Belarus News

Belarus is marking on Friday Independence Day and the 65th anniversary of the republic's liberation from German fascist invaders....

Belarus plans to create a gambling zone near its international airport in Minsk to attract foreign visitors as neighboring Russia and Ukraine have banned casinos, an official said on Thursday....

WASHINGTON Days from his first Moscow summit, President Barack Obama declared Thursday that former Russian President Vladimir Putin "still has a lot of sway" in his nation and needs an in-person reminder the Cold War is over....

MINSK -- An ailing U.S. lawyer who was imprisoned in Belarus last year on charges of using fake documents and attempted industrial espionage has walked free after a presidential pardon.

Emanuel Zeltser, a 55-year-old diabetic, was sentenced to three years in prison in August 2008 after being convicted in a closed trial on charges that his supporters called politically motivated.

In November, Zeltser was placed in a prison hospital after arriving at a penal colony in eastern Belarus where he was denied medicine, lawyers said.

On leaving the prison clinic in the eastern town of Mogilyov, Zeltser said Tuesday, "I am glad about my freedom....

The neon lights are no longer flashing; the roulette wheels have spun their last turn. Casinos across Russia closed their doors Wednesday as a sweeping ban on gambling went into effect, less than a week after a similar ban hit neighboring Ukraine. Lawmakers in both countries say the actions were necessary to bring under control spiraling addiction and a notoriously shady business. But critics say the moves will leave hundreds of thousands out of work and force the industry underground.

Gambling has become an epidemic that can be compared with AIDS and tuberculosis," says the law's author, Valeriy Pysarenko...

Until June 25, the River Palace was one of the most popular casinos in Kiev, buzzing with customers trying their luck in rooms awash with the sounds of pinging bells and clicking roulette balls. But now the place is deserted, filled only with an eerie silence. The timing couldn't have been worse for Olha Stupak, who was one of the casino's senior supervisors. With a child about to enter university, car-loan repayments to make and rent to pay, she's going to struggle to get by on her savings and unemployment benefits. "I'm looking for work, but it's difficult because of the crisis," she says, looking around at the empty tables. "I know all about roulette, poker and blackjack. But other jobs require different work experience...."

Azerbaijan, Baku, July 1 /Trend Capital, E. Tariverdiyeva/

New joint venture launched by Ganja Automobile Plant and Belarus Tractor Plant in Azerbaijan has launched production, Belarus ambassador to Azerbaijan Nikolai Paskevic said.

Azerbaijan, Baku, July 1 /Trend News, E. Tariverdiyeva/

By adopting positive decision on Belarus, Europe admitted that absence of dialogue with Minsk was not fruitful, Belarus ambassador to Azerbaijan Nikolai Paskevic said.

An ailing American lawyer who was imprisoned in Belarus last year on charges of using fake documents and attempted industrial espionage walked free Tuesday night after a presidential pardon.

Eds: APNewsNow. Moving on general news and financial services. MINSK, Belarus A U.S. senator says the president of Belarus is promising to free an ailing American lawyer who was imprisoned in the former Soviet country last year on espionage charges.

Led by CEO Michael Rietveld, the delegation will meet officials of local state companies including Greenfield's joint venture partner Belbiopharm, agriculture services company Belagroservice, Belarusbank, the Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Agriculture and other official bodies.

Russia will continue to maintain cheap energy supplies to Belarus in the near future to support its economy, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Sunday, Xinhua reported.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Tuesday intends to return the Belarusian delegation to Strasbourg.

Activists of the opposition Youth Front movement in Belarus held a protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in Minsk on June 24, RFE/RL's Belarus Service reports....

CONTAMINATED lands, blighted by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, could be cleaned up in a clever way: by growing biofuels. Belarus, the country affected by much of the fallout, is planning to use the crops to suck up the radioactive strontium and caesium and make the soil fit to grow food again within decades rather than hundreds of years.

A 40,000 square kilometre area of south-east Belarus is so stuffed with radioactive isotopes that rained down from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 that it won't be fit for growing food for hundreds of years, as the isotopes won't have decayed sufficiently. But this week a team of Irish biofuels technologists is in the capital, Minsk, hoping to do a deal with state agencies to buy radioactive sugar beet and other crops grown on the contaminated land to make biofuels for sale across Europe....

MINSK, June 25 (BelTA) - The Russian Federation is and has always been Belarus' major strategic ally, said President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko as he met with Rostov Oblast Governor Vladimir Chub on June 25, BelTA learnt from the presidential press service.

MINSK, Belarus Former road race world champion Zinaida Stagurskaya has been killed after being hit by a car while training in her native Belarus.

A blindfold is ripped from a soldier's eyes. Looking up to get his bearings, he notes that he is in a forest. Looking down, he sees a long, deep pit, its floor carpeted with dead bodies in khaki uniform. He has moments left to live. He feels for his crucifix, but a bullet interrupts the conversation with his Maker. His lifeless corpse topples into the hole in the ground.

After him another man is shunted forward, the blindfold removed. The same ritual. Another bullet whistles through another brain. Then another. And another. The gruesome procedure is repeated until the hole fills with the bodies of hundreds and hundreds of innocent men.

This is the harrowing scene of a devastating new film, Katyn. It takes its name from the village in western Russia where the bodies of more than 4,000 Polish prisoners of war were dug up in 1943....

Neda Agha-Soltan, Iranian Heroine for Human Rights

By Amil Imani

I am so restless, I cannot cease thinking! It seems like the world we live in reveals to us incessantly, at certain moments or in certain circumstances, just how little we are and how vast the universe is. This world of ours is a very complex world. The world we live in is a world of many brutal voices. It is a world of heavy blows and delirious trances, but it is the only world that we know.

Like millions of people around the world, the tragic death of Neda has affected me tremendously. I felt a temptation to scream and run to the end of the world and say my prayers with unusual earnestness and a heavy heart. I felt like screaming for the overflowing flood of human blood. I felt like screaming for the weary eyes and innocent moans of the victims of Iranian revolution. I felt apprehensive, anxious, and fearful. And now, as I take up my pen, my hand trembles and my head swims with horror and disbelief at the magnitude of the human devastation....

"They shot them out of the air." ~Caroline Stuart

Almost 14 years have passed since Belarusian soldiers aboard a helicopter gunship killed her husband. But Caroline Stuart-Jervis is still seeking answers, let alone an apology, regarding his death.

John Stuart-Jervis was slain while flying his gas balloon over Belarus during the 1995 Gordon Bennett Cup, the world's most prestigious balloon race, in a shooting incident that sparked one of the first diplomatic spats between Washington and Minsk.

Caroline Stuart-Jervis recalls that her husband and his co-pilot, Alan Fraenckel -- both U.S. citizens -- had been particularly excited about that year's race.

"They took off at night. There are pictures of them in which you can see a U.S. flag draped over the side and a sign saying they were part of the Gordon Bennett race," she says. "They were quite excited because it was the first time that they were able to fly over some of these newly formed countries. These countries had fallen away after the breakup [of the Soviet Union] and were all available to fly over...."

Despite overtures to the EU and a recent row with Russia, Belarus isn't going to turn away from its big neighbor any time soon.