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/ 13 October 2005
More than 60 people were killed on Thursday in the southern Russian city of Nalchik in simultaneous attacks on government targets claimed by rebels from nearby breakaway Chechnya, officials said. President Vladimir Putin ordered the city sealed and issued shoot-to-kill orders for anyone using arms to resist police.
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/ 13 October 2005
More than 60 people were killed on Thursday, including about 50 militants, after gunmen launched attacks on Russian government installations in the southern city of Nalchik, the region’s top official said. Arsen Kanokov said the attacks were carried out by about 150 armed militants.
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/ 13 October 2005
Police and security forces on Thursday battled gunmen in the capital of the southern Russian region of Kabardino-Balkariya, including near a school near a police station. Schoolchildren were evacuated and black smoke billowed from the building as panic-stricken parents searched for their children in the schoolyard.
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/ 12 October 2005
The stress of post-Soviet social changes ranging from work redundancies to rebellious children is forcing thousands of people to seek psychological help from a unique network of centres in Moscow. ”We’re expanding and it’s always full,” said Valery Shatilo, deputy director of the Moscow Psychological Help Service.
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/ 30 September 2005
The Russian Federation’s weak and poorly enforced laws against child pornography have turned the country into a haven for paedophiles, participants at a conference in Moscow devoted to the problem said this week. The confenrence heard that child pornography can be distrubuted through the internet with relative impunity because of weaknesses in the criminal code.
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/ 28 September 2005
Glamour girl Maria Sharapova’s meteoric rise to world number one is inspiring a new generation of Russian teenage girls to head for the courts hoping to emulate her sporting and financial success.
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/ 26 September 2005
Historic Russian admiral Fyodor Ushakov — a hero of Russia’s wars against Turkey and Napoleon Bonaparte — was designated the patron saint of nuclear-armed, long-distance Russian bombers by the Orthodox Church on Monday. "His strong faith helped Saint Fyodor Ushakov in all his battles," the church said.
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/ 19 September 2005
Russian newspapers celebrated on Monday the career of pioneering editor Yegor Yakovlev before and after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, following his death from heart failure. Yakovlev, a journalist and author of several books, died in a Moscow hospital on Sunday, aged 76.
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/ 12 September 2005
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov warned on Monday that attempts to rush reform of the United Nations Security Council would risk splitting the world body. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said he hopes for an agreement on the sensitive issue of reforming the Security Council by year’s end.
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/ 2 September 2005
Malik has the nonchalant manner of any 14-year-old when he says ”I don’t know” or snaps at his little sister, Fatima. But his green eyes are ”those of a 40-year-old man”, his mother says, even a year after he survived the Beslan school hostage massacre. Sitting on a bench outside his family’s home, Malik Kolchakeyev already knows what questions are coming.
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/ 1 September 2005
He is Russia’s most wanted man, with tens of thousands of soldiers on his trail, but a year after masterminding the Beslan massacre, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev remains at large, openly mocking the Kremlin. Meanwhile, hundreds of Beslan residents have signed a petition requesting political asylum abroad.
Russian veterinary workers incinerated thousands of slaughtered fowl on Wednesday in an attempt to prevent a bird-flu epidemic blamed on wild ducks from spreading further west toward Europe. An expert blamed Russia’s growing problem on a failure to keep domestic fowl isolated from wild birds.
A vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn on Thursday. Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11Â 000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
The British team who aided the rescue of seven Russian submariners from the depths of the Pacific flew home on Monday night, as details emerged of the crew’s horrifying 76 hours spent in the icy dark, their vessel enmeshed in a fishing net. Pictured strolling the grounds of their hospital, the crew said they had survived on only three to four gulps of water a day.
A new primary school built to replace that destroyed in the Beslan school hostage massacre last year has been robbed, with thieves stealing computers, printers and televisions worth around €5 000 ( 200), officials said on Monday.
Russian crewmen walked ashore unsteadily, rescued from a three-day ordeal after their mini-submarine surfaced with all seven crew members safe after being trapped deep under the Pacific Ocean in the frigid darkness. Six were taken to a hospital on the mainland for examination, waving to relatives as they went in.
