Pinchuk told a news conference that he had been planning to invite McCartney since the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine, which was followed by mass protests known as the ‘orange revolution’ that brought a pro-Western government to power.

The news conference also included a recorded video message from McCartney, who invited Ukrainians to the concert.

McCartney, 60, recently announced his intention to go on another world tour. He was involved in a high-profile divorce case last month.

After the signing ceremony, the outgoing Russian leader told reporters: “We are satisfied with the way we have resolved this problem. I am absolutely convinced that the scheme we have arrived at will benefit both the Russian and the Libyan economies, as well as the Russian and the Libyan people.”

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who accompanied Putin on his visit to the North African state, told reporters that the size of Libya’s debt to Russia had been brought down by $100 million from $4.6 billion to take into account Russian state bank VTB’s debt to Libyan companies.

The deals signed include a $3.5-billion contract for rail monopoly Russian Railways to build a 500-km (310-mile) section from the city of Sirte to Benghazi, Putin said.

Kudrin said 70% of the equipment and steel products required for the project would, under the contract, be supplied by Russian companies.

Another major deal was closed between Russian natural gas giant Gazprom and Libya’s National Oil Corporation to set up a joint venture to engage in both upstream and downstream oil and gas operations.

Kudrin said the Soviet-era debt had hampered bilateral economic cooperation, whereas now the hurdles would be removed, adding Russia’s position in Libya had grown stronger.

The two countries also signed a military cooperation agreement.

The parties announced their intention to strengthen cooperation in the areas of national security and defense, particularly through closer ties between the bodies involved.

Russia and Libya also agreed to collaborate in arms control measures, nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, to boost efforts to turn the Middle East into a zone free of weapons of mass destruction and to reduce military operations in the Mediterranean in order to make it a region of peace, stability and cooperation.

Moscow and Tripoli pledged to coordinate their efforts to prevent and resolve armed conflicts in certain African regions and facilitate post-conflict revival.

Libya’s main weapons supplier during the Cold War, Russia is trying to regain its position in the country.

Earlier reports said Russia had hoped to sign arms contracts worth some $3 billion with Libya, selling 12 of the latest Su-35 Flanker multi-role fighter and Tor-M2E short-range missile systems, and offering spare parts and maintenance services for Soviet-era military hardware.

Libya’s ties with the West have improved since the UN lifted sanctions against Libya in 2003 after Qaddafi announced he would halt the country’s nuclear weapons program and later accepted responsibility for the 1998 terrorist bombing over Lockerbie in Scotland, agreeing to pay compensation to the victims’ families.

Russia’s president arrived in Tripoli on Wednesday for a two-day visit. This evening he left for Sardinia, to meet with Italian incoming-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

“During the flights the crews develop their flying skills in northern latitudes, over unmarked terrain,” Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky said.

He said the crews also perfect their in-flight refueling techniques, allowing the bombers to remain in the air for more than 24 hours and is considered extremely difficult “especially when the Russian planes are accompanied by NATO interceptors.”

“All Russian Air Force flights are performed…in strict accordance with international rules on the use of airspace over neutral waters without violating the borders of other states,” he also said.

Although it was common practice during the Cold War for both the U.S. and the Soviet Union to keep nuclear strategic bombers permanently airborne, the Kremlin cut long-range patrols in 1992. The decision came as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the ensuing economic and political chaos.

However, the newly-resurgent Russia, awash with petrodollars, has invested heavily in military technology, and the resumption of long-range patrols is widely seen among political commentators as another sign of its drive to assert itself both militarily and politically.

The reason I decided to shed some light on my personality is that Fuelmyblog guys announced a new competion, and the competion topic hooked me – it’s about first 5 minutes of my working day. Turns out that this invaluable information is of much interest to Tsheets. Who are Tsheets?

Here:

Tsheets is a web-based timesheet system that turns ANY PC or mobile device into a time clock, that is ideal for tracking hourly time for employees, salaried employees, contractors, or your own time.

