neighbouring Colombia’s efforts to upgrade its military relationship with the US, including a standing US military presence in Colombia, as potentially a first step in a US intervention in Venezuela.
The S-300 system is considered one of the best in the world and has been deployed in several countries. The US bought one for evaluation.
He said Russia was lending the government $2.2. billion to make the purchase. A consortium of Russian oil companies has paid Venezuela $1b for access to Venezuela’s Orinoco oil fields, the Venezuelan oil company PdVSA announced. BBC, El Nacional, El Tiempo
US President Barack Obama made a key speech on future US-Russian relations at a graduation ceremony at Moscow’s New Economic School where he drew a line between past generations, children of the Cold War, and the new one, focused less on battles and nuclear arms. “The future belongs to young people with an education and imagination to create. That is the source of power in this century”, he told the students. Canada Free Press, Christian Science Monitor, Moscow Times, NPR and full transcript of the speech
Russian and US presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama have agreed, during a meeting in Moscow 6 July, to reduce “the number of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,500-1,675 from levels above 2,200″, reports Reuters, and Russia agreed to allow US troops en route to Afghanistan to fly over its territory. Obama Wednesday 7 July meets Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom he referred to before his trip as still having one foot in the cold war. Major US companies traveling with the americaqn president to boost trade with Russia include Deere & Co, PepsiCo and Boeing. Moscow Times, Washington Post
Russian signed the European Social Charter 20 May, a fact that excited little media attention elsewhere in Europe, but in Moscow it is stirring up the public because it may force the government to offer sex education courses to young people. The Moscow Times reports that there is little such education and according to one government official not a single textbook mentions the word condom. Groups of parents are, however, protesting plans to start teaching children about sex at ages 11-12. The country has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV infection among young people, according to the Times.
Russian government officials revoked the diplomatic accreditation of two Canadian diplomats working in Nato’s Moscow office. This action was in response to the dismissal of two Russian envoys working in Nato’s headquarters in Brussels. The diplomatic quarrel stems from Nato’s military exercises in Georgia that the Russians see as a provocation, according to a BBC report.
Russia ended its more than 10-year counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya in an attempt to restore and develop the economic and social infrastructure, according to a BBC report. Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin President Ramzan Kadyrov has helped to stabilize the country, according to Moscow. Human rights groups accuse his militias of abuse. Al Jazeera
Elise Andre (photo: Interpol), click on image to view larger
Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Elise, a three-year-old who was kidnapped Friday in Arles, southern France, as she returned from school with her father, is still being sought by Interpol with police in France, Switzerland and Russia. TSR carries a headline, “confusion reigns,” with Russian authorities saying the girl is not, to their knowledge, in Russia, after they were reported by Russian media over the weekend as saying she was there.
The former deputy mayor of Grozny, Gelani Shapiyev, was shot three times in the head and killed, outside his apartment building in an “affluent” neighbourhood in western Moscow, near the Krylatskaya metro station. He is the third former Chechan official to be shot in three years on the streets of Moscow, according to the Moscow Times.
When Russian dissident writer Alexander Sozhenitsyn died in August 2008 the Russian president suggested that Moscow should name a street after him. The street where he was born is now changing its name for what would have been the writer’s 90th birthday, but residents and companies are grumbling about the inconvenience.
The funeral of Russian Orthodox patriarch Alexiy II takes place today, 9 December, in Moscow, and Russian media are canceling entertainment programmes to broadcast the funeral. Some 80,000 people have marched past the coffin since he died 5 December, the BBC quotes Moscow police as saying. The Moscow Times reports that traffic came to a standstill Monday and that people are being urged to use public transport today to attend the funeral.
