26/7 Tass 3
MOSCOW — Russia’s July grain exports will amount to 1.8-1.9 million tonnes, according to a forecast made at a press conference on Monday by Vice-President of the Russian Grain Union (RGU) Alexander Korbut. “This is a good result, we expected that this figure would not exceed 1.4 million tonnes,” said Korbut. According to him, 1 million and 400 tonnes of grain have already been shipped over the first 20 days.
KIEV — The Pechersky District Court on Kiev on Monday resumed a session on the “gas case” against Ex-Prime Minister of Ukraine, leader of the Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party Yulia Timoshenko. The defendant and her defence lawyers will again “demand dismissal of the criminal case for lack of evidence of crime,” Timoshenko told reporters before the court session.
MOSCOWs — Russia is engaged in negotiations on lower tariffs for grain export from the Black Earth Zone, Russian Grain Union Vice-President Alexander Korbut said.
LENINGRAD REGION — The Russian Transport Ministry worked out a number of proposals following the Bulgaria ship accident in Tatarstan. These include mandatory insurance on inland waterways, unscheduled inspections of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs working in the field of transport, state and port control, and transfer to regions of moorage walls that are currently controlled by the Federal State Property Service.
MOSCOW — The sale of a one hundred percent stake in the United Grain Company has been put in the government privatization plan for 2012, the company’s chairman of the board of directors Sergei Alexashenko told Itar-Tass, adding that the golden share will stay with the government.
MOSCOW — A book of condolence is opened at the Norwegian Embassy in Russia for the victims of gun and bomb massacre in Norway. “At 12 p.m. sharp the embassy’s doors have opened for those who want to record their condolences,” Norwegian Ambassador Knut Hauge said on Monday.
VLADIVOSTOK — As many as 1,250 brown bears, 200 bighorns, 50 lynxes, and about 10,000 sables may be shot on Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula under the new hunting quotas for the 2011-2012 season, the press service of the Kamchatka administration reported.
OMSK — Wages for secondary school teachers in the Omsk region will go up by almost a third from the beginning of the next academic year, or from September 1, under an amended regional law passed by the Omsk Region Legislative Assembly.
IRKUTSK — A national Spartakiad, or a sports contest, of Cossack youth opens here on Monday. Among its participants are 11 teams from Russian Cossack units, in all more than 100 athletes aged from 18 to 30 who won regional competitions.
KHABAROVSK — Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika at a meeting in Khabarovsk on Monday drew attention of supervisory bodies of the Far East to the shortcomings in their work.
BAKU — Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev said he was pleased the level of military-technical cooperation with Russia. At a meeting with Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, Aliyev said, “Bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and Russia are developing successfully in various areas, including in the military field: we are satisfied by cooperation based on multilateral ties.”
KIEV — The Ukrainian-U.S. manoeuvres, Rapid Trident 2011, have begun at the Yavorov training ground, Lvov Region. The manoeuvres are being held with NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s press service reported on Monday.
KAZAN — The death toll from the Bulgaria ship wreck has reached 122 after rescuers found two more dead bodies, a spokesman for the emergencies administration in the republic of Tatarstan told Itar-Tass on Monday. “As of now, the death of 122 people has been officially registered,” he said.
MOSCOW — Mostly women and children are fatalities of the Bulgaria shipwreck, the press service of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s (EMERCOM) main department for Tatarstan told Itar-Tass. “The officially confirmed death toll is 122 people – 28 children, 72 women and 22 men,” a spokesman for the regional EMERCOM department said. Over two days the divers have found the bodies of eight dead who have been unaccounted for. Three of them have not yet been identified. All of them are women.
MOSCOW— Three persons were killed and two more injured in a Mi-8 helicopter crash in Russia’s Far Eastern Chukotka, a spokeswoman for the Far Eastern emergencies centre told Itar-Tass on Monday.
SHANGHAI — There is a Russian citizen among those killed in the collision of two high-speed trains in the Chinese province of Zhejiang on Saturday, Chinese media reported on Monday. “We have also seen this information in the media, we are currently contacting the Chinese authorities for a confirmation,” the Russian Consulate General in Shanghai told Itar-Tass.
BISHKEK— A powerful quake which hit the Batken region in the south of Kyrgyzstan on July 20 caused heavy damage to more than 3,500 buildings and facilities of social and cultural infrastructure, the press service of the Kyrgyz Ministry for Emergency Situations said on Monday.
MOSCOW — An investigator from Blagoveshchensk in the Amur region, a city which came into the limelight in connection with an investigation into child molesting crimes, has been sacked from the Investigative Committee; a criminal case has been opened against him on charges of negligence, Alexei Lubinsky, a representative of the Investigative Committee department for the Amur region, told Itar-Tass.
MOSCOW — A criminal case has been opened against two Blagoveshchensk district prosecutors and an ex- investigator who ignored information about a sex crime against a seven-year old girl. A criminal case has been opened against the officials of the city and regional prosecutor’s office who turned down a complaint filed by the child’s mother and did not register the crime in a crime register in the established order, said Alexei Lubinsky- Senior Assistant to Chief of the Investigative Department for the Amur region.
MOSCOW — A combination of evidence collected to incriminate captains, who did not come to the rescue of the sinking Bulgaria and let their ships pass by, has confirmed their guilt, spokesman for the Investigation Committee Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass on Monday. A criminal case was opened against Captain of the Arbat freight ship Yuri Tuchin and Captain of the Dunaisky-66 tow ship Alexander Yegorov. Both can face a prison term up to two years on charges of not helping a ship in distress.
CHEBOKSARY— Almost 400 telephone calls have been made to the hotline specially set up for feedback on the implementation of the new police law, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said.