Month: March 2013

A Russian national has been detained in Poland over suspicion of defrauding several companies of stock and property worth an estimated $12 million, the Russian Interior Ministry said.

According to Russian investigators, the suspect, Sergei Petrov, fraudulently acquired 252 million rubles (about $8 million) worth of shares in 2004 in the Urals-based UralinvestEnergo industrial group and the South Urals insulator plant, owned by the Uralinvestenergo corporation.

Students of a university in the UAE have donated about 97,000 dirhams (over $26,400) for displaced Syrians during a charity campaign.

Sheikh Ousha bint Nayhyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, chairperson of the Zayed University Alumni Association, launched the campaign — Action 2013 — last week.

IANS

President Vladimir Putin laid flowers Friday at a memorial in western Russia to 84 soldiers who were killed in Chechnya March 1, 2000.

Just six paratroopers from the 6th Company, based in the west Russian city of Pskov, survived after being cut off by retreating Chechen separatist fighters in the North Caucasus republic’s Argun Gorge.

The human losses were the Russian military’s highest on a single day during the Second Chechen War (August 1999 to May 2000).

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has spoken out against spending money on an electronic version of the orthodox encyclopaedia series this week, saying it would be unprofitable.

The orthodox encyclopaedia was launched in 2000 to collect data about history and religion. Some 30 volumes have been published already and many more are still being compiled.

The idea of making an electronic version of the printed encyclopaedia has been proposed by the culture ministry, but the patriarch rejected the idea as unprofitable.

Lawyers for James Holmes, who allegedly killed 12 people during the screening of ”The Dark Knight Rises” at a movie hall in Colorado, United States, have indicated their client might plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

According to court documents, Holmes’ attorneys want the judge to declare portions of the state’s insanity defense laws unconstitutional.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Friday inaugurated a naval installation that will make parts for conventional submarines – and eventually a nuclear-powered submarine – under cooperation agreements signed with France in 2009.

The launch of the facility marks the first concrete step toward construction of what will be Latin America’s first submarine powered by a nuclear reactor.

“With this initiative, we join a select group of countries with access to a nuclear submarine,” Rousseff said.

Eight miners have been killed in a colliery blast in southwest China.

The accident happened yesterday at the Liangshuigou Coal Mine in Muzhuo township of Zhenxiong county, according to the county’s publicity bureau.

An initial probe has indicated a gas blast in the mine.

Operation of the coal mine has not resumed after the Spring Festival, but the mine manager managed 20 miners to work in the mine without any safety check.

Twelve of them had been lifted out of the mine before the accident. The manager of the colliery has been in police custody.

–PTI

An earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale rocked the entire north-east India and adjoining Bangladesh on Saturday morning. No casualties were reported, officials said.

According to a seismologist in Shillong, the quake was felt around 7.01 a.m. in most parts of the north-east region and neighbouring Bangladesh, and its epicentre lay along the India-Bangladesh border.

“The exact epicentre of the quake was on the India-Bangladesh border with western Tripura. The tremor lasted for about four to five seconds,” an official at the Regional Seismological Centre told IANS.