On June 11-12 2010 the member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) held their annual Summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under the auspices of the (rotational) Uzbek presidency. The previous SCO Summit was held in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, where the agenda of the member states was dominated by the search for the right exit strategies out of the global economic-financial crisis, particularly those that would serve to minimise its nefarious consequences upon SCO members. In Tashkent, the agenda of SCO member country leaders was dominated by the following issues:

• Enhancement of regional stability and security
• Coordination of the intergovernmental struggle with international terrorism, extremism and separatism
• Contemporary problems relating to the above, including ongoing crisis in Afghanistan (a regional thorn for all of the SCO members) and the fallout of the political-security crisis in Kyrgyzstan
• Coordination of national and intergovernmental efforts to counter organised crime and narco-trafficking. READ MORE

• August 29, 2010

A Russian gas tanker is this month making a historic voyage across the famed Northeast passage as receding ice opens up an elusive trade route from Asia to the West sought for centuries by explorers.

• August 28, 2010

Diversification of the gas market in Lithuania will eliminate the need for ties to the Russian energy sector by 2020, the Lithuanian energy minister said.

• August 28, 2010

China kept silent on Friday about a reported visit by North Korea's secretive leader, Kim Jong-il, that analysts say appears intended to line up Beijing behind his dynastic succession plans.

• August 28, 2010

Exclusive interview of Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) with Her Excellency Elena Poptodorova, Bulgaria’s new Ambassador to the United States of America.

• August 28, 2010

Hollywood executives and Washington policymakers are suckers for Russophobia. Considering the appalling level of political discourse in both these capitals of mass entertainment, certainly one cannot expect their "opinion leaders" to have read Professor Paul Kennedy's recent expose of European history packaged as a crash course to Americans about the inevitable downsizing of the US in the emerging, multipolar new world order.

• August 28, 2010

Azerbaijan and Russia will become the main importers of Kazakh grain, said chief of commercial department of Kazakhstan's Food Corporation Kazbek Omarov.

• August 28, 2010

Bulgaria’s Economy and Energy Minister, Traicho Traikov, announced Thursday the price for the project to build a second Nuclear Power Plant in the Bulgarian Danube town if Belene has reached EUR 9 B.

• August 27, 2010