Zimbabwe Minister of Education David Coltart is unequivocally on a mission. And his mission is particularly unique here in Zim – it is supported on both (if not more) sides of the proverbial aisle. It is common knowledge that education is a pillar of infrastructural stability, allowing a nation and its respective citizenry to develop [...]
Blackrock, the world’s largest money manager, today warned that “resource nationalism” was a growing trend, on the rise globally. Their investment chief for natural resources, Evy Hambro, particularly singled out the regimes of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as extreme examples of government intervention, ultimately hinderances to foreign investment. “We’re seeing a [...]
Foreign policy used to be a craft practised by diplomats and statesmen. No longer.
TASHKENT – Tuesday, October 18, 2011 – The latest in a series of corruption scandals in Uzbekistan is only a symptom of a much more widespread malaise, experts say. The state news agency carried a report on Tashkent airport last week, saying some of the staff there had been convicted of extortion and forgery. Reports [...]
Sir Richard Branson recently denied a report in a leaked US embassy cable that he bankrolled a diplomatic effort to sweeten the exit of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, writes Alex Duval Smith in the Independent. A confidential memo released by Wikileaks says that in July 2007, Branson was due to hold a secret meeting with South [...]
It’s grape-harvesting season in the region of Kakheti, the sun-dappled epicenter of Georgian winemaking, and 57-year-old village potter Remi Kbilashvili is busy working with the latest hope for Georgia’s success in international wine markets — a giant, terra-cotta amphora or kvevri. The kvevri method for fermenting and aging wine, a millennia-old tradition in Georgia, is [...]
Polish rural communities largely depend on low-cost but dirty coal for their heating, but under pressure from Brussels to provide cleaner energy, Warsaw is proposing controversial shale gas wells as an alternative. “In small villages, each house has its own individual heating system – mostly based on coal – because access to other [heating sources] [...]
TBILISI— Free Democrats City Council Vice-Chairman visited the sprawling new Saburtalo headquarters of the Bank of Georgia on Tuesday to send a warning to the monopoly Georgia Water and Power that they had better not raise water prices on hard-pressed Tbilisi citizens. “For more than a month I have been seeking answers about what was [...]
Russian court officers raided BP PLC’s Moscow office on Wednesday seeking documents in a court case related to the British oil giant’s failed Arctic deal with OAO Rosneft, raising the pressure on BP just a day after Rosneft said it would work on the project with Exxon Mobil Corp. Gregory L. White And Guy Chazan document that [...]
Free Democrats leader Irakli Alasania recently released an open letter addressed to Georgian Prime Minister Nika Gilauri raising questions and requesting guarantees about the Georgian government’s plans for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of 20-25 percent of the shares of strategically-vital companies. As a party committed to free markets as well as the protection of fundamental [...]
