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ASTANA, March 16. /TASS/. The presidents of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus will meet in Astana on March 20, a spokesman for the Kazakh leader said on Monday. The spokesman said Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko had already confirmed they would attend the meeting. "The heads of state will discuss bilateral trade and economic cooperation," the spokesman said adding that they would also focus on global economic issues and the Ukrainian crisis.

NOVO-OGAREVO, February 4. /TASS/. The Russian Education and Science Ministry sees no reasons to allow female students wear a hijab at schools, minister Dmitry Livanov told TASS on Wednesday. Livanov said that under the federal regulations, "schoolwear must be secular."

The world's biggest Internet-retailer Amazon is going to start testing air drones for delivery of parcels in Britain. Two years after buying the Cambridge startup Evi Technologies, the company turned to looking for engineers and experts who can help with the tests, the Business Insider reported. It is likely that the military specialists will be involved in the tests. The drones will be flying over Cambridge. The date of the start is not yet announced. The project named Prime Air in future will allow the customers to receive their parcels within 30 minutes after the order confirmation. The Amazon drones...

MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/. Russian physicists dismissed as a promotional action on Thursday the statement by the US company Lockheed Martin about its technological breakthrough in the thermonuclear fusion field. Skunk Works (a subsidiary of the Lockheed Martinweapons producer) on Wednesday reported a breakthrough in the field of practical use of controlled thermonuclear fusion. The company claims that in the next decade it would present a commercial sample of a compact thermonuclear reactor. President of the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, Academician Yevgeny Velikhov told TASS in an interview that first it was necessary to develop such a project and...

MOSCOW, September 15 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia is returning to the Soviet-style system of marking the quality of domestic goods. The State Quality Mark of the USSR was the official Soviet mark for the certification of quality established in 1967. It was used to guarantee high commercial standards of consumer products and technical goods and was a stimulus for manufacturers to improve the quality of production. Obtaining the mark allowed Soviet enterprises to increase the state controlled price for their goods by ten percent. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the government introduced its own sign for certification of quality...

MOSCOW, September 15. /ITAR-TASS/. The results of Sunday’s regional election in Russia prove that the presidential approval rating in the country is high, the head of the Institute for Social, Economic and Political Studies said Monday. “The results of the election are a projection of the approval rating for the country’s president and the course that he has taken,” Dmitry Badovsky said at the Regions of Russia media forum. The outcome of the vote could have been forecast already in March when an opinion poll on Crimea’s reunification with Russia showed that over 90% of Russians across the country supported...

SIMFEROPOL, September 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s ruling party United Russia is winning elections to Crimea’s State Council, or legislature, according to exit poll results announced on Sunday after polling stations were closed. Thus, the results of the exit poll demonstrate that the United Russia is claiming 70.36% of the vote. Apart from the United Russia, two more parties - the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and the Communist Party (CPRF) - are surmounting the five-percent barrier with 9.33 and 6.56% of the vote, respectively. Candidates from the rest nine political parties, according to the exit polls, are failing to win seats in...

MOSCOW, May 15, 3:30 /ITAR-TASS/. Moscow’s Metro marks its 79th birthday on Thursday. Regular service along the first underground section of 11.2 kilometres from the Sokolniki station to the Park Kultury station was launched at seven in the morning on May 15, 1935. Back then, Moscow’s Metro had only 13 stations. Today, Moscow’s Metro has 194 stations and more than 325 kilometres of tracks. It is the world’s second metro system in terms of the number of passengers after Tokyo’s. The network of the Moscow Metro is still being expanded. In terms of the volume of construction of metro lines,...

MOSCOW, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the Finance Ministry to prepare and submit proposals by July 1, 2014 to lay off 10% of public servants, said the government official website which posted Medvedev’s instructions upon results of his annual report on government’s working results in 2013 at the State Duma. The Prime Minister delivered the annual government report on April 22. The premier stated particularly to ponder another 10% cuts of public servants in regions and at the federal level, because Russia needs “a modern, compact and effective state personnel oriented at people’s requests.” Meanwhile,...

© ITAR-TASS/Konstantin Sazonchik DONETSK, May 13 /ITAR-TASS/. Pavel Gubarev, the people’s governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has announced his plans to found his own party, Novorossia, with a headquarters in Donetsk, the local media reported on Tuesday. “The new political system of the Donetsk People’s Republic should have nothing in common with Ukraine’s previous oligarchic policy,” Gubarev said. “To realize these principles, I, on my own behalf, announce the establishment of a new party, Novorossia [Novorussia is a historical term referring to territory that acceded to the Russian Empire in the 1700s and made part of the Ukrainian Soviet...

