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Anna Selezneva is an intriguing looking Russian model with the funkiest hair in the modeling business, but definitely the poster child for the emaciated image that the Fashion World tends to project these days. Anna would look much better if she put on 15 pounds at least...

A 28-year-old Russian female, who visited Dubai on a tourist visa, and a 30-year-old male citizen of Lebanon, a salesman in a local store, were put on trial for drinking juice in a public place in the daytime during Muslim fasting. The police caught the two people red-handed at a gas station in Dubai, Emirat.ru reports with reference to Gulf News. In accordance with the Federal Penal Code of the United Arab Emirates, a public intake of food and beverages during daytime hours of the month of Ramadan is forbidden by Article 313. The article stipulates the punishment in the...

CCTV caught the moment the Russian passenger jet crashed killing 82 passengers and 6 crew. The camera pointing in the opposite direction caught the bright orange flash from the explosion. 82 passengers and six crew members have been killed in a plane crash near Perm in the Ural Mountains of central Russia. Emergency workers say there are no survivors. Seven children, including a baby, are re More..ported to have been on the flight from Moscow, which was operated by Aeroflot subsidiary, Aeroflot Nord. Monday has been declared a day of mourning in the region, as messages of condolence pour into...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feted by Russian media on Sunday for saving a television crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger in the wilds of the Far East. Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild... The 55-year-old former KGB spy, who cultivated a macho image during his eight years as the Kremlin chief, was shown striding through the taiga in camouflage and desert boots before grappling with the feline foe.

RUSSIAN soldiers have been caught on camera ROBBING a bank in war-torn Georgia. The band of gun-toting men were caught on CCTV forcing their way into the bank in Gori. Once inside, the men are seen breaking into the teller offices and rifling through the desks.

US Presidential Candidate Declares Russia Not the Aggressor  

Remarks by President Bush in the Rose Garden on Wednesday about the crisis in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, by as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions. Good morning. I've just met with my national security team to discuss the crisis in Georgia. I've spoken with President Saakashvili of Georgia and President Sarkozy of France this morning. The United States strongly supports France's efforts, as president of the European Union, to broker an agreement that will end this conflict. The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia. We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of...

The Sun witnessed the latest horror as a blood-splattered tot was rushed screaming to a shattered hospital in the gateway city of Gori. It was 5pm — four hours after fighting should have stopped. The one-year-old boy with an ugly head wound was carried from a police car. With him was his uninjured sister, three — smeared with his blood. Minutes later, a second cop car screeched to a halt. Inside was the children’s mother, in agony from gunshot wounds in her right shoulder and leg. She was loaded on to a trolley. After a brief examination all three were...

President Medvedev said the EU peace plan contained "good principles to settle the problem," but that Russia would also add proposals and that it was "up to Georgia now". He said that President Saakashvili, whom he described as a "lunatic," had lied about his side's respect for a ceasefire during the conflict. "You know, lunatics' difference from other people is that when they smell blood it is very difficult to stop them. So you have to use surgery," President Medvedev said. Asked about the progress of the peace plan, President Sarkozy said: "The night is young. We are not at...

LONDON (AFP) — British energy giant BP said Tuesday that it has closed two more oil and gas pipelines in Georgia because of the ongoing conflict with Russia. "We have closed two other pipelines in Georgia -- Baku-Supsa and the South Caucasus pipeline, which is a gas pipeline," a BP spokesman told AFP. The key Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which BP also operates, was shut last week after a blast occurred in a pump at a section in eastern Turkey. Russia's armed forces on Tuesday denied deliberately targeting the strategic BTC conduit running through Georgia after Tbilisi claimed it had been...

YORK, Pennsylvania (AFP) — Republican White House hopeful John McCain Tuesday stepped up a fusillade against Russian "aggression" and declared that today, "we are all Georgians." Addressing voters in Pennsylvania, McCain said he had spoken by telephone earlier with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who he said wanted to thank the American people for their support. "I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians," said the Republican, a hardliner against Russia who wants the mighty nation expelled from the Group of Eight club.

The Georgian National Anthem   Freedom Our icon is the homeland Trust in God is our creed, Enlightened land of plains and mounts, Blessed by God and holy heaven. The freedom path we've learnt to follow Makes our future spirits stronger, The morning star will rise above us And lighten up the land between the two seas. Glory to long-cherished freedom, Glory liberty!  

