Shorter Question Everything

Russia

• Russia remains on schedule in fulfilling its commitments under the chemical weapons convention, and has met the end-of-year deadline for reducing its stockpiles by 45% from the 1990s level, a government official said. “In line with Russia’s federal program for destroying chemical weapons, in spite of all the difficulties in implementing this program, Russia will have fulfilled its obligations under the third stage of the Chemical Weapons Convention as of December 31, 2009,” Deputy Russian economics minister Oleg Savelyev said.
• Russia’s top diplomat is accusing the United States of holding up progress on a new nuclear arms treaty, saying he does not expect the presidents of Russia and the United States to sign a new accord when they meet Friday in Copenhagen. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Thursday for Washington to accept deeper reductions to its nuclear arsenal and less intrusive verification measures than those in the current treaty.
• Two Russian Tu-95MS Bear strategic bombers that carried out a routine patrol flight over the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans were shadowed by ‘regular’ NATO fighters, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday. Spokesman Lt. Col. Vladimir Drik said the bombers spent over 12 hours in the air on Thursday and were shadowed by two NATO F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters. A similar patrol mission on September 29 was shadowed by an F-22 Raptor that uses stealth technology, reportedly the first time the world’s only fifth-generation fighter aircraft was sent out to keep an eye on Russian planes.

Canada

• The federal government is selling off its commercial CANDU reactor division, Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt announced on Thursday. Last spring, the government announced its plan to break up AECL and possibly sell parts of the Crown corporation. The bid for investors does not include the Chalk River Laboratories, where medical isotopes are produced.