world in news

sometimes it's really hard to figure out what's going on on this planet. In the continuous stream of news pouring down one's mind from TV, internet etc. the most challnenging task is to decide what news actually deserve attention. Here's what has stuck to my mind today:

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's center-right government won its second term Tuesday, with 84 percent of the votes counted, as Danes embraced its plans to keep immigration in check and taxes from rising.(read more...)

Is it just an abberation or a growing trend?

Unidentified persons have demanded ransom for an Israeli businessman they had kidnapped in St. Petersburg, the Interfax news agency reports. (read more...)

The thing is that he was kidnapped in the broad daylight, forcibly put in the car on the St. Petersburg's main street. I guess the Man on Fire might as well have been made in Russia.

A pilot project of the Leningrad military district. Draftees are sent to a sanatorium on the Finnish Gulf coast in order to gain weight. Ever fifth soldier in Russia suffer from malnutrition and must be fed before they're able to serve. (read more (in Russian)...).

I am not quite sure what to make of it. Well, I'd rather save the bathos (the country that defeated fascism has been brought to this by the capitalist liberal reformers and so on).
But I reckon some Canadian soldiers may be willing to trade places with their Russian counterparts. Too bad Russia isn't in NATO...