Erie, Pa: ARLINGTON, VA – Today, in Erie, Pennsylvania, U.S. Senator John McCain delivered the following statement regarding the current conflict between Georgia and Russia: “Americans wishing to spend August vacationing with their families or watching the Olympics may wonder why their newspapers and television screens are filled with images of war in the small country of Georgia. Concerns about what occurs there might seem distant and unrelated to the many other interests America has around the world. And yet Russian aggression against Georgia is both a matter of urgent moral and strategic importance to the United States of America....

When the North Caucasus slid into war Thursday night, it presented Senators John McCain and Barack Obama with a true '3 a.m. moment,' and their responses to the crisis suggested dramatic differences in how each candidate, as president, would lead America in moments of international crisis. While Obama offered a response largely in line with statements issued by democratically elected world leaders, including President Bush, first calling on both sides to negotiate, John McCain took a remarkably-and uniquely-more aggressive stance, siding clearly with Georgia's pro-Western leaders and placing the blame for the conflict entirely on Russia. The abrupt crisis in...

The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled. It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation. The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivalling the US Ares/Orion system. Unlike previous crewed vehicles, it will use thrusters to make a soft landing when it returns to Earth. I think the main roadmap is the agreement between the European and Russian space agencies. That is their Plan A Anatoly Zak In some respects, the capsule resembles America's next-generation...

Russian scientists in bid to solve Tunguska Event Last Updated: 1:18AM BST 02/07/2008 Russian scientists will this week attempt to solve the mystery of a giant explosion 100 years ago that turned night to day across western Europe and flattened a large swathe of Siberia. Trees lay strewn across the Siberian countryside, in 1953, 45 years after an 'unexplained explosion' near Tunguska, Russia A century after reindeer herdsmen saw a column of light that shone with the intensity of the Sun moving across the Siberian dawn sky, the Tunguska Event remains one of the modern era's most abiding scientific riddles....

"Russia's air force chief on Saturday accused NATO fighters escorting Russian bombers on patrol flights over neutral waters of violating safety rules. Air Force chief Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin said NATO aircraft were approaching Russian bombers too closely and too often, creating risky situations."

MOSCOW - A Russian capsule carrying South Korea's first astronaut touched down 260 miles off target in northern Kazakhstan on Saturday after hurtling through the atmosphere in a bone-jarring descent from the international space station. It was the second time in a row — and the third since 2003 — that the Soyuz landing went awry. Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the condition of the crew — South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko — was satisfactory, though the three had been subjected to severe gravitational forces during the re-entry. The...

the Russian Soyuz capsule that ferried them back from the international space station made a very steep re-entry, known as a "ballistic re-entry," and landed 260 miles off course on Saturday morning. Mission Control in Moscow reported all three were in satisfactory condition although the ride home subjected their bodies to severe G-forces, up to 10 times the normal force of gravity. Besides being far off course, the landing was about 20 minutes later than planned.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian electrician slept off a night's drinking with a long knife stuck in his back and didn't notice until his wife spotted it in the kitchen the next day, Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda paper reported on Thursday. Yury Lyalin, 53, was rushed to hospital in the northern city of Vologda, but the 15-centimetre (six-inch) knife had not damaged any vital organs. His wife saw the handle of the knife sticking out as her husband bent down to get some breakfast from the fridge, the newspaper reported. Although Lyalin played down the injury, local prosecutors are not treating...

Cause Of Death Of Russian Baby Mammoth Discovered ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2008) — On September 27, 2004, the front part of a baby mammoth’s body was found in Olchan mine in the Oimyakon Region of Yakutia. Specialists of the Museum of Mammoth of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, Academy of Sciences of Sakha Republic (Yakutia), have been thoroughly studying the finding and they have published the first outcomes. There remained only the head, part of the proboscis, the neck area and part of the breast of the baby mammoth’s body. The body is practically cut off behind...

