S. KOREA: South Korea, U.S. Start Military Exercises

03.07.10, 09:30 PM EST

By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea and the U.S. kicked off annual military exercises Monday, a day after North Korea denounced the training as a rehearsal for invasion and threatened to attack the allies.

About 18,000 American soldiers and an undisclosed number of South Korean troops are taking part in 11 days of drills across South Korea, according to U.S. and South Korean militaries.

The exercises, dubbed Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, are aimed at rehearsing how to deploy U.S. reinforcements in time of an emergency on the Korean peninsula, U.S. military spokesman Kim Yong-kyu said.

The U.S. and South Korea argue the drills - which include live-firing by U.S. Marines, aerial attack drills and urban warfare training - are purely defensive. North Korea claims they amount to attack preparations and has demanded they be canceled.

The North's military warned Sunday that it would bolster its nuclear capability and break off dialogue with the U.S. in response to the drills.

It also said it would use unspecified "merciless physical force" to cope with them, saying it is no longer bound by the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea's military has been closely monitoring Pyongyang's maneuvers but hasn't seen any signs of suspicious activities by North Korean troops, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday.

Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, dismissed North Korea's statement as rhetoric. "The North's strong protest is not unusual as it also protested during previous drills," he said.

The training comes as the U.S. and other regional powers are pushing for the North to rejoin international disarmament talks on ending its atomic weapons program in return for aid. The North quit the six-nation weapons talks and conducted its second nuclear test last year, drawing tighter U.N. sanctions.

The North has demanded a lifting of the sanctions and peace talks with the U.S. on formally ending the Korean War before it returns to the negotiations. The U.S. and South Korea have responded the North must first return to the disarmament talks and make progress on denuclearization.

The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea.

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Associated Press writer Kwang-tae Kim contributed to this report.

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RUSSIA: On this day: 8 March

President Reagan delivers "Evil Empire" speech.

On 8 March 1983, in his speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Ronald Reagan introduced the term “evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union.

Reagan exhorted the audience to “pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness – pray they will discover the joy of knowing God.” He subjected the Soviet leaders to criticism, as the embodiment of the “darkness” and reproached the “aggressive impulses of the evil empire.”

The Soviet Union, for its part, accused the United States of being the center of imperialism, holding out for world domination; it was the Soviets’ duty to fight this in the name of communism.

In Moscow, the Soviet press agency TASS said the use of the words “evil empire” only proved that the Reagan administration “can think only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anti-Communism.”

Reagan, however, genuinely believed that all he had done was call a spade a spade, the only right thing to do under the circumstances; any euphemisms would signal the concession of the free world to totalitarianism. His approach to the problem was vastly supported by conservatives, but was showered with criticism by pacifists. The latter viewed such an attitude as perfectly capable of triggering a nuclear war between the two superpowers.

The “evil empire” concept received a warm welcome in Europe, threatened by the strengthening of the Soviet foreign and domestic policies that General Secretary Yury Andropov* brought with him. In the USSR, Reagan’s formula was favored by the dissident movement, and particularly, by the academician Andrey Sakharov **. It was also popular among Soviet émigrés.

During his second term in office, three years after the phrase “evil empire” had first been pronounced, Reagan paid a visit to the new reformist General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, who took office in 1985. When asked by a reporter whether he still thought the Soviet Union was the “evil empire,” Reagan admitted that he no longer did. The time when he used the term was a “different era,” that is, the period before Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms. Still, throughout his career, Reagan’s antagonism against the Soviet regime, with its absence of democratic institutions, persisted.

*Yury Andropov – General Secretary of the Communist Party from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later. A hardliner and former head of the KGB, he is renowned for his brutal suppression of political dissidence.

**Andrey Sakharov – an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.

RUSSIA: Russian forces kill militants linked to train attack

March 7, 2010 4:36 a.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Train derailment in November 2009 killed 28 people, injured about 90 others
• State media: Official says special operation in Russian republic of Ingushetia
• State media: Official says explosives laboratory, explosives seized in operation

Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- Russian security forces killed eight militants that it said were connected to a 2009 terrorist attack, the head of Russia's domestic security and anti-terrorism agency said Saturday.

