A Russian passenger plane burst into flames after it crashed on landing in the Siberian city of Irkutsk early on Sunday, killing at least 102 people. Russian news agencies said the death toll could be as high as 150. Transport Minister Igor Levitin blamed the crash on wet runway conditions after rain, Russian news agencies reported.
As a black man in Russia, life for Gabriel Anicet Kochotfa means always being home by 9pm, never using public transit and hearing abusive remarks when he goes out in public with his white wife. ”Sometimes I even go to the shop with my wife and we go separately, so nobody knows that we are together,” the native of Benin says.
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/ 21 December 2004
The cash-rich oil company Surgutneftegaz is the mystery purchaser of the main assets of Russia’s Yukos empire, auctioned for ,35-billion to a shell company, press reports said on Tuesday. The head of Russia’s big business body criticised the opaque sale and warned it will damage the country’s investment image.
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/ 20 December 2004
Yukos’s jailed founder accused the Russian government of ”destroying” the nation’s top oil group on Monday as mystery surrounded the new owner of its crown jewel, widely seen as linked to state-run gas giant Gazprom. In an auction cloaked in secrecy on Sunday, the Russian authorities sold Yukos’s main subsidiary to an unknown entity.
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/ 1 December 2004
Ukraine’s Parliament voted to oust the country’s pro-Moscow government on Wednesday as European and Russian mediators took a second stab at trying to quell a political crisis. Parliament backed an opposition proposal to dismiss Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and replace his team with a ”people’s government,” while thousands of chanting and singing demonstrators built human chains around official buildings.
Ukraine opposition renews blockade
From cocaine smuggling for Colombian drug cartels to criminal betting syndicates in Asia, Russian mobsters have extended their tentacles across the far corners of the globe, backed up by formidable resources at home.