"2 killed, 5 wounded in market shooting
MOSCOW — Gunmen opened fire on security guards at a provincial food market in the city of Samara, killing at least two and wounding at least five, investigators said. At least six attackers arrived at the market in three cars and opened fire, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. Even the smallest of Russian enterprises hire security guards, who are often in the line of fire when disputes turn violent (AP)."
Was it the Jewish mafia or the CIA terrorists?
"Russia grapples with a deadly heat wave" by Bloomberg News | July 27, 2010
MOSCOW — Muscovites sweltered as temperatures neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and the number of Russians who drowned trying to beat the heat reached about 2,000.
Related: Russian Heat
Yesterday’s temperature in the capital was the hottest since records began 130 years ago, the Hydrometeorological Monitoring Service said on its website. It surpassed the previous high set in July 1920.
Been cooling ever since?
Unusually high temperatures have contributed to record deaths by drowning across Russia...
Most of those who drowned were intoxicated, the government’s newspaper of record said....
The heat wave has also hit Russia’s economy, with drought damage to almost 25 million acres, or 32 percent of all land under cultivation, said Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik. The ministry has declared weather-related emergencies in 23 crop-producing regions.
Russian food grain prices may double in 2010 from last year because of the drought, the Grain Producers’ Union said in an e-mailed statement yesterday....
The country’s chief health official has urged companies to adopt a siesta regime of breaks for workers during the hottest part of the day to avoid injury and illness. Officials have also urged farmers to start harvesting at night to protect their combines from mechanical failure during the daytime heat.
Muscovites’ misery was compounded by thick smoke from burning peat bogs east of the city. Twenty-one separate peat-bog fires were burning as of 10 a.m. yesterday, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry.--more--"
"Moscow swelters in smog, record heat" by Associated Press | July 29, 2010
MOSCOW — A cloud of smog has enveloped Moscow, raising airborne pollutants to four times the norm, officials said yesterday, prompting doctors to urge residents to stay indoors as the city swelters in a record heat wave.
Officials have said the smog, which has plunged the Kremlin and other famous landmarks into a dull haze for days, is the capital’s worst since 2002. The cloud has drifted in from dozens of peat bog and forest fires in rural land south and east of the city, Emergencies Ministry officials have said.
Oh, the fires are still burning?
I thought they were put out because the Globe seemed to forget about them.
Health officials have urged Muscovites who have to venture outside to don face masks to ward off the worst of the poisonous carbon monoxide and carbolic acid particles in the smog.
Moscow routinely has hot summers, but this year has been a record-breaker....
You know, I'm okay with the follow-up coverage because this is an important story.
"Hundreds flee forest fires in Russia" by Associated Press | July 30, 2010
MOSCOW — Raging forest fires encircled a southern Russian city and tore through provincial villages yesterday, forcing mass evacuations as Moscow suffered through a record, weeks-long heat wave and a smog cloud caused by peat-bog fires.
Some 212,506 acres were burning nationwide, and flames all but encircled the city of Voronezh, 300 miles southeast of Moscow. Forest fires reached Moscow’s western fringe, but were extinguished toward nightfall....
--more--"You know, as long as they don't turn this into some sort of global-warming agenda-pushing I'm fine.
"Russia mobilizes army to fight fires; 214,000 acres ravaged; 25 die" by David Nowak, Associated Press | July 31, 2010
Then ATTACK IRAN NOW, USrael, while the Russians are fighting fires!
MOSCOW — Vast sections of Russia were under a state of emergency yesterday as more than 10,000 firefighters battled to save villages and forests from being reduced to ash and ember during the country’s hottest summer on record.
At least 25 deaths were reported in the last two days alone and the Kremlin called out the army to help as fires raged more than 214,136 acres of woodland and peat bog.
More than 1,000 homes have been destroyed and thousands of people have been forced to flee as blazes left their houses in smoldering ruins and filled the air with smog and ash.
Weeping women greeted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as he visited Verkhnyaya Vereya, a village where all 341 homes were burned to the ground and five residents were killed in the blaze.
A woman salvaged some of her belongings yesterday amid ruins near of the town of Vyksa, about 93 miles southwest of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fifth-largest city. (Mikhail Voskresensky/Reuters)
The village, one of three hamlets destroyed around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fifth-largest city some 300 miles east of Moscow, looked like a ghost town coated in gray ash.
“Before winter, each house will be restored,’’ Putin told the distressed crowd. “I promise — the village will be rebuilt.’’
**********
Officials have declared a state of emergency in 27 of Russia’s 83 regions, with the hardest-hit being the Moscow region — which doesn’t include the city itself — and other areas south and east of the capital, including the Voronezh, Ryazan, Lipetsk, and Nizhny Novgorod regions.
