RIA: Railway station in south Russia comes under fire, no casualties

RIA: Railway station in south Russia comes under fire, no casualties

Several shots from grenade launchers damaged the building of a railway station in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, but left no casualties, a local police source said.

The attack occurred late on Tuesday in Ingushetia's largest city of Nazran.

"A group of unidentified attackers fired several shots from rifle-mounted grenade launchers at a railway station. At least one round exploded inside the building," the source said.

"Fortunately, the passenger terminal was closed for the night and no one was injured in the blast," the official added.

A similar attack killed one police officer and injured at least five other people in Nazran on Monday.

Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus republics, especially Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, have seen an upsurge of militant violence lately, with frequent attacks on police and officials.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently ordered the Federal Security Service to tighten security in the volatile North Caucasus following a suicide bomb attack in Dagestan that killed five people and wounded up to 19 on January 6.

ROSTOV-ON-DON, February 3 (RIA Novosti)

RFE/RL: Kadyrov's Libel Case Against Paper Opens

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court today opened a libel case filed by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov against an opposition newspaper he says damaged his reputation when it wrote he had murdered, tortured, and harmed fellow countrymen.

The case follows Kadyrov's victory in October 2009 when a Moscow court ordered Russian human rights group Memorial to retract its accusation that he had kidnapped and murdered its activist Natalia Estemirova in July.

Kadyrov is seeking 865,600 rubles ($28,480) from newspaper “Novaya gazeta,” where murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya had worked, and 100,000 rubles from its reporter Vyacheslav Izmailov, 55.

After two separatist wars since the mid-1990s, Muslim-dominated Chechnya now rests on a shaky peace. Rights groups say Kadyrov uses heavy-handed measures and has been involved in abductions and torture, charges he has repeatedly denied.

"The journalists could have easily gone down to Chechnya to do their homework and check the facts.... Instead they blamed the president," Kadyrov's lawyer Andrei Krasnenkov told the court.

Six articles published in “Novaya Gazeta” between May 2008 and February 2009, half of which were penned by Izmailov, accuse Kadyrov of murder, beatings, torture, threats of physical violence, extortion and involvement with a criminal organization, Kadyrov's lawyer Krasnenkov said in court.

The 33-year-old Chechen leader denies all those accusations, Krasnenkov said. The court may make a ruling on February 15.

"I'm proud the president of Chechnya has decided to take action against me. It means he has a high estimation of my work," Izmailov told Reuters.

During the court hearings, much attention was given to the article "Murder in Vienna," compiled by “Novaya Gazeta” editors, which links Kadyrov to the murder of his former bodyguard, Umar Israilov, in the Austrian capital in January 2009.

Krasnenkov denied those allegations in court, saying the newspaper had no proof to back up its claims.

Chechen exile Israilov had accused Kadyrov of participating in kidnappings and torture sessions in a complaint filed in the European Court of Human Rights in 2006.

Despite pledges by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to create a freer society, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia as the world's fourth most dangerous place for reporters, after Iraq, the Philippines, and Algeria.

Feb 3, 2010

Straits Times: 7 businessmen slain in Siberia

MOSCOW - THE bodies of seven businessmen have been found in a car on a remote road in Siberia after they were apparently murdered, Russian officials said on Wednesday.

The Interfax news agency said the seven local businessmen were found on a road 120km from the town of Zakamensk, close to the border with Mongolia, in the Siberian region of Buryatia.

'The bodies had signs of a violent death,' it quoted an official as saying.

A spokeswoman for the investigative committee of prosecutors in Buryatia confirmed to AFP by telephone from the regional capital Ulan Ude that the bodies of seven murdered people had been discovered. All further details would be disclosed in a news conference at 0700 GMT (3pm Singapore time), she added.

Russia is notorious for murders in the business world which are often linked to criminal or mafia score settling even if the frequency of such events has slackened somewhat compared to the chaos of the 1990s. – AFP

Interfax: Seven dead businessmen found in car in Buryatia

http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=144692

CHITA. Feb 3 (Interfax) - A car with seven dead businessmen inside has been found 120 kilometers away from the town of Zakamensk in Buryatia.

"The bodies of seven local businessmen with signs of violent death have been discovered near a road," the Buryat department of the Investigative Committee within the Russian prosecution system told Interfax on Wednesday.

Investigators are working at the scene.

Pravda: Russia to Adopt International Time Zone System

http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/03-02-2010/111995-time_zone-0

03.02.2010

Soon Russia may adopt the international zone time system. The document is now being discussed on the regional level.

According to the proposal of the State Duma presidential legislation, on the last Sunday of March, the clocks may be set back one hour, and not forward, as it used to be in the last 29 years.

Scientists and doctors have been arguing about pros and cons of the time change for years. The scientists claim that it brings about savings and more comfortable existence during daylight hours. Doctors disagree, stating that the number of heart attacks increases within several weeks after the clocks are set back or forward. They also observe aggravation of chronic diseases, decrease in stamina, and insomnia. Children and older people suffer the most, reports Gazeta.ru.

The proposed federal law suggests abandoning annual re-setting of the clock. If this piece of legislation is passed in the next couple of months, the usual re-setting of the clock in Russia will not happen on the last Sunday of March.

Additionally, we may have to set the clocks one hour back, but it will be a one-time action. The same piece of legislation would abandon daylight savings time in the Russian Federation.

The daylight savings time enacted in the USSR on June 16, 1930, is one hour ahead of the world zone time. This daylight savings time existed until April 1, 1981, when summer daylight savings time was introduced and Russia transferred to the European system of summer and winter daylight savings. Summer daylight savings time is two hours different form the zone time, while in the majority of the countries they coincide. As a result, getting up at 7am, Russians were actually getting up at 5am according to the zone time.

The explanatory note to the legislation states that daylight savings time is an obvious anachronism. Introduction of daylight savings time was necessary because of power savings. However, current calculations show that the savings only account for 0.5% of all produced p. Therefore, computation of time in Russia will comply with the international zone system.

According to the authors of the idea, the experiment with introduction of distortion into natural biorhythms of the population of the entire country has failed. They argue that its abandonment will improve the population’s health, will save lives of tens of thousands of people and will improve the demographic situation in the country. At the same time, all claims about health benefits will be pointless if another President’s idea will be considered. The idea is to decrease the number of time zones in Russia that now has 11 of them.

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