At first look, their site looks swell – it’s both sophisticated and well organized, usability is top notch – everything is absolutely clear and it’s place. I registered for a free trial – I’ve choosen Business type to be able to track multiple employees, but I’m inclined to register a Personal type account as well for a single user, thatis myself – gotta organize things and see how much time I waste unroductively…

Back to business type full functional account – as promised, no credit card info was asked, and that’s good, cause I’m REAL tired of my CC info being required at every corenr. A wizard guided me through setup process easily and now I’ll be adding my employees to evaluate full functionality of the system.

OK, so back to the fun part of it – my first 5 minutes of working day.

here it comes:

1. On the way from office entry door to my desk I pass by out teapot and switch it on – a cup of hot tea is absolutely necessary to put me into right mood.
2. Once at my desk, I switch computer on and hit “get new mail” in my The Bat! mailer.
3. While The Bat! downloads 200+ messages of SPAM and occasional letters of interest, I turn to my table Gary Larson 365-days calendar, tear off yesterday’s sheet and giggle at today’s cartoon. This puts me into excellent mood.
4. Still giggling at Larson’s wicked humor, I pour myself a cup of tea and get to sort through 200+ emails I’ve downloaded by this moment. I flag important ones and postpone it for later study, and turn to couple of mailing list digests I’m subscribed to (professional and fun).
5. I browse through mail and comment on most interesting moments aloud so my fellow colleagues could also…

Wait! Aren’t 5 minutes over already? Yeah right…

So what’s the summary of first 5 minutes of my working day? As always, I managed to put myself into positive uplifting mood and made myself ready to fight challenges new working day will sure impose of me.

I’ll be much curious to read summary of other folks first 5 minutes at Fuelmyblog page.

The scheme envisions that overall domestic demand for electricity will increase 4 percent per year, and outlines plans to construct at least four nuclear plants in the Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk and Yaroslavl or Kostroma regions.

Russia currently operates ten nuclear power plants with total capacity of 23.242 GW.

Under the base scenario, output from the nuclear sector will double by 2020 and output from hydroelectric stations will increase 60 percent. At the same time, Russia will need to invest over $282 billion in the construction of power plants by 2015, and $204 billion in 2016-2020.

Russia’s electric power sector has undergone radical changes in recent years. The changes have been aimed at increasing the efficiency of power plants and developing the industry by attracting investment. During the restructuring process, specialized structures have been created in place of the old vertically integrated companies.

By the end of the reforms, potentially competitive units of the industry (generation, sales and repair companies) will be privatized. Meanwhile, natural monopoly functions (the power transmission and dispatching companies) will remain state-controlled.

Last February the Military-In­dustrial Commission headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov held a special session at the Moscow Research Institute of Precision Instrument-Making.

At first glance, it seems that the plans and legislative initiatives fully correspond with military-technical achievements. The latter include the development of the non-nuclear tactical Iskander missile (NATO reporting name SS-26) for the ground troops.

High survivability, a quick refilling system, a perfect data processing system, and a dual capability to carry both ballistic and cruise missiles allow Iskander to deal surgical strikes at small size command and communication posts, and to destroy area targets, such as enemy troops. Proceeding from the results of tests, Russian military experts maintain that given active enemy resistance, Iskander is capable of hitting standard targets with one or two missiles, which is equivalent to the use of a nuclear warhead.

Under the program, the ground forces will be equipped with such modern weapons. But this raises some questions.

Last June, Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces General of the Army Alexander Maslov said that under the Arms Program until 2015 the missile and artillery forces will receive five missile brigades, each equipped with the Iskander-M missiles (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone).

But why not six? The ground forces, which had nine combined arms armies and one army corps in 2004, are divided into six military districts. It would be logical for each district to have at least one brigade.

By the end of last year, only the North Caucasus Military District received a missile brigade. Two years ago, Major-General Vladimir Zaritsky, head of Russia’s artillery and missile forces, promised that in 2007 missile brigades in the Volga-Urals Military and Far Eastern Military Districts will receive Iskander-M systems.

The introduction of these badly needed systems, developed by the Kolomenskoye Design Bureau of Machine-Building more than ten years ago, has been going at a very slow pace. But the production of even such a small number of Iskanders at the current rate does not make sense because high technology weapons quickly become obsolete, and these missiles may soon lose all of their advantages.