Russian archaeologists find 15th century griffin jug piece Irish Sun Wednesday 19th March, 2008 Moscow, March 19 (RIA Novosti) Archaeologists near the city of Veliky Novgorod in northwest Russia have discovered part of a centuries-old ceramic jug decorated with a mysterious griffin symbol. 'On the fragment of ceramic, most likely part of a broken jug, we saw an image of an animal with open jaws and wings, like a griffin,' the head of the archaeology team, Oleg Oleynikov, said. The griffin, portrayed as a gigantic bird with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion, first appeared...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — U.S. and South Korean fighter jets scrambled to turn back a Russian reconnaissance aircraft that approached a U.S. aircraft carrier during training exercises, an official said Thursday. The Russian plane flew close to the USS Nimitz in waters off South Korea's eastern coast Wednesday, but retreated shortly after the allied warplanes approached, an official at the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said on condition of anonymity, citing office policy. Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed military official saying two F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters from the carrier and four South Korean F-16 jets were deployed...

Hillary Clinton is a highly-educated woman. But this was her response last week when asked to name the front-runner in Russia's presidential election. The New York senator and White House hopeful seems to wear her ignorance of the world's largest country as a badge of honour. She is not alone. In the run-up to today's Russian vote, the Western press has been full of insinuation, slur and downright disinformation about a nation which has risen from the ashes and is now emerging as a global economic giant. I lived in Moscow for several years during the mid-90s - the roughest...

UNITED NATIONS - A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program — and allow Russia to skim profits. Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies...

A top political adviser in Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign helped arrange an introduction in 2006 between McCain and a Russian billionaire whose suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures are so controversial that the U.S. government revoked his visa. Rick Davis, who is now McCain's campaign manager, helped set up the encounter between McCain and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska in Switzerland during an international economic conference. At the time, Davis was working for a lobbying firm and seeking to do business with the billionaire. There is no evidence that McCain did anything for Deripaska after they met at...

Iran received a third shipment of nuclear fuel from Russia on Friday for a power plant being constructed in the southern Iranian port of Bushehr, state radio reported. The 11-ton consignment arrived at the Bushehr power plant on Friday morning, and the remainder of the remainder of the fuel will arrive in five separate shipments over the next months, the radio report said. Iran received the first two shipments of nuclear fuel from Russia on Dec. 17 and Dec. 28 after months of dispute between the two countries, allegedly over delayed construction payments for the reactor. Iran has said Bushehr,...

Father Christmas does exist -- Russian governmentAgence France-Presse First Posted 05:43pm (Mla time) 12/27/2007 MOSCOW -- Russia's government has ridden to the rescue of children by banning a television ad that declares Father Christmas does not exist, the daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta announced Thursday. The Federal Anti-monopoly Service ruled that the advertisement run by a network of electronics stores called Eto breaks a law against discrediting parents, the government-run newspaper said. The advertisement declares bluntly "that Father Frost does not exist," according to the report, referring to Russia's version of the gift-bearing, red-coated old man. "It means that parents are not...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Russia is preparing to equip Iran with a powerful new air defense system that would dramatically increase its ability to repel an attack, Iran's defense minister said Wednesday. The S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense system is capable of shooting down aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missile warheads at ranges of over 90 miles and at altitudes of about 90,000 feet. Russian military officials boast that its capabilities outstrip the U.S. Patriot missile system.

MOSCOW (AFP) - A major oil spill off the southern coast of Russia could take months to clear, a top environmentalist said on Wednesday as the first charges were brought over the accident. Some 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil seeped into environmentally sensitive waters of the Kerch Strait in the northeastern corner of the Black Sea, after a fierce storm on Sunday wrecked five ships including an oil tanker. "It will take nearly a week to clear the coast of pollution and months to eliminate fuel oil from the sea surface," Igor Chestin, head of the Russian branch of the...

PORT KAVKAZ, Russia - More than 30,000 birds and countless fish have been killed in an "ecological catastrophe" wrought by thousands of tons of oil from a tanker that broke apart in a heavy storm near the Black Sea, the governor of the region said Monday. Birds weighed down by thick coatings of the fuel oil hopped weakly along the shore or sat helplessly in the sand. Workers with pitchforks and shovels started the backbreaking labor of gathering up vast clumps of oil mixed with sand and seaweed. The tanker was one of up to 10 ships that sank or...

Feastday: November 12 Josaphat, an Eastern Rite bishop, is held up as a martyr to church unity because he died trying to bring part of the Orthodox Church into union with Rome. In 1054, a formal split called a schism took place between the Eastern Church centered in Constantinople and the Western Church centered in Rome. Trouble between the two had been brewing for centuries because of cultural, political, and theological differences. In 1054 Cardinal Humbert was sent to Constantinople to try and reconcile the latest flare up and wound up excommunicating the patriarch. The immediate problems included an insistence...

