Russia: Hundreds detained to prevent ethnic clashes

Russian police detained hundreds of people in Moscow and St.Petersburg on Wednesday, aiming to prevent new outbreaks of ethnic violence that erupted in the capital last weekend.

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Law enforcement authorities turned out in force near the central Kievsky railway station in Moscow, where nationalist ethnic Russian youths and migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia had been gathering for a rumoured confrontation. About 800 people were detained during the day-long operation, many of whom were armed with knives, clubs or stun guns, Moscow police spokesman Viktor Biryukov said, according to Russian news agencies. In St.Petersburg Russian police detained more then eighty people near one of the central metro stations. The police said they had managed to take control of the situation and no violence or serious injuries were reported in the city. Simmering tension between ethnic-Russian nationalists and minorities from the largely Muslim Caucasus and Central Asia escalated after the fatal shooting of a soccer fan last week in a Moscow street fight between members of the two groups.

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Putin chief of staff among Moscow mayor candidates

MOSCOW: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday approved a shortlist of four candidates to replace the sacked mayor of Moscow, including the chief of staff of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev, who dismissed Yuri Luzhkov last month after the longtime mayor targeted him with rare public criticism, has 10 days to pick a new mayor for Moscow, a city of 10.5 million that accounted for about one-quarter of Russia’s economy in 2009.

The four candidates are Sergei Sobyanin, Putin’s chief of staff; Igor Levitin, Russia’s transport minister since Putin’s 2000-08 presidency; Lyudmila Shvetsova, a first deputy Moscow mayor; and Valery Shantsev, a former Luzhkov deputy who is mayor of Nizhny Novgorod.

Sobyanin had been described by Russian media and analysts as the most likely successor to Luzhkov before United Russia formally proposed the candidates to

Chinese ‘gold’ brings Egyptians a taste of little luxury

In Egypt, Chinese gold– an affordable imitation of the precious metal– has swamped the jewellery market, granting the poor a little taste of luxury.
As in many other countries, the Egyptian market has been flooded with Chinese goods — everything from electronics to plastic cigarette lighters have been shouldering locally made goods out of the way.
And in a country where 40 percent of the 80 million population lives on less than two dollars a day, the so-called Chinese gold has been widely welcomed, particularly by young couples who struggle to afford the traditional marriage dowry.
The current price of one gram of 24 carat gold in Egypt stands at 218 Egyptian pounds (38 dollars), while the Chinese version — a mixture of aluminium, iron and other metals — only costs around 20 to 30 Egyptian pounds (four to five dollars) per gram.
Just a short walk from the Khan al-Khalili tourist bazaar is Haret al-Yahud, the old Jewish quarter where gold workshops churned out designs from simple wedding bands to elaborate necklaces. But many of the jewellers there have switched to selling Chinese gold to improve business.
For young couples struggling to start a new life together, the arrival of Chinese gold has removed at least one obstacle to the costly traditions that surround marriage, including the dowry or shabka.

Firefighters try to douse peat fires in Moscow

Residents of villages in the Moscow region continued efforts to douse peat fires on Friday.
In Shatura district, 180 kilometres south-east of Moscow, local residents helped firefighters flood water into peat bogs near their homes. They hope that a change in the weather might help them, but the forecasts are not promising.
According to our meteorological data and forecasts there will be no rain in the near future, said Colonel Vitaly Simonov of the Emergencies Ministry. The situation is complex but stable, he added.
Russia’s worst heatwave since records began has set ablaze thousands of hectares (acres) of forest, killing 54 people and leaving thousands homeless. The Kremlin declared a state of emergency in several regions.
Smouldering underground fires in dried-out peat bogs blanketed Moscow in smoke for much of last week, causing mortality rates to soar. Strong winds this week cleared the smoke, at least temporarily.

PM rules out troops deployment in Karachi

KARACHI: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has ruled out deployment of military troops in Karachi to restore peace in southern port city of Pakistan.