It transpires that now the program itself will be amended. Deputy director of the Industry and Energy Ministry’s defense and industrial complex department Valery Voskoboinikov reported in early February that a number of financial parameters will be specified in the course of the program’s adjustment. It appeared that the program’s cost is much higher than its budget parameters because of rising prices of materials and spare parts, and it is impossible to meet its goals both in the range and quantity of hardware.

This lack of foresight is simply amazing, considering that the program was endorsed quite recently – at the end of 2006. This was a serious miscalculation.

Defense Ministry planners have now made the unmistakable conclusion about the need to reduce the range or the quantity of military hardware. I have strong doubts that the reduction will affect the range – modern Russian arms have been reliably hidden into the golden cage of export contracts. T-90 tanks in the Russian armed forces can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But 310 of these tanks have already been produced for India, and there are contractual commitments to supply it with another 347. The Iskander system is no exception. It has long been popular in the Middle East.

If the situation remains the same, our tanks will leave our tank-training grounds, and our surface aircraft will land on foreign ships. But the effectiveness of our own program of rearmament will be close to zero.

Putin spoke four days after he signed into law Russia’s suspension of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, drawing sharp criticism from NATO and the United States.

Signed by NATO members and states of the defunct Warsaw pact, the 1990 CFE treaty places strict limitations on the deployment of tanks and other military hardware across Europe.

Moscow says the CFE is not working because an updated version agreed in 1999 to take account of the break-up of the Communist bloc has been ratified by Russia but not by NATO countries.

NATO members, led by the United States, say they cannot ratify the pact because Moscow has not fully complied with a related commitment to withdraw its military presence from ex-Soviet Georgia and Moldova.

Moscow says it has met those requirements.

“Russia did not only sign this agreement, but it ratified it and implemented it unilaterally during many years. We could not tolerate this situation any longer,” said Putin.

Russia’s suspension of the treaty enters into force on December 12 but military officials have said this would not trigger any immediate redeployment of forces in western Russia.

Putin had ordered the moratorium in July amid a row over U.S. plans to install an anti-missile shield in eastern Europe.

“We have heard in many different ways that everything being done in the military area near our borders is not aimed against Russia,” Putin said.

“But as they say in such situations, it’s not the intention but the potential” that matters.

“This potential poses a threat to Russia’s security,” he added.

In Brussels, the NATO expressed regret and said questions about Russia’s possible future military posture would be raised at a foreign ministers’ meeting next week.

“We hope that the Russian Fede­ration will not take any unilateral action that undermines the integrity of the treaty,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai said in Brussels.

A senior U.S. official said Russia’s suspension of the arms treaty was a “mistake” and urged Moscow to return to the negotiating table for talks.

“Russia has made a mistake in this unilateral behavior of walking out of a major arms control treaty in Europe,” U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told a news conference in Madrid.

Following Putin’s signature, the suspension will enter into force on December 12, but a senior Defense Ministry official said the decision would not trigger any immediate redeployment of Russian forces on its western flank.

“The entry into force of the moratorium does not mean that Russia will immediately start redeploying troops on its flanks,” said the unnamed official quoted by the Interfax news agency.

“But we reserve the right to move our forces on our territory where we consider them necessary,” he said.

Earlier this month Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Kolmakov said plans were being considered for boosting troop deployments on western borders, once CFE provisions were frozen.

Applauding the move, a senior Russian lawmaker said other international treaties would come under scrutiny by the new parliament that is set to be dominated by Putin’s United Russia party.

“I think that we were right to do this and we should have done it earlier,” said first deputy speaker Lyubov Sliska, a senior member of United Russia, was quoted by Interfax as saying.

“I believe that this is a first step toward reviewing those agreements that do not suit Russia or harm it,” Sliska said.

Putin, who was the lead candidate for United Russia in this month’s vote, had ordered the moratorium in July amid a row over U.S. plans to install an anti-missile shield in eastern Europe.

Criticising CFE, the speaker of the upper house of parliament, another Putin ally, described provisions of the treaty as “absolutely colonial.”

“Under this agreement, we cannot move a single tank on our own territory,” said Sergei Mironov quoted by Interfax.

“Russia fulfilled the CFE provisions in good faith while NATO bases sprang up in Romania, Bulgaria and the United States prepared to install its anti-missile defense system along Russia’s border,” Mironov said.