MOSCOW – A Russian oil tanker split in two during a fierce storm early Sunday, spilling some 560,000 gallons of fuel into a strait leading to the Black Sea in one of the worst environmental disasters in the region in years, authorities said. Two freighters carrying sulfur also sank nearby in the Strait of Kerch, a narrow strait linking the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov to the northeast, said Sergei Petrov, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry. Operations to rescue the crews of all three ships were under way, officials said. The...

We all know how annoying can spam be. Although there are highly sophiscated tools nowadays, which can reduce the amount of spam in your mailbox to the minimum, it’s still at least unpleasent to see all those “penis enlargement” mails. But people working in this “business” aren’t safe anymore: Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means ‘Thick Skin’), a Russian spammer, was found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known...

Russian bombers fly Alaska, Canada coastsPosted : Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:08:47 GMT MOSCOW, Sept. 21 Russia resumed long-range military flights along the coasts of Alaska and Canada after a 17-year hiatus. The two Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers participated in scheduled exercise drills that began Tuesday and were to end Friday, Itar-Tass reported. The bombers, monitored on their flights by NATO planes, returned to their home airfield Thursday via the North Pole, Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky told Itar-Tass. Russia resumed long-range flights to remote areas on order from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said the flights are a security precaution...

09/21/2007 | 11:13 Two Russian Bombers Spotted near Iceland Two far-reaching Russian Tupolev 95 bombers entered the Icelandic air observation zone north of the country yesterday morning. British military jets flew towards the bombers and followed them to the northern limits of the observation zone. The Russian aircrafts circled Iceland and flew as close as 43 nautical miles offshore, but without entering Icelandic airspace, ruv.is reports. According to a statement from Iceland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it received information from Russia about the flight on Wednesday night. Iceland’s Radar Agency monitored the bombers during the entire flight and exchanged information...

LONDON - Russian military aircraft were intercepted by British and Norwegian jets Friday after they breached NATO airspace close to the U.K. and Finland, defense officials said. Finland's prime minister demanded an explanation from Moscow. Interception of Russian warplanes in NATO patrolled-airspace has become increasingly common since the Kremlin ordered strategic bombers to carry out long-range missions for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union. British fighter jets intercepted two Russian long-range bombers flying in NATO airspace and shadowed them until they charged course, Britain's defense ministry said, without revealing precisely where the incursion took place. The...

Russian espionage in UK 'at Cold War level' By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent Last Updated: 1:11am BST 08/09/2007 Russia's espionage operation in Britain is operating at the level of the Cold War and involves about half of the staff accredited to its diplomatic missions in London, it has been claimed. Boris Berezovsky: an outspoken critic of Putin Their tasks range from seeking military and commercial secrets to monitoring Russian dissidents based in London, most notably Boris Berezovsky, the billionaire and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin. When Britain expelled four Russian diplomats in July - responding to Moscow's failure to...

President Vladimir Putin flexed Russia's military muscles once again yesterday when his government said that 12 strategic bombers would practise firing cruise missiles during a show-of-strength exercise over the Arctic. The giant Tupolev 95 aircraft were due to take off from five air bases, including one near the Bering Straits, separating Russia from Alaska. Mr Putin has made great efforts to extend Russian influence over the Arctic, which may have untapped mineral wealth. Russia has dispatched a scientific expedition to the polar ice-cap and last month a submarine dropped the national flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole. Monday's...

HAVANA (Reuters) - They came from Russia with love to a tropical socialist utopia when the going was good. They were young women romantically drawn to Fidel Castro's revolution, a breath of fresh air on a distant Caribbean island for those who were disillusioned with Soviet communism. But when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, hundreds of Russian women who married Cubans and moved to Cuba were cut off from home and stranded in poverty as the Cuban economy plunged into deep crisis. For those who had lived through the hardships of World War II in Russia as children,...

Russian bombers launch missiles over Arctic By Richard Holt Last Updated: 7:24pm BST 03/09/2007 Twelve Russian strategic bombers are taking part in military exercises above the Arctic involving the launching of tactical cruise missiles. The Russian air force spokesman did not specify the exact location of the exercises but confirmed that the TU-95MC bombers would take off from five air bases stretching from the Volga River city of Engels to Anadyr on the Chukotka Peninsula overlooking the United States. Russian bomber being shadowed by a RAF jet last month "The planes will also practise mid-air refuelling from Il-78 transport planes,"...

