Russia to orbit new satellite

Russia to orbit new satellite

Russia will soon orbit a satellite to test a new generation of onboard instruments.

The MiR probe was developed by the Information Satellite systems R&D bureau in Krasnoyarsk, which has designed more than 1,000 multiple-orbit satellites.

Dutch minister ignores MPs on Russia sanctions

Today @ 09:29 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Dutch foreign minister is to ignore his own parliament over a call to impose sanctions on Russian officials deemed guilty of murdering lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Ward Bezemer, a spokesman for minister Uri Rosenthal, told EUobserver on Monday (4 July) that "in this case, he has discouraged the motion, he doesn't like it and he most likely won't act on the request." Bezemer added: "The minister shares the concerns and will continue to raise this issue internally. The Netherlands and the EU will continue to encourage the Russian federation to trace the perpetrators responsible."

All 150 MPs in the Dutch assembly, the Tweede Kamer, last week backed a non-binding resolution calling on the Hague to impose a travel ban and asset freeze on 60 Russian officials named by Magnitsky's former employer, US-born venture capitalist Bill Browder, in the case.

The situation in The Hague mirrors the one in Brussels, where the European Parliament last year also called on EU member states to consider sanctions and is being roundly ignored.

Browder's tactics - to lobby parliaments to put pressure on Russia-wary diplomats - are getting the best results in Washington, where a cross-party group of 18 senators introduced a bill that could force the state department to act.

US diplomats are equally reluctant to let open parliament democracy into its behind-closed-doors world. "The new law is seen by the State department as excessive, because it would mean any congressman could put forward a name for the no-fly list and then the department would have to prove they are OK. This would be a huge burden," a State department source said.

Browder noted that the Twede Kamer is "one of many European parliaments that is planning resolutions this summer and fall on the same subject." He noted that the British, Czech, German and Polish assemblies are the most sympathetic so far.

Under the rules of the EU's passport-free Schengen zone, if one country puts somebody on a persona non grata list, all Schengen members are obliged to decline them a visa.

The UK is not a Schengen member. But Sir Tony Brenton, a former British ambassador to Moscow, said in a letter to The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday: "Isn't it time that the British authorities made publicly clear their abhorrence at what has happened, demanded a full investigation, and made it clear too that those concerned will never receive a visa to enter the UK?"

Russian investigators on Monday acknowledged that Magnitsky, who suffered from pancreatitis, died because of "deficiencies in medical care." But the Browder camp sees the move as an attempt to shove blame onto prison doctors while letting senior officials off the hook.

Meanwhile, the Russian Duma last week began work on its own bill to blacklist foreigners who abuse the rights of Russian citizens.

The bill mentions the case of Alexander Kashin - a 35-year-old Russian man who was hit by the SUV of a US consul general, Douglas Kent, in Vladivostock in 1998, and left paraplegic. Kent avoided prosecution due to diplomatic immunity and left Russia.

Magnitsky died in his jail cell in 2009 after uncovering a multi-million-euro tax fraud by senior officials in the interior ministry and the secret police, the FSB. He was killed by a rupture of his abdominal membrane due to lack of medication. His body also had broken fingers.

02:46 05/07/2011ALL NEWS

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MOSCOW, July 5 (Itar-Tass) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will on Tuesday meet members of the presidential Council for the development of civil society and human rights.

The Council’s official website reports that civilian participation in counteraction to terrorism and extremism and the creation of an inter-ethnic and inter-confessional accord will be among the key topics of today’s dialogue.

According to the Council’s head, Mikhail Fedotov, Russian human rights activists are preparing materials on the cases of Khodorkovsky and Magnitsky. They are carrying out a public analysis of these cases and will submit their conclusions to the Russian president.

Fedotov says that the Council’s idea to draft and adopt a bill on public control may be another subject for discussion.

At the moment, the Council’s members are studying another bill proposed by lawmaker Alexander Torshin in which he suggests establishing the precedence of the Russian Constitutional Court’s decisions over the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, which receives a lot of complaints from Russia.