DONETSK, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Oleg Tsarev will prepare a federal agreement for the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, according toa resolution of the coordinating council of the South-East association that was published on Tuesday. According to the document, Tsarev will lead a working group that will be tasked to word a draft agreement for a “unification of the self-proclaimed Luganks and Donetsk People’s Republics into a single entity - the Federal Republic of Novorossia.” Later on, the constitution of the new state and a mechanism for admitting new constituent entities into the would-be federation will be worked out.

LUGANSK, May 12. /ITAR-TASS/. Luhansk People’s Republic, whose residents supported the act on state sovereignty at the May 11 referendum, has declared its independence from Ukraine. 96.2% vote for independence of Luhansk region in May 11 referendum ‘Popular governor’ Valery Bolotov stated this at a rally on Monday. “We have chosen our path of independence from arbitrariness and bloody dictate of the Kiev clique, fascism and nationalism, the path of freedom, the path of rule of law,” Bolotov said. “From the moment of declaring its independence, a new life free from dictate of Kiev authorities will start for the Luhansk...

DONETSK, May 12. /ITAR-TASS/. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has made a plea asking to be accepted into the Russian Federation, the republic’s co-leader, Denis Pushilin, told a news conference on Monday. “We, the people of the Donetsk People’s Republic, relying on the results of the May 11, 2014 referendum and the declaration of independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic, declare that from now on the Donetsk People’s Republic is a sovereign state,” Pushilin said. “Proceeding from the will expressed by the DPR people and for the sake of restoring historical justice we are asking Russia to consider the...

OSCOW, May 12, /ITAR-TASS/. RF President Vladimir Putin will formulate his attitude to the referenda, held on Sunday, on the status of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, "on the strength of their results", presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov told the newspaper Kommersant. What the RF President's decision will be "is difficult to forecast", Peskov added. Asked by the newspaper whether Putin's attitude would be influenced by the fact that he himself had asked the federalization supporters to postpone the referendum until a later date, the presidential press secretary pointed out as follows: "Not asked but made such a recommendation". "However,...

Criminal responsibility for rehabilitation of Nazism is introduced in Russia Russia May 07, 7:31 UTC+4 The maximum punishment being the deprivation of freedom for a term of up to five years MOSCOW, May 07, /ITAR-TASS/. Criminal responsibility for the rehabilitation of Nazism is introduced in Russia, effective from Wednesday, with the maximum punishment being the deprivation of freedom for a term of up to five years. Amendments to this effect to the Penal Code and to the Code on Administrative Offences are published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Article 354.1 ("Rehabilitation of Nazism") is added to the Penal Code. The Article envisages...

MOSCOW, May 03. /ITAR-TASS/. A credible source in Russia’s government agencies has drawn attention to the recent change in the form and tonality of the Kiev authorities’ actions in the information sphere. “It is formed not at all by Ukrainian citizens, but by specialists who arrived from abroad. The PR group for the so-called “anti-Russian actions” involves American experts - as far as we know, shoulder straps show through the suits and sweaters of some of them. There are also European spin doctors, in particular, from Belgium who back during the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia had tried to persuade...

MOSCOW, May 01. /ITAR-TASS/. More than 100 thousand people are taking part in the May Day demonstration of trade unions in the centre of Moscow, the press service of the city’s main interior department reports. “The festive procession of trade unions from Vasilyevsky Spusk down Tverskaya Street has begun in the Russian capital,” the police department said. Who is taking part The column of the procession participants is led by Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, head of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FITUR) Mikhail Shnakov, head of the Moscow Trade Union Federation Sergei Chernov. Young people and students...

CHELYABINSK, April 26 (Itar-Tass) - Electricity was cut off to more than 150 residential localities in the Chelyabinsk region hit by a heavy snowstorm on Friday. Electro-transmission lines were covered with snow and torn by strong winds. Electricity supply was resumed to most of the houses overnight, but 13 residential localities of 9,369 people had no electricity on Saturday morning, the Russian Emergencies Ministry's Chelyabinsk regional department reported. Repairs were planned to be completed at 16:00 Moscow time. Mass cultural events and school classes were cancelled in Chelyabinsk on Saturday, and all services in the city remained on alert because...

DONETSK, April 24. /ITAR-TASS/. The leadership of the recently self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic plans to hold a referendum simultaneously with east Ukraine’s Luhansk region, co-chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic presidium Denis Pushilin told ITAR-TASS. “A referendum will be held no later than on May 11 and it is highly probable that Luhansk will also hold it with us no later than on May 11. Ludansk just has to confirm similar wording of the question. Our question is as follows, “Do you support the independence of Donetsk people’s republic?” Pushilin said. In his words, sovereignty gives the right and opportunity...