Crashed An-12 plane's cockpit voice recorder found

Crashed An-12 plane's cockpit voice recorder found

KHABAROVSK, August 11 (RIA Novosti)

"The cockpit voice recorder was found at 2:45 Moscow time [22:45 GMT Wednesday]," the source said.

The flight data recorder was recovered late on Wednesday.

The recovery of bodies from the wreckage will begin right after investigators document the positioning of all plane fragments.

So far, all 11 people who were onboard the plane are presumed dead, but officially listed as missing.

"The location of every fragment is vital for establishing the cause of the crash and making a clear picture of what had happened. That's why we do not touch anything at the crash site. The search for victims will begin only after investigators do their job," a spokeswoman for the regional transport prosecutors' department, Natalya Salkina, said.

Fragments of the plane are scattered in a radius of 5 km (3 miles).

The investigation team will include about 20 experts from Khabarovsk, Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee and the Far Eastern transport investigation department. It will arrive to the crash site on Thursday.

The plane, bound from the city of Magadan to the Chukotka Autonomous Area in Russia's extreme northeast, was carrying 11 people and around 18 metric tons of cargo. It disappeared from radars some 300 km (186 miles) from its takeoff point shortly after reporting a fuel leak and fire in an engine. No survivors have been found.

Before the crash, the An-12 was used for 48 years, and investigators say a technical malfunction and pilot error could be to blame for the accident.

RT News line, August 11

Fair Russia expels MPs for joining Putin’s Popular Front

The Fair Russia opposition party has expelled those members who enrolled in Vladimir Putin’s Popular Front. “We unanimously agreed to expel vice speaker Aleksandr Babakov, MPs Mikhail Starshinov and Vasily Shestakov, and also former MP Elena Vtorygina,” party spokesman Igor Zotov has said. None of the MPs showed up at the meeting where their expulsions were being considered, the spokesman added. United Russia’s Popular Front was originally established by party leader Vladimir Putin to unite members of various public organizations, but later began accepting members of other political parties as well.

06:46 11/08/2011ALL NEWS

Mironov promises to break into State Duma

http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c154/201987.html

MOSCOW, August 11 (Itar-Tass) — Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov “cannot guarantee that nobody will leave the party anymore”, but promises that the main skeleton, the face of the party will remain”.

Alexander Babakov, Mikhail Starshinov and Vasily Shestakov who joined the Popular Front and were expelled from the Just Russia Party, “played no role in the party, and it turned out that they were just fellow travellers, while Yelena Vtorygina was really a comrade-in-arms who stood at the formation of the party”, Mironov noted in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper, published on Thursday.

Mironov explains the mass exodus from Just Russia by the fact that many of its members turned to be unready to embrace tough and principled stand of the party which “grew stronger as a political force” and which “has become the real opposition to United Russia".

Mironov also claimed that the very good rating of his party at the start of the election race “scared United Russia very much and then luring his colleagues started”.

“The Kremlin is afraid of our ungovernable nature,” the Just Russia leader reckons. “But nobody have ever governed us. I have not given any promises, and the party has always been independent. When I was a member of the Russian Security Council, I closed personally my mouth. But when I left the post of the Federation Council speaker, I untied my hands,” Mironov continued.

“We are bracing for a tough version at the elections to the State Duma: they will try to bar us from the elections, and we arrange mechanisms in such a way so that it would not be possible to do this,” Mironov noted. “We shall break into the State Duma this time too,” he said with conviction.
07:55 11/08/2011Top News

Volgograd region fire area increases to 853 ha

http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/202066.html

VOLGOGRAD, August 11 (Itar-Tass) — Firefighters and foresters in the Volgograd region continue efforts to put out wildfires. To extinguish a major forest fire it is planned to use aircraft of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry (EMERCOM). In less than a day the fire area has grown more than 4 times.

Spokeswoman for the regional EMERCOM department Yelena Rodionova told Itar-Tass that at the present time “the area engulfed by fire is 853 hectares, of which 82 hectares are pine plantations of the Archedinsky forest service.”

The fire alarm came at 17:10 MSK, Wednesday. A steppe fire at an area of 162 hectares swept 20 hectares of pine forest of the Archedinsky forestry. The hot and windy weather contributed to the spread of the fire.

At present a total of 420 people and 96 special equipment units are engaged in the fire-fighting operation, Rodionova said. She noted that there is no threat to human settlements, however to improve the efficiency of fire fighting it was decided at dawn to use special helicopters and airplanes of the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

The Volgograd region located in the south-eastern part of the East European Plain is a connecting link between all Russian regions, the CIS countries, and the whole world. It shares a border with many neighbours, including Voronezh, Saratov, Astrakhan, and Rostov regions, the Republic of Kalmykia, and Kazakhstan. The Volga River divides the region into the high Right Bank (elevations to 358 m) and the low Left Bank (or Trans-Volga). The Volga and the Don are the region’s main rivers. The Volgograd region has an area of 113,900 square km (0.67 percent of the Russian Federation).

The region has a continental climate with hot, dry summers and cold winters with little snow. Annual precipitation varies from about 500 mm in the northeast to 250 mm in the southeast. The average January temperature ranges from -8 °C to -12 °C, and the average July temperature is +23 °C. Most of the region is located in the dry steppe and semi-desert zones. Soils are divided into five different zones: steppe black earth (chernozem), dry steppe light chestnut, dry steppe chestnut, semi-desert light chestnut, and Volga-Akhtuba floodplain.

Volgograd Region is participating in an experiment of the RF Ministry of Natural Resources to introduce environmental insurance for predicting the prevention of environmental crises and elimination of their consequences. Volgograd has been designated as an experimental centre for developing new atmospheric quality control methods.