The meeting of the Council’s members with the president is timed to coincide with the beginning of a trial over defendants accused of killing the Spartak football fan Yegor Sviridov in December 2010. This case provoked mass riots and disturbances on Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square that were classified as actions inciting inter-ethnic strife. The Council’s members are unlikely to ignore this fact.

The presidential Council for the development of civil society and human rights is an advisory body. It was set up to help the president to exercise his constitutional powers in the provision of human rights and civil liberties, to inform the head of state about the situation in this field and prepare proposals of the head of state on issues that are in the Council’s competence.

The Council’s history dates back to 1993 when a Commission for human rights was set up under the Russian president. In 2004, the Commission was transformed into a Council. Ella Pamfilova headed that body from 2002 to 2010. She resigned from her post on her own accord.

Mikhail Fedotov who was also appointed presidential adviser filled that position last year.

Dispute emerges over Russian lawyer's jail death

MOSCOW (AP) — Activists plan to present evidence Tuesday that a Russian lawyer who accused officials of corruption died after a brutal beating by prison guards, saying investigators' findings that a lack of medical treatment killed the man fell short of the full truth.

Sergi Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who worked for a large U.S. investment fund, died in prison in November 2009 after the pancreatitis he developed there went untreated.

He had been arrested by Interior Ministry officials after he had accused them of using false tax papers to steal $230 million from the state.

Magnitsky's case is being scrutinized by human rights activists and potential Western investors as a gauge of the Kremlin's commitment to addressing corruption and allowing an independent legal system.

Several prison officials were fired but no one has been charged either for his death or in the alleged tax fraud.

On Monday, the federal Investigative Committee acknowledged for the first time that the lack of medical help was the "direct cause" of Magnitsky's death.

A panel of Russian rights activists that investigated Magnitsky's death, meanwhile, is presenting their report to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday.

Valery Borshchev, a prominent activist who took part in the independent probe, said the Investigative Committee's acknowledgment that Magnitsky was denied medical help was a positive sign, but added that the committee kept silent about prison guards beating the lawyer.

He said the panel had found evidence that Magnitsky had died shortly after eight prison guards handcuffed him, took him to a cell and beat him with truncheons.

"We have concluded that he died of beating," Borshchev told The Associated Press. "It was a real torture to beat an ailing man with truncheons."

Borshchev said a prison doctor had claimed that Magnitsky had a nervous breakdown and that she called prison guards to calm him down until an ambulance arrived.

The ambulance came quickly but prison officials kept the crew waiting at the prison gates for more than one hour while the guards were beating Magnitsky.

"Magnitsky was in a cell with eight guards who were beating him for more than one hour, and there were no doctors around," Borshchev told the AP. "Bruises were found on his body and there are pictures of his broken knuckles, testifying that he was beaten."

The ambulance crew said Magnitsky had died 15-30 minutes before their arrival, while the official reports claimed he died an hour later and lied that he died at a prison hospital, Borshchev said.

"He already was in grave condition," Borshchev said. "I don't think that they wanted to kill him, but they beat him with truncheons and that played a fatal role."

Officials at the Investigative Committee couldn't be reached for comment on Borshchev's claim late Monday.

The Investigative Committee said in a statement that Magnitsky also had cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease, and it was the combination of this and his other illness in the absence of medical aid that caused his death.

"The nonperformance of stipulated actions during Magnitsky's incarceration, and the absence of adequate therapy on Nov. 16, 2009, deprived Magnitsky of the chance of a positive outcome," the Investigative Committee said.

The agency said it has identified those responsible for Magnitsky's death but will name them later.

Magnitsky had been charged with tax evasion linked to his defense of Hermitage Capital Management, a multibillion-dollar fund headed by U.S. businessman William Browder, who has since been deported from Russia as a national security threat.

Hermitage accused Interior Ministry officers of seizing ownership documents of three of its subsidiaries in 2007, then using those documents to register their own people as owners and directors.