In all nearly 2.5 million acres have been consumed by wildfires so far this season.
During his tour, Putin urged local officials to step up operations to defeat the fires and asked President Dmitry Medvedev to send troops in to help. Television showed Putin in a birch forest calling Medvedev on a cellphone, then switched to footage of the president taking the call and promising to mobilize the army.
Fires had all but encircled Voronezh, a city of 850,000 people located 300 miles south of Moscow. The streets of Voronezh were filled with smog early Friday and a giant wall of rising black smoke could be seen on the horizon. Later, the worst of the fires were extinguished.
Weather scientists say that as global warming intensifies, Russians unaccustomed to such sweltering heat should brace for more summers like this.
They just couldn't let it pass without pushing some s***, huh?
The mercury hit 100 in Moscow on Thursday, setting a new record, and July was the hottest month ever recorded in Russia.
“In 130 years of daily weather monitoring in Moscow, there has never been such a hot summer,’’ said Alexei Lyakhov, director of Moscow’s Meteorological Service. “This is not normal weather, this has never happened.’’
Ever hear the expression "records are made to be broken?"
What about the RECORD COLD ALL OVER the PLANET this WINTER!?
No single hot spell is evidence of global warming, the gradual rise of the earth’s average temperature over several decades. But climate researchers predict that summer heat waves will become more frequent and intense as the world warms, raising the risks of crop damage, wildfires, and health problems for the elderly and the sick.
Paul Della-Marta, a climate scientist working at Partner Reinsurance Company in Switzerland, said there has clearly been an increase in heat waves in temperate regions....
I'm sorry, readers, but I have stopped listening to liars.
--more--"
As if the fart-mist mattered to these folk:
A woman in Voronezh, Russia, held a crying baby near the remains of her burnt-out home. (Alexey Sazonov/ AFP/ Getty Images)
It would be enough to make me cry, too.
Fire is the worst because it literally leaves nothing.
"Hundreds of new wildfires erupt in Russian forests" by Associated Press | August 2, 2010
VORONEZH, Russia — Hundreds of new fires broke out yesterday in Russian forests and fields that have been dried to a crisp by drought and record heat, but firefighters claimed success in bringing some of the wildfires raging around cities under control.
The firefighters got much-needed help from residents desperate to save their homes, who shoveled sand onto the flames and carted water in large plastic bottles.
See people? We are REALLY ALL the SAME!!
The wildfires that began threatening much of western Russia last week have killed 28 people and destroyed or damaged 77 towns or villages, the Emergencies Ministry said. Thousands of people have been evacuated from areas in the path of flames; no deaths have been recorded since late Wednesday.
Troops and volunteers have joined tens of thousands of firefighters in combating the fires, which blazed just outside Moscow and in several provinces east and south of the capital....
Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Chernova said fires in the Voronezh region were under control yesterday and no longer threatened any population centers.
But woodlands on the edge of the city, about a mile from some houses, continued to burn. Firefighters sprayed water from hoses and dumped it from the air, while local residents pitched in on the ground.
Some 320 new fires broke out yesterday, but 210 were extinguished, the Emergencies Ministry said, while the total territory ablaze shrank by thousands of acres to about 316,000 acres. No homes were damaged by fire during the weekend, it said.
Fires have devastated the regions around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fifth-largest city, and the city of Ryazan, just southeast of Moscow. They also were moving into regions farther to the east such as Mordovia and Tatarstan.
Smoky air has settled over cities, already baking in the heat, and many residents are complaining of headaches and intestinal ailments. In Moscow, the smog has come mainly from fires in dried-up peat bogs.Because there are toxins in the air.
--more--"
Not even fires can stop freedom:
"Kremlin opponent arrested at rally
MOSCOW — Police arrested a leading Kremlin opponent and dozens of fellow activists yesterday at a demonstration demanding freedom of assembly. Several hundred protesters gathered in a Moscow square chanting “Freedom!’’ at the rally, which city authorities tried to ban. Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov was dragged to a police car and driven away. Human rights advocate Lev Ponomaryov said there were as many as 30 arrests."
Related: Russian human rights adviser resigns
Back in the U.S.S.R, huh?
You don't know how lucky you are, boy....
"Cambridge spy silent despite requests; Media dying to speak to Russian, his lawyer says" by Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | July 31, 2010
The lawyer for one of two admitted Russian spies from Cambridge said yesterday that numerous media outlets want to interview his client, who was deported to Moscow three weeks ago, but the spy is not talking....
I wouldn't talk to them either.
--more--"
Related: The Boston Sunday Globe Writes a Russian Spy Story
No one reads books or newspapers anymore, Globe, haven't you heard?