A Russian mini-submarine that was trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean surfaced on Sunday with all seven people aboard alive after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled it. All seven aboard the AS-28 mini-submarine appeared to be in satisfactory condition, naval spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo said.
A British plane carrying a robotic underwater vehicle arrived on Saturday as part of an international effort to help rescue seven people trapped aboard a Russian mini-submarine off the Pacific coast. Captain Igor Dygalo said the Super Scorpio was being unloaded for transport to the area where the submarine has been trapped since Thursday.
A Russian mini-submarine with seven sailors aboard got caught on a fishing net and is stuck on the sea floor off Russia’s Pacific Coast, navy officials said on Friday. Navy authorities have scrambled to try to figure out how to raise the vessel from a depth of about 190m amid conflicting statements on how long the air supply will last.
Russia’s federal space agency took a giant leap in the field of cosmic tourism on Tuesday with the announcement it will offer a -million trip to the moon. Roskosmos leaked details of the project as Nasa’s space shuttle Discovery prepared for launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
A store fire in the northern Russian city of Ukhta killed nearly 20 people on Monday, emergency officials said. The emergency situations ministry put the toll at 19 dead and 17 injured. The Federal Security Service in Moscow earlier said 16 had been killed and 20 injured.
A Russian astrologer took legal action against Nasa for compensation on Monday, claiming that the United States space agency’s bombardment of the Tempel 1 comet will upset her horoscope and violates her spiritual rights. Nasa fired a projectile the size of a fridge at the comet on Monday.
Some of the women sat at a wooden table littered with documents. Others hovered near a computer learning how to write a press release, or traded gossip over weak tea. It could almost be a PTA meeting or a ladies’ social circle — but for the tragedy that haunts this room. All of these women lost relatives in last September’s Beslan school massacre.
Russian police who smelled something amiss when the owners of a Moscow apartment failed to pay their bills found four mummified corpses and a fridge full of out-of-date food. Investigators established that the bodies were those of four family members, who died at intervals over a five-year period.
Yukos oil founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky was found guilty on Tuesday of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison after a politically charged trial seen by critics as a Kremlin-driven vendetta against Russia’s once-richest man. Defence lawyers have vowed to file an appeal against the verdict and sentence.
A massive power outage caused chaos in Moscow on Wednesday, stranding about 20 000 people in underground metro tunnels, disrupting traffic above ground and leaving large sections of the Russian capital without electricity. One report said effects were felt as far as Tula, 300km south of Moscow.
Russia is keen to strengthen its cooperation with Algeria and hopes to step up arms sales to the North African country, Russia’s armed forces chief of staff told his visiting Algerian counterpart on Monday. Algeria, which had strong ties with the former Soviet Union, has continued to purchase arms from Russia after the fall of communism in 1991.
Lawyers representing Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky said on Tuesday it is a foregone conclusion their client will be found guilty as judges continued reading the protracted verdict in the controversial trial. For a third day in a row, the Moscow court’s three-judge panel took turns in reading out the mammoth judgement.
Although the military parade through Red Square commemorating the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on Monday was awash in Soviet-era symbols — on banners, medals and posters — the city’s most powerful Soviet image was almost in hiding. The Lenin mausoleum was blocked by an elaborate platform.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to reassure skittish investors on Monday in his annual State of the Nation address that rampant tax probes, greedy bureaucrats and a shifting economic playing field will be made things of the past. However, opposition politicians and economic analysts reacted sceptically to Putin’s promises.
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin made his pitch to visiting Olympics officials on Wednesday to choose Moscow as host of the 2012 Games, arguing that Russia has drastically changed since hosting the 1980 Olympics, but is still a world sports power. He reminded the officials that ”Russia is one of the great athletic powers in the world”.
Russian authorities have blown up the house where rebel Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov was killed last week in a special operation, witnesses and officials said on Monday. It was unclear whether the explosion was meant as punishment for the family that allegedly gave him shelter, a safety precaution or an attempt to cover up sensitive evidence.