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Richard Solash

Also by Richard Solash

March 15, 2012
U.S. Senate Mulls Jackson-Vanik Repeal

The U.S. Senate Committee on Finance has held a hearing to consider the permanent normalization of trade with Russia, a move that the Obama administration and business leaders are pushing for but which raises the sensitive issue of Moscow's human rights record.
March 13, 2012
U.S. Envoy Cites 'Real Politics In Russia'

Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, says there is "real politics in Russia again."
March 09, 2012
Pakistan ISI Chief Replaced

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's office announced that Zaheer-ul-Islam will be the new head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, replacing Ahmad Shuja Pasha, whose departure is likely to come as a relief to the U.S. intelligence community.
March 02, 2012
Tech Boost Arms Citizens To Monitor Russian, Other Votes

Russia's parliamentary elections showed how ordinary citizens can bypass official election observers by using new technologies to take vote monitoring into their own hands. The upcoming presidential vote will be a test of that experience.
February 24, 2012
Digital Innovators Help Plan Russia Protest

A website pairs social media and online mapping tools to allow participants to "check in" during an opposition demonstration in Moscow, highlighting the increasingly creative use of internet-based technology in Russia's protest wave.
February 17, 2012
Russia Said To Block U.S. Drug Plan

Russia has reportedly blocked a U.S. plan designed to help stem the flow of drugs from Afghanistan through Central Asia, a sign of continued wariness in Moscow about Washington's intentions in a region often thought of as "Russia's backyard."
February 15, 2012
U.S., Pakistan Relations 'Burdened'

Pakistan's newly appointed ambassador to the United States says relations between the uneasy allies are "burdened by too many expectations and invested with an inordinately high wattage of emotion."
January 31, 2012
Kazakh Pledges 'Largely Unmet'

A high-ranking U.S. State Department official says at an event to mark two decades of Kazakh independence that Kazakhstan's promises to reform its political system and uphold human rights remain "largely unmet."
January 27, 2012
Central Asia Bottom Of Environment Index

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iraq -- countries that have long occupied the lower rungs on corruption and freedoms rankings -- now have another disappointing evaluation to add to this list: they're positioned at the very bottom of the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI).
January 19, 2012
U.S. Alleges Iran-Syria Wrongdoing

U.S. officials say they have uncovered an effort by Iran to help its close ally, Syria, evade U.S. sanctions on its petroleum sector.
January 18, 2012
Experts Unconvinced By Trailer Claiming Secret U.S.-Yugoslav Space Pact

A provocative trailer for a new film appeared on the Internet recently, claiming that Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito secretly tried to bring his country into the space race during the 1950s and '60s and even sold research to the United States that helped it send a man to the moon.
January 10, 2012
New Genome Decoder Holds Promise, Raises Ethics Questions

A U.S. biotechnology company has begun taking orders for a device that can inexpensively decode a person's full genetic makeup in just one day. But while researchers are hailing its potential to accelerate disease research and enable individually tailored medical treatment, the machine also raises serious questions about personal privacy.
December 29, 2011
U.S. Envoy To Baku Leaving Post

Matthew Bryza, the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan who has faced stiff opposition, is heading back to Washington following the U.S. Senate's decision to go into recess without voting on his appointment.
December 29, 2011
Year In Review: Highlights In Science And Technology

Are physicists close to finding the "God particle?" Is there a speed faster than the speed of light? And could the Earth have a twin planet? Researchers were hot on the trail of those questions during the past year in science.
December 26, 2011
Emigres, Defectors Remember Watching U.S.S.R.'s Collapse

For those who lived through it, the disintegration of the Soviet Union generated feelings ranging from shock, to fear, to hope. But thousands of miles from Moscow, the former Soviet citizens who had managed to emigrate also experienced the fall of an empire -- albeit from afar.
December 14, 2011
U.S. Weighs Jackson-Vanik Repeal

U.S. officials have pushed Congress to repeal the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik Amendment, long used as a tool to push Russia on human rights issues. But in doing so, they tiptoed around proposed legislation concerning the death of Russian anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky that many senators favor to hold Moscow accountable on rights.
December 12, 2011
Lugar: Arab Spring Fueled Russia Demos

The top Republican lawmaker on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee says the protests taking place in Russia against the ruling power in the Kremlin have been influenced by the Arab Spring and online social-media networks.
December 08, 2011
The Consequences Of Hiding From History

Twenty years ago today, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was declared. In a new book, journalist David Satter argues that the continuing failure to understand the roots of communism’s human tragedy reinforces the authoritarianism of Russia’s government today.
December 01, 2011
Survey Finds Endemic Corruption

Corruption in politics and the public sector has become increasingly entrenched in the world, helping to fuel a year of unprecedented protest. That's according to the latest report from the watchdog group Transparency International, which tracks perceived levels of corruption in 182 nations.
November 22, 2011
U.S. Halts CFE Sharing With Russia

The United States has announced that it will not allow Russian inspections of U.S. bases or share data with Russia on its nonnuclear weapons stores in Europe after years of failed efforts to revitalize a Cold War-era arms treaty.

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