29 October 2012. A Photo Spread. A New Crew Heads to the ISS

An Orthodox priest blesses the cosmonauts before the flight

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Cosmonauts Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitsky, and Yevgeni Tarelkin

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The priest blessing the spacecraft spritzes the photographer! Now, that’s Russian Orthodoxy…

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The mission is readied for launching

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Lift off! Ura! Isn’t it odd how the arrogant and tight-arsed Americans have to bum rides with us backward and retrograde Russians? You’d think that all of their boasts are hubristical lies! Hmm… one hopes that the Russian crew taught the American how to go “na troikh” (“three on a bottle”)… there are three of them, after all…

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The Soyuz TMA-06M was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome with a new ISS crew. Cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky (Roscosmos), Yevgeni Tarelkin (Roscosmos), and Kevin Ford (NASA) went to into near-Earth orbit. The docking of the Soyuz with the ISS happened on 25 October. For Russians Novitsky and Tarelkin, it’s the first flight into space, whilst Ford is on his second mission. The new crew shall stay at the ISS for 148 days. They will unload four Progress transport craft and one European ATV-4 craft. The crew of the 33rd expedition doesn’t plan to have any spacewalks.

24 October 2012

English Russia

http://englishrussia.com/2012/10/24/the-new-crew-is-about-to-come-to-the-iss/#more-112615

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Party of Regions Leads the Ukrainian Parliamentary Election After 10% of Ballots Counted

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On Monday, the Ukrainian Central Election Committee said that the ruling Party of Regions, headed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, leads the parliamentary elections after it counted 10 percent of the ballots. Yanukovich’s party gained 39.97 percent of the vote, followed by jailed ex-premier Yuliya Timoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party with 19.56 percent. The Ukrainian Communist Party came in third with 15.79 percent. Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR), led by world-famous boxer Vitaly Klitschko had 11.59 percent of the vote, whilst 6.18 percent of the voters cast their ballots in favour of the nationalist Svoboda Party.

The rest of the political parties participating in the electnationalistion didn’t pass the five percent threshold necessary to gain seats in the country’s legislative body, the Verkhovna Rada. Over 5,000 candidates contested 450 seats in the Rada, with half of the deputies elected by party-list voting, whilst the other half stood in single-mandate constituencies. Polls closed at 20.00 EET (21.00 MSK 18.00 UTC 13.00 EDT 10.00 PDT 04.00 29 October AET) on Sunday. According to the Central Election Committee, voter turnout stood at nearly 58 percent.

29 October 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/politics/20121029/177005157.html