A WEALTHY Russian tried to buy a US B-52 bomber from a group of shocked American pilots at an airshow near Moscow, a Russian newspaper reported today. The unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards, approached the US delegation and asked to buy the bomber, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said. An astounded member of the US delegation said the bomber was not for sale but that it would cost at least $US500 million ($610.54 million) if it were to be sold on the spot. “That is no problem. It is such a cool machine,” the Russian was quoted as...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A wealthy Russian tried to buy a U.S. B-52 bomber from a group of shocked American pilots at an air show near Moscow, a Russian newspaper reported on Friday. The unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards, approached the U.S. delegation and asked to buy the bomber, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said. An astounded member of the U.S. delegation said the bomber was not for sale but that it would cost at least $500 million (249.5 million pounds) if it were to be sold on the spot. "That is no problem. It is such a cool...

The defendant is accused of stealing source code for Alibre Design, three-dimensional solid-modeling software for creating virtual prototypes of products. Alibre Design competes with products by SolidWorks Corp. and Autodesk Inc.. Mr. Voznyuk allegedly offered it under the name RaceCAD Design Professional for download on the Internet.

In a scene reminiscent of the Cold War, a Russian air force Tupolev Tu-95 bomber is pictured being intercepted by a Royal Air Force fighter before approaching too close to UK airspace on 17 August. But for the first time, the aircraft providing so-called quick reaction alert (QRA) cover is a Eurofighter Typhoon F2 from the RAF's 11 Sqn - the unit tasked with leading the type's evolution into a multirole fighter also capable of performing ground-attack duties in Afghanistan from July 2008. Russian bombers have been intercepted by UK fighters on several occasions so far this year, with their...

The Manhattan district attorney indicted five men Thursday for allegedly being part of an identity theft ring that stole more than a million dollars from wealthy citizens. Prosecutors say the ring leader was Igor Klopov, 24, from Russia. Klopov's accused of targeting people's home equity line of credit accounts. He was arrested in New York in May when he came to pick up $7 million in gold from an undercover investigator. He allegedly picked his victims from the Forbes 400 list and used his home computer to get property records and mortgage information off the Internet. "There is a great...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Long-range Russian bombers are flying more often and closer to US territory, a top US commander said Tuesday, as Moscow made its latest show of military might with exercises over the North Pole. General Gene Renuart, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command, the agencies charged with protecting US and Canadian airspace, said that US forces would continue to monitor the activity. "Over the last few months the Russian air force has been flying a little bit more than we've seen in the past; certainly they're ranging farther than they have...

Article published Aug 7, 2007 Russian navy covets Mediterranean Sea August 7, 2007 By David R. Sands - Having just staked a claim to the North Pole, Russia is now eyeing the Mediterranean. With Moscow's coffers replenished by the global oil boom, Adm. Vladimir Masorin, Russia's naval commander, has announced ambitious plans to expand the country's primary Black Sea base and establish a "permanent presence" in the eastern Mediterranean for the first time since the Cold War. "The Mediterranean is very important strategically for the Black Sea Fleet," the admiral told reporters Friday on a visit to the Russian base...

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia could prosecute businessman and former Soviet KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi in the Litvinenko affair if Britain provides "proof" of his guilt, Russia's foreign minister said Friday. If the British "have proof that has 100 percent convinced them of Lugovoi's guilt, we are ready to receive it and study it," Sergei Lavrov said, cited by Interfax news agency from Beijing. At the same time, he said Russia did not intend to exchange Lugovoi for Russian businessman and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky, who currently lives in London and is wanted in Russia on various charges of fraud. "For...

Taliban militants have used a heat-seeking surface-to-air missile to attack a Western aircraft over Afghanistan for the first time. Click to enlarge Click to enlarge: how the attack was launched The attack with a weapon believed to have been smuggled across the border with Iran represents a worrying increase in the capability of the militants which Western commanders had long feared. The Daily Telegraph has learnt that the Taliban attempted to bring down an American C-130 Hercules aircraft flying over the south-western province of Nimroz on July 22. The crew reported that a missile system locked on to their aircraft...