More in ‘Russia’

• President Obama further postponed a trip to Asia, meaning he’ll be in town early next week, when Prime Minister Netanyahu is as well. Will they break bread? [Laura Rozen]
• Visiting Moscow, Secretary of State Clinton asked Russia to delay finishing a nuclear plant it’s building for Iran. [Haaretz]
• Jeffrey Goldberg points out that if ...

European history buffs already know how fascinating the Russian province of Kaliningrad Oblast is. Sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea—it does not border any other part of Russia; the awesome term for such a thing is an exclave—it had been the German territory of East Prussia until after World War II, when ...

• The Palestine Liberation Organization formally dropped its requirement that Israel freeze all settlements before peace talks commence, in order to allow a new round of U.S.-mediated indirect negotiations. [AP/NYT]
• Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Israel today, ostensibly to kick-start those talks, but perhaps most of all to signal to Israeli leaders that America ...

• The rookie head of the U.N. nuclear inspectors defended their finding that Iran is working on weapons. Meanwhile, there were new indications that Russia would get behind harsher sanctions. [WSJ]
• A new scoop further implicates New York Gov. David Paterson in a longtime aide’s assault case, so we’re yet closer to a resignation and ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, David P. Goldman talks to George Friedman, whose defense consulting company Stratfor—a “private CIA”—predicts the rise of Poland as well as a Japanese-Turkish axis against America. Digging through old Yiddish newspapers, Eddy Portnoy finds that the pre-World War II Warsaw Beit Din frequently resembled less a staid rabbinical court and more ...

• Prime Minister Netanyahu met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow to push for further Iran sanctions. [WP]
• Netanyahu also asked Medvedev to tell Hamas that his previous offer for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit—a deal Hamas did not accept, leaving talks at an impasse—would not be improved upon. [Haaretz]
• Lebanese soldiers fired anti-aircraft guns ...

• A Palestinian Authority police officer killed an Israeli soldier, in an area of the West Bank controlled by Israel. Twist #1: the Israeli was a Druse. Twist #2: the victim’s name was Ihab Khatib, the killer’s name was Mahmoud al-Khatib; they are unrelated. [NYT]
• Today Iran observes the anniversary of the founding of the ...

• Russia was unusually prominent among those who condemned Iran’s latest nuclear provocations. However, China, the final U.N. Security Council veto, remains reluctant to criticize Iran or seem to support sanctions. [LAT]
• Meanwhile, U.S. officials revealed plans to devise a new, harsher sanctions regime specifically designed to put Iran’s Revolutionary Guards at odds with its ...

• Did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tip the U.S. hand? She said “the 1967 borders, with swaps, should be the focus of the negotiations over borders,” maybe revealing plans to use the Green Line as a basis for the final status. [NYT]
• While Europe and even Russia have toughened of late, China indicated that ...

• The Jewish Agency for Israel feared Russia would not permit its Board meeting to take place in St. Petersburg, and moved it to Jerusalem at the last minute. The group says Russia told it a couple weeks ago that there were issues with its “legal status.” [JTA]
• Solomon Dwek, who wore a wire to ...