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PM rules out troops deployment in Karachi

Smog over Moscow worsens as wildfires rage

MOSCOW: A deep layer of smog from wildfires around Moscow hung over the Russian capital Saturday, prompting many city residents to wear masks and causing dozens of flight delays and diversions at the city’s airports.

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Smog over Moscow worsens as wildfires rage

Heat, smoke and worry cloak Moscow

MOSCOW: As Moscow’s record heatwave began, I threw open all the screenless windows in my apartment, hoping for some breeze but mostly what I got was visits from bugs and, briefly, an inquisitive crow.

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Heat, smoke and worry cloak Moscow

Russia: Ahmadinejad comments unacceptable

MOSCOW: Russia on Monday angrily slammed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s criticism of Moscow in the nuclear crisis as unacceptable and irresponsible, as tensions spiral with its traditional ally.

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Russia: Ahmadinejad comments unacceptable

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Filipinos optimistic about Aquino Philippine Sen. Benigno Aquino III, whose parents fought to topple a dictatorship, promised Tuesday to fulfill his campaign promise to fight corruption as he headed for a landslide victory in the presidential elections.

“I will not only not steal, but I’ll have the corrupt arrested,” Aquino, 50, told a news conference in his first comments since Monday’s polls.

Massive corruption has long dogged the Philippines, tainting electoral politics and skimming billions of public funds in a country where a third of the population lives on $1 a day.

Still, the survey frontrunner and son of former president Cory Aquino leads the race followed by the former 13th President of the Philippines Joseph Ejercito Estrada.
The figures shown below comprises the 84.90% of the total election returns. Earlier this morning, the Comission on Election announced that this will be the last announcement of the partial and unofficial results of the elections. The congress, who has the power to proclaim the winners will be announcing the final figures if the 100% of the total election returns are already canvassed.

The 50-year-old Aquino has promised to immediately begin prosecuting corrupt officials to restore government credibility.

At many polling places, voters waited more than five hours in humid 100-degree heat to cast their ballots, with many eventually giving up in despair. Election officials put turnout at 75% of the 50 million eligible voters.

For the first time, optical scanning machines counted the votes in 76,000 precincts. A software glitch discovered a week ago nearly derailed the vote, but was fixed at the last minute. The machines were expected to reduce incidents of poll fraud allegations that have marred previous contests.

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Ten pirates released from a Russian warship 300 miles out to sea may have drowned, according to Russian officials and colleagues of the pirates, raising fears of retaliation against other vessels plying East African waters.

The pirates were captured last week after they hijacked the Moscow University, a Liberian-flagged, Russian-operated oil tanker sailing off the Somali coast. A Russian warship came to the ship’s rescue and apprehended the pirates. But after determining it would be too difficult to obtain a conviction, Russian officials said that they dropped plans to take the pirates to Moscow for trial.

Instead, like many other warships that have intercepted pirate skiffs, the Russian marines released the pirates — but not before removing weapons and navigation equipment from the boat several hundred miles from shore. Russian officials gave no explanation for removing the navigation equipment

Russian officials claimed they considered bringing the pirates to Moscow for trial but decided not to because of the uncertainties of international law.

So the Russians say they placed the pirates in a boat without weapons and after taking away the pirates navigation equipment cut the small boat loose. While removing the weapons makes sense to many people, leaving the pirates at sea without navigation equipment strikes some as senseless.The Moscow University tanker was hijacked on May 5 by a gang of pirates, according to the European Naval Force Somalia, which patrols these waters and monitors hijacking attempts. It said the crew members locked themselves in the rudder compartment as the pirates boarded the ship.Officials initially said they would be taken to Russia for trial, but the Defense Ministry said Friday they’d been released because of “imperfections” in international law. The statement was met with skepticism, especially in light of a comment made by the Russian president.
“We’ll have to do what our forefathers did when they met the pirates” until the international community comes up with a legal way of prosecuting them, Dmitry Medvedev said on the day the ship was stormed.

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