Month: June 2013

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila announced Thursday on national television that their marriage was over, ending years of media speculation about the couple’s relationship.

They have been married for under 30 years.

“Yes, you could say this is a civilised divorce,” Lyudmila said in response to a journalist’s question, following the Putins’ joint outing to a ballet performance – the first time they had been seen in public since the president’s inauguration in May 2012.

Russia is set to sign a visa-free travel agreement with Paraguay, according to a document published on the government’s website Thursday.

“The agreement establishes visa-free travel for trips of 90 days or less for every period of 180 days for owners of valid passports,” the government said.

The statement, however, did not say when the agreement would be signed.

–IANS

Tom Sharpe was aptly named, a writer who turned a razor-edged eye for absurdity on everything from the racism of apartheid to the squabbles of academia.

The British writer behind a string of comic novels including the campus classic “Porterhouse Blue” has died at
85.

Sharpe’s Spanish publisher, Anagrama, said he died today in Llafranc, the Catalan town where he lived. His physician, Dr. Montserrat Verdaguer, said the cause was complications from diabetes.

Sharpe’s first novel, the South Africa-set “Riotous Assembly,” was published in 1971. He became one of Britain’s

Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, has been admitted to hospital for an exploratory operation, Buckingham Palace said.

He will turn 92 next week.

He was admitted to the London Clinic “following abdominal investigations” and expected to stay in the hospital for up to two weeks, BBC reported Thursday.

The operation will take place Friday under general anaesthetic. It is a planned, not an emergency, admittance, it added.

Prince Philip had to pull out of an official engagement earlier this week.

The parents of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects say American investigators have once again come to their home in the southern Russian province of Dagestan to talk to them about their elder son.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six months in Dagestan last year, and investigators have been trying to determine whether he was influenced or trained by local Islamic militants.

Wellington, June 6 (ANI): Former CIA Director Leon Panetta has been accused of violating security rules by revealing the name of the commander of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, to the writer of the film Zero Dark Thirty, according to US Defense Department investigators. An unpublished draft report was first disclosed by the Project on Government Oversight and has been confirmed by Representative Peter King, who asked for the investigation nearly two years ago, reports Stuff.co.nz.

London, June 6 (ANI): Muslim groups have urged authorities to take serious action against anti-Islamic attacks, saying that they fear a wave of reprisals in the wake of the Woolwich murder of Drummer Lee Rigby. Muslim representatives are pleading with police to clamp down on Islamaphobic attacks, and are appealing for solidarity throughout their communities, reports the Daily Star. Counter-terrorism police are investigating after a Somali cultural centre was burned to the ground in Muswell Hill, north London on Wednesday.