Posted by Kris Roman on June 11, 2008
The Russian President says it’s important that the Russian Cyrillic alphabet is used on the internet. Dmitry Medvedev wants urgent action to ensure that domain names on the web are assigned in Cyrillic.
The President made his comments at the Russian Press World Congress in Moscow on Wednesday.
“We should do everything possible to get domain names assigned in Cyrillic characters in the future. This is a serious matter,” he said. He said that it would be symbolic for the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet. “Every technical possibility to strengthen the Russian-language should be used,” Medvedev said.
“We will create different products and spread them in different ways for this purpose.” Digital TV and the move from print media to electronic media are among such products, he added.
Meanwhile, there’s been a lot of discussion in the media and among Russian bloggers about the move to have Cyrillic domains on the internet.
According to the Russian famous computer designer, Artemiy Lebedev, Cyrillic domains can lead to confusion in the internet community. Apart from the fact that some Cyrillic letters look similar to Latin ones, these domains can be used only by users with a Cyrillic keyboard layout.
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Posted by Kris Roman on June 11, 2008
Russia is celebrating the 209th anniversary of the birth of the poet Aleksandr Pushkin.
He is often considered the country’s greatest ever poet. His legacy endures around the world, with around 270 monuments to his literary genius standing in cities throughout the globe.
In Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, there was a festive atmosphere around Pushkin’s statue. Traditional music was played to accompany readings of his poetry. The Russian Embassy helped put the event together, to commemorate a poet who “beautified the world like flowers,” said a representative of the Foreign Ministry.

A bust of the writer stands proudly in a park in central Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. By midday it was already covered in roses and tulips, brought by local schoolchildren. Each child read out a few verses of his poetry – with some trying to outdo each other by seeing who could recite the most by heart. A museum dedicated to the writer, and a nearby estate where he briefly lived, threw open their doors to the public for the day.
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Posted by Kris Roman on June 4, 2008
The residents of a remote Siberian village have adopted 47 orphans in a bid to keep their community alive. For about 30 years Barkhatovo had been slowly dying. Local children left in droves for a better life in the big cities.

But things began to change when local woman Tatyana Fadushina came up with an idea to beat her loneliness. She adopted an 11-year-old boy from an orphanage.
It was a great success. So, a year later another child came to live under the same roof. Six more followed, until Tatyana became the mother of eight children.
Her friends saw the benefits of having young people around and began to follow her example. Nina Krasnova adopted six kids and Lidya Bondareva gave shelter to another four. Now the village of Barkhatovo is full of life and hope. It’s become famous in the Topkinsky district, where other villages are starting to adopt orphans.
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