The Interior Ministry officials then filed a tax claim, saying they made a much smaller profit than originally described and asked for a tax return, according to Hermitage.

The total return for the three subsidiaries was 5.4 billion rubles ($230 million at the time).

Browder says a Moscow tax official who approved the fraudulent tax return bought luxury real estate in Moscow, Dubai and Montenegro and wired $39 million through her husband's bank accounts.

All that was done on an average annual Russian household income of about $38,000, according to documents released by Browder.

Lawmakers in the Netherlands on Monday voted in favor of a resolution demanding the government slap a travel ban on dozens of Russian officials who Browder and his supporters consider complicit in Magnitsky's death.

The U.S. Senate is working on similar legislation.

Browder is lobbying all European governments to follow suit.

Russian lawmakers have threatened to retaliate in kind.

Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/108017/#ixzz1RD26KEwA

04:22 05/07/2011ALL NEWS

Putin to chair meeting on high technologies in Dubna.

http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c154/179186.html

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MOSCOW, July 5 (Itar-Tass) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will chair a conference of the governmental commission for high technologies and innovations on Tuesday. It will take place at the Unified Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, the Russian government’s press service reports.

“The conference on development of scientific research infrastructure is planning to work out the basic approaches to the creation in this country of unique world-class research centres, the so-called Mega-Science class installations which will make it possible to reach new horizons in fundamental science,” the press release goes on to say.

The creation of this kind of infrastructure is the backlog of competitiveness of the Russian scientific complex and an opportunity to establish fruitful international cooperation in breakthrough areas of research.

At present, Russian scientists are taking part in implementing four such mega-projects: the Large Hadron Collider within the framework of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the creation of an ITER reactor in France as well as the development of a European free electron lasers and heavy ion accelerators in Germany. Besides, the Russian Academy of Science has received a number of proposals to join other international mega-projects, the press service goes on to say.

Over the past six years state budget allocations for Research and Development for civil purposes have gone up three times: about 230 billion roubles were appropriated for these purposes in 2011. About 40 billion roubles had been committed to support science in higher educational establishments and strengthen scientific schools in leading universities in a period until 2012. In 2010, a package of measures aimed at enhancing innovative activities in institutions of high learning was adopted in 2010.

A pilot project to create a national research centre was launched in 2010. The centre will unite the Moscow-based Kurchatov Institute, the St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics named after P. Konstantinov (Gatchina), the Institute of High Energy (the town of Protvino) and the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (Moscow).

The creation of the national research centre the Kurchatov Institute was the subject of a conference held by Putin on January 12, 2010, the press service reports.

11:39 05/07/2011ALL NEWS

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MOSCOW, July 5 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s State Duma, or lower parliament house, decided on Tuesday to hold an extra plenary session on Thursday, July 7, to consider outstanding issues.

Initially, it was planned to prolong today’s and tomorrow’s sessions and shorten lunch breaks to have time to consider what is on the agenda, but chairman of the Duma regulations committee Otari Arshba proposed to hold an additional session on Thursday instead. Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov promised to put the proposal for vote on Wednesday.

The spring session of the lower house of Russian parliament is to be over on July 17, with the last plenary session scheduled for July 8. Members of the lower parliament house will spend the next week in their constituencies. If the lawmakers hold an extra session, they will not have to prolong the spring session, as they did before.

08:32 05/07/2011ALL NEWS

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NAZRAN, July 5 (Itar-Tass) — One policeman was killed and another was wounded in a clash with gunmen in Russia’s southern republic of Ingushetia, sources from the republican interior ministry reported on Tuesday.

They said information was received on Monday that a group of gunmen was moving in the forest on the outskirts of the settlement of Sagopshi, Malgobek district.

A decision was made to block the group. Policemen sent to the site run against a group of up to eight gunmen, and an exchange of fire followed. One policeman was killed and one more was wounded in the clash.

Measures are taken at the present moment to neutralize the gunmen. All possible ways of retreat are blocked.