The Russian forces also detained 10 militants in connection with the 2009 attack, in a special operation in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia earlier this week, the head of the Russian security agency said.

In a televised meeting on Russia's state media, Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that the operation happened on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Bortnikov said that "DNA tests of the militants have been carried out to establish their involvement" in a November 2009 Moscow to St. Petersburg train derailment that killed 28 people and injured about 90 others.

Following that attack, the Federal Security Service examined this "illegal armed group" in Ingushetia, Bortnikov said, "which was justifiably suspected of this crime."

"Investigative measures helped us obtain more materials confirming this theory," he said.

Among those killed in this week's operation was Alexander Tikhomirov, also known as Said Buryatsky, a prominent rebel leader in Russia's North Caucasus. Russian investigators link Tikhomirov to Chechen separatist leader Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the 2009 train derailment.

According to the state-run RIA Novosti and ITAR TASS news agencies, Bortnikov said that police found an explosives laboratory and seized more than a ton of explosives -- including small arms and ammunition -- at the site of this week's special operation in Ingushetia.

Bortnikov said the site was in Ekazhevo, a village in Ingushetia's Nazran district.

State-run news media reports link Buryatsky's group to other large-scale attacks, including an assassination attempt on Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, in June 2009 and a suicide bombing that killed at least 20 policemen in Ingushetia last August.

CNN's Amir Ahmed contributing to this report.

RELATED TOPICS

• Russia
• Ingushetia
• Dmitry Medvedev

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VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIA: Russians Create Image of Ideal Woman

An ideal woman is a careful mother, a housewife or an attractive mistress

VLADIVOSTOK, March 7, vladivostoktimes.com Russian people create an image of an ideal woman and chose the main features of her. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) reported it and presented the information about what qualities, according to Russians, an ideal mother, wife, mistress, lady friend, lady colleague, and lady boss should have.

Woman image is very diverse among Russians.

Thus, a good mother should be

• careful (67%)
• domestic (66%)
• intelligent (37%)
• she should have the ability to overcome miseries (39%)
• empathize (35%)

An ideal wife should be

• domestic (61%)
• faithful and intelligent (47% each)

The image of an ideal mistress is different: she should be

• attractive and sexy (49% each)
• hot (30%)

Woman friend should be

• empathetic (49%)
• decent (42%)
• intelligent (35%)

The main quality for lady boss and lady colleague is

• intelligence (60% and 46% respectively)
• organized nature (47% and 46% respectively)

For lady boss ambition is more important than decency (41% and 31% respectively) but for lady colleague it is vice versa (31% and 41% respectively).

In comparison with the year 2001 Russians appreciate more

• domesticity (from 56 to 66%)
• ability to overcome miseries (from 32 to 39%)
• empathy (from 28 to 35%)

in mothers

• domesticity (from 47 to 61%)

in wives

• decency (from 20 to 31%)

in lady boss

• ability to make money (from 12 to 23%)

in lady colleague.

Less important qualities are mistress’ temperament (from 39 to 30%), lady boss’ appearance (from 22 to 15%) and lady friend’s faithfulness (from 40 to 29%).

For men a woman’s appearance is very important but they appreciate less

• carefulness in mothers (62 and 71% respectively)
• ability to overcome miseries (36 and 42% respectively)
• and ability to make money (8 and 13% respectively).

A wife’s appearance is more important for men than for women (36 and 28% respectively), the same thing about a mistress (53 and 45% respectively), and lady colleague (20 and 14% respectively).

But women appreciate more than men decency and empathy of both lady friend (37 and 47% respectively, 41 and 54% respectively) and lady colleague (37 and 49% respectively, 11 and 19% respectively).

The research was made by VCIOM on February 27-28 of the year 2010. The respondents were 1600 people from 140 cities and villages in 42 areas, territories and republics of Russia. Statistical error is not more than 3.4%.

View Vladivostok Times Article