A mother is lecturing her 23-year-old daughter about her love life, flailing a kitchen knife above her head for emphasis.
First came Mikhail Gorbachev, who moved a monolithic Soviet Union toward reform. Then in August 1991, an ill-conceived coup attempt by clumsy and occasionally drunken men opened a crack that could not be closed.
A young soprano from Moldova has won the prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, the launch pad for many operatic careers.
Warsaw and Prague might seem like unlikely battlegrounds in the Middle East conflict. Yet it suddenly matters - a lot - whether Poles, Czechs and others in the region align themselves with the Israelis or Palestinians.
The ancient Eastern European nation of Moldova was buffeted throughout its long history, repeatedly invaded by Goths, Huns, Mongols and Romans, and later coveted by Ottoman Turks, Nazis and the Soviet Union.
Thousands of Romanians gathered Sunday for the funeral of Adrian Paunescu, one of the country's most famous poets whose verse struck a chord despite odes he wrote to late Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
A groundbreaking, 6-year-old initiative meant to reward developing countries with U.S. aid for good governance and efforts to institutionalize democracy is giving billions of dollars to nations upbraided by the State Department for corruption in government.
More than 30 volunteers were raped or sexually assaulted last year while hundreds of others were attacked, robbed, burglarized or threatened, bolstering criticism that the agency has failed to provide "a consistent and complete safety and security program."
BRUSSELS (AP) - European Union foreign ministers yesterday approved much-delayed plans to begin talks with Russia aimed at forging a new "strategic partnership."
