Month: March 2013

Russian prosecutors are looking into a case of alleged expulsion of a female student from a Siberian university over her hijab.

A local TV station in Krasnoyarsk city reported that an unnamed third-year student from Muslim-populated Dagestan had been expelled from the city’s medical school for wearing a headscarf.

“After the TV report was broadcast, the Krasnoyarsk district prosecutors launched a probe to check the legitimacy of the expulsion,” local prosecutor’s aid Yelena Pimonenko said.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck near Guatemala City, but residents said they barely felt the temblor and authorities had no immediate reports of damages or deaths.

The US Geological Survey said yesterday the quake’s epicenter was located 6 kilometers northwest of San Jose Pinula and had a depth of 200 kilometers.

“So far we have received no reports of damage and we’re monitoring nationwide,” said Mario Cruz, a spokesman for firefighters.

The quake was only 9 kilometers from Guatemala’s capital, but was barely felt, perhaps because of its depth.

French President Francois Hollande has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing regret over the “inadvertent” killing of two Indians in the Central African Republic, where a rebel leader seized power during the weekend.

Six other Indians were injured in the hostilities in the country’s capital Bangui, where the French have stationed some 250 soldiers. Hollande said it was a case of mistaken identity when his troops tried to defend their country’s national numbering some 1,200 people, most of them in the capital.

The UN said Monday that it is withdrawing foreign staff from Syria over security conditions after mortar shells fell near a hotel housing its employees.

Russian envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin said the move was regrettable, but that it demonstrated the gravity of the situation in the war-ravaged nation.

Mortar fire damaged the hotel building and some cars in the parking lot, including one UN vehicle.

Around 100 international and 800 domestic employees work for a variety of UN agencies and programs in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The US has been assisting Turkey and Arab nations boost their arms deliveries to Syrian rebels in recent months as the armed opposition attempts to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the New York Times reported.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has helped Arab governments — including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan — in their efforts to procure weapons to arm the Syrian rebels with, and US intelligence officers have also assisted in vetting the insurgents designated to receive the shipments, the newspaper reported.

The first in-flight tests of Russia’s domestically designed PD-14 engine for MS-21 passenger planes are scheduled for 2014, an official said.

The fifth-generation PD-14 engine is Russia’s first domestic development in the area of civilian engine-building for the last 25 years.

Russia has invested 70 billion rubles (over $2 billion) in the development of the engine.

“At present, the engine is being prepared for tests on an Il-76-based airborne testing lab, scheduled to take place in 2014,” said Anastasia Denisova, spokesperson for the United Engine-Building Corporation (UEC).

Lawmakers in Georgia have approved changes to the constitution that will reduce President Mikheil Saakashvili’s authority and tip the balance of power to the prime minister.

The changes, which include stripping the president of the right to dismiss the government without parliamentary approval, mark a new victory for billionaire prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose Georgian Dream coalition triumphed in the October elections.

More than 69,000 new cases of HIV were recorded in Russia last year, the country’s top public health official said.

Signalling that there has been no letdown in the rising spread of the virus, Gennady Onishchenko told a scientific conference in Moscow that around 720,000 people have been diagnosed with HIV in Russia since 1987, when the first case was officially registered.

Onishchenko said more than 6,300 of those cases were among children aged below 14.

The figure for last year is a notable increase on the 62,000 confirmed HIV cases in 2011.

Judges in the Italian city of Milan said on Monday they would delay Silvio Berlusconi’s trial on charges of paying for sex with a minor until April 22, pending a decision on whether to transfer the case to the city of Brescia.

A separate appeal against a conviction for tax fraud has already been delayed until April 20 after the former prime minister’s lawyers appealed to have the cases transferred to Brescia from Milan where they say he cannot get a fair hearing. Italy’s highest court, the Corte di Cassazione, is due to rule on the request but no date has yet been set for a decision.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his first public comments on Monday over allegations he duped the country’s richest woman to raise election funds, saying he had never betrayed his public duties and pledging to clear his name.

Sarkozy was placed under investigation last week for allegedly exploiting the mental frailty of 90-year-old L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, after she was declared in a state of dementia, to help raise money for his 2007 election campaign. His lawyer rejected the case as flawed.