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters in New York on Monday: “I can assure you that at this meeting we will have a thing or two to say about the latest unconstructive, and at times provocative actions from the Georgian side.”

The meeting of the Security Council, on which Russia holds a permanent seat, will be held behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon, the envoy said.

The meeting was requested last week by Georgian Foreign Minister David Bakradze, who said Russia’s plans to give legal status to companies in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and to cooperate with their governments were “an attempt to annex two Georgian regions.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili during a phone conversation on Monday that the planned measures do not contravene international law and are aimed at improving the socioeconomic situation in the regions.

Putin also said Georgian reconnaissance flights over Abkhazia run counter to a 1994 ceasefire agreement.

Russia’s ambassador to Georgia was summoned to the Georgian Foreign Ministry and given a protest note over Sunday’s incident in Abkhazia. Georgia claims that a MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter from the Gudauta military base in Abkhazia shot down a Georgian drone.

Saakashvili said in a national TV broadcast yesterday evening that the Georgian side has proof the incident took place.

“For the first time in the last few years, after repeated incidents of Russia violating Georgia’s airspace and acts of aggression, we have video footage of a Russian attack aircraft bombing Georgian territory.”

In the UK, Ofcom made deregulation one of its first priorities upon coming into existence, but the Russian equivalent is doing just the reverse, including an ominous-sounding policy of requiring registration for every Wi-Fi device and hotspot, according to a report this week from news agency Fontanka.

Rossvyazokhrankultura’s interpretation of current law holds that users must register any electronics that use the frequency involved in Wi-Fi communications, said Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency’s communications monitoring division, according to an English commentary provided by website The Other Russia.

Aside from public hotspots, the registration requirement also applies to home networks, laptops, smart phones and Wi-Fi-enabled PDAs, Karpov reportedly said. Registration only permits use by the owner.

His comments come as something of a surprise, since government decisions in 2004 and 2007 have tended to exempt Wi-Fi devices from any spectrum-related restrictions, according to the report.

On the other hand, Rossvyazokhrankultura is a new agency, formed last year by the merger of two separate agencies which formerly controlled media and telecommunications – not unlike Ofcom.

In this case, the merger appears to have created confusion and chaos, according to an anonymous IT expert cited in the report.

He noted that the head of the new body is a metallurgic engineer, and that the agency’s remit now covers protecting cultural patrimony, registering mass-media outlets, control of legal compliance on personal data, monitoring communications and allocating radio frequencies, among other tasks.

“It is unlikely that he can simultaneously manage communications personnel, fine art experts, journalists and attorneys,” the expert reportedly said.

Registration for personal devices is said to take 10 days, but registering a hotspot – including a home network – is more complicated, involving a set of documents and technological certifications.

Any networks in Moscow or St. Petersburg need the additional approval of two federal agencies, Karpov said.

“Setting up a home Wi-Fi network or a hotspot would require what sounds like vast amounts of paperwork, akin to putting a cell tower,” commented wireless pundit Glenn Fleishman, in a blog post.

Even if Rossvyazokhrankultura fails to follow up on enforcing these rules, its comments are unlikely to improve Russia’s image as a haven mainly for technology of a criminal nature.

In February, Sophos found that the country now deserves the moniker of ’spam superpower’ having seen its share of total volumes rise dramatically over the last year, to put it in firmly in second place behind arch-rival, the US.

Russia is already prominent for other types of Internet criminality, such as malware and exploits, boosted by the near-mythical super-network, the Russian Business Network, which supposedly went out of business in November.

Techworld’s John Dunn contributed to this report.

via Computerworld

Read what  Rossvyazokhrankultura has to say on this (autotranslated from Russian via Google)

“During the flight over neutral waters near Alaska, the Russian planes were accompanied by NATO fighters,” Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky said.

Interceptions of Russian combat aircraft by NATO fighters have been a common occurrence since Russia resumed strategic bomber patrol flights over the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans last August, following an order signed by President Vladimir Putin.

Drobyshevsky reiterated on Wednesday that regular patrols of Russian strategic bombers do not pose a threat to other countries, and Russia always issues prior warnings of their patrols.

He said that the main purpose of these missions was to train pilots in instrument flight and aerial refueling.