Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at his inauguration ceremony in the Kremlin on May 7.

A diminutive, softly-spoken former corporate lawyer, Russia’s new President Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is an unlikely figure to lead the biggest country on earth.
The first Russian leader in generations to have worked in the private sector, Medvedev, 42, was sworn in as president on Wednesday in a lavish televised ceremony in the Kremlin, Reuters reported.
Medvedev took the oath in the Andreyevsky Hall in the Kremlin shortly after Putin gave a speech thanking Russians for their support and talking up his successes in two terms in office.
“It’s very important for everyone together to continue the course that has already been taken and has justified itself,“ Putin said, according to AFP.
Medvedev secured the post after the popular outgoing leader Vladimir Putin endorsed him as his preferred successor, ensuring an overwhelming victory at the polls in March.

Putin’s Course
Medvedev inherits a booming economy fuelled by massive oil and gas exports, and a country at its most confident on the international stage since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Medvedev has repeatedly cast himself as a continuity candidate who will follow the course set by Putin--a popular line in Russia, where most of the population has benefited from rapid economic growth and rising incomes under Putin.
Further underlining continuity, Putin will stay on as Medvedev’s prime minister and as leader of the United Russia Party, which holds a big majority in the lower house of parliament.
Medvedev has said little about his plans for government during the election campaign, shunning debates with other candidates and news conferences with foreign media and granting only one in-depth interview to a weekly news magazine.
His main campaign speech, in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, pledged respect for private property, freedom and an independent judiciary. Analysts described the comments as fine aspirations but questioned how easy it would be to put them into practice.
“I think he is a well-prepared, educated and modern. He has good experience as a lawyer, he’s bright, but there is one drawback, he didn’t work at the federal level long enough,“ the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said of the new president earlier this year.

Longtime Aide
Medvedev graduated in 1987 from university and first worked with Putin when the latter was deputy head of the mayor’s office in St Petersburg during the 1990s.
Putin was unable to run for a third consecutive term under the constitution. However, by steering in his trusted, longtime aide Medvedev into the Kremlin, the former KGB agent retains a tight grip on the political scene.
Medvedev worked as a key lawyer for the Ilim Pulp paper firm, helping to found a firm which has since emerged as one of Russia’s leading companies in a sector worth billions of dollars.
Some western ambassadors in Moscow believe Medvedev’s selection may represent a desire by Putin to shift Russia onto a more investor-friendly path after the years of strident confrontation which marked his own years in the Kremlin.

India’s military on Wednesday tested a medium-range nuclear-capable missile which can hit targets inside China, its third such test in two years, defense research officials said.
The Agni-III missile, India’s longest-range ballistic missile, was fired from a testing site on Wheeler Island, 180 kilometers northeast of Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar, AFP reported.
“Today’s test was a confidence-building exercise meant to fine-tune the missile,“ a defense official said, asking not to be identified.
The missile, which has a 3,000-kilometre range and can carry nuclear or conventional warheads, was first tested in 2006.
But the trial of the Agni was a flop when the missile traveled12 kilometers and crashed into the sea without hitting its target.
The failure was blamed on a snag with its strapped-on solid fuel booster rocket.
India successfully tested the 1.8 meter-diameter missile in April 2007.

Chinese President Hu Jintao (l) and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda interact after a press conference.

The leaders of Japan and China called for a new era in relations at a summit Wednesday, pledging to hold annual meetings, resolve an angry dispute over maritime gas deposits and not allow their bitter history to divide them.
The carefully choreographed summit between Japanese Prime
Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu JintaoÑthe first visit by a Chinese president to Tokyo in a decade-- was aimed at bolstering ties between the Asian giants.
Fukuda also said he hoped for a successful Beijing Olympics, recalling the 1964 summer games in Tokyo that marked Japan’s emergence on the world stage after its defeat in World War II. Fukuda, however, said he had not decided whether to attend the opening ceremony.
Fukuda also said the countries were on the verge of a resolution of a thorny dispute over the exploitation of natural gas fields in the East China Sea. China is tapping the fields, but Japan says they should be jointly developed.
Hu and Fukuda, hoping to underscore the positive during his five-day stay, were to use pingpong and pandas to take the edge off more contentious problems.
Hu said China was willing to loan a couple of pandas to Japan following the death last week of 22-year-old giant panda Ling Ling at Tokyo’s largest zoo.
The visit is intended to build on a recent warming in relations after years of friction over disputed borders, Japan’s treatment of its wartime invasion of China, anti-Japanese protests in China, and general Japanese unease over Beijing’s rapidly growing diplomatic, military and economic power.
Hu is hoping the visit will project China as a friendly, good neighbor after weeks of protests over Tibet and human rights issues that marred China’s Olympic torch relay.
Bilateral ties began unraveling in 1998 when then Chinese President Jiang Zemin went to Tokyo expecting-but not receiving-an apology over Japan’s often brutal 1931-1945 occupation of much of China. Relations chilled as Japan charted a more aggressive defense and foreign policy course, even as other countries in the region began to accommodate China’s rising clout.