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Five minutes of Russian dash cam footage that may help restore your faith in humanity
Finally, Russian dash cam footage that will give you warm and fuzzes instead of making you want to rage out at the world’s terrible drivers
Is that a look of delighted surprise on president Putin’s face? A topless demonstrator with a message on her back walks towards Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) during their visit of the Hanover industrial Fair in Hanover, central Germany, on April 8, 213. Four bare-breated demonstrators shouted “f**k dictator”at Russian President Vladimir Putin as he was visiting the Volkswagen stand. (JOCHEN LUEBKE/AFP/Getty Images)
Russia’s rich hiring luxurious ‘ambulance-taxis’ to beat Moscow’s traffic jams
Police in Moscow are to carry out checks on ambulances after reports that emergency vehicles have been fitted with plush interiors and are being rented out to VIP commuters hoping to dodge the city’s appalling traffic jams.
They face random checks after companies advertising rides in “ambulance-taxis” for upwards of 6,000 roubles ($200) per hour appeared on the internet.
The vehicles are said to use their sirens to scatter traffic and deliver harried businessman to meetings on time. (Tatyana Makeyeva / AFP / Getty Images files)
Amateur sleuth uses viral videos to trace the origins of Russian meteor
An investigation by an amateur sleuth using “Google Earth, YouTube and high-school math,” has led to a scientific study hunting down the origins of the meteor which hit Russia earlier this month.
Stefan Geens wrote on his blog Ogle Earth that he was inspired to look into the Russian meteor when he started seeing viral videos of it on the Internet.
“Might it be possible to use this viral footage with Google Earth to have an initial go at mapping the meteorite’s trajectory?” he pondered. (Ogle Earth Blog / Youtube; AFP PHOTO / URAL FEDERAL UNIVERSITY/ALEXANDER KHLOPOTOV)
Nearly 1,000 hurt as 10-ton meteor screams across Russian sky
A meteor that scientists estimate weighed 10 tonnes streaked at supersonic speed over Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday, setting off blasts that injured roughly 1,000 people and frightened countless more.
The Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that the meteor over the Chelyabinsk region entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 kph and shattered about 30-50 kilometres above ground.
The fall caused explosions that broke glass over a wide area.
A Russian health official says nearly 1,000 people have sought help for injuries.
Chelyabinsk health chief Marina Moskvicheva, said Friday that 985 people in her city had asked for medical assistance. The Interfax news agency quoted her as saying 43 were hospitalized.
“There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people’s houses to check if they were OK,” said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometres east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region. (AP Photo/Nasha gazeta, www.ng.kz; Yevgenia Yemelyanova/AP; AP Photo/ Nadezhda Luchinina, E1.ru)
Hundreds hurt as 10-ton meteor screams across Russian sky
A meteor that scientists estimate weighed 10 tons streaked at supersonic speed over Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday, setting off blasts that injured some 500 people and frightened countless more.
The Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that the meteor over the Chelyabinsk region entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 kph and shattered about 30-50 kilometres above ground.
The fall caused explosions that broke glass over a wide area. The Emergency Ministry says more than 500 people sought treatment after the blasts and that 34 of them were hospitalized. (AP Photo/Nasha gazeta, www.ng.kz; AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru)
A year before the 2014 Winter Olympics are to begin, President Vladimir Putin has demanded that a senior member of the Russian Olympic Committee be fired, apparently due to cost overruns in host city Sochi.
The current price tag for the Sochi Games is US$51-billion, which would make them the most expensive games in the history of the Olympics – more costly even than the much-larger Summer Olympics held in London and Beijing.
During his tour of Olympic venues, Putin fumed when he heard that the cost of the ski jump had soared from US$40-million to US$265-million and the project was behind schedule.
“So a vice president of the Olympic Committee is dragging down the entire construction? Well done! You are doing a good job,” Putin said Wednesday, seething with sarcasm. (Photo: SERGEI KARPUKHIN/AFP/Getty Images)
One man killed after zorb tumbles off cliff in Russian mountains
It was supposed to be a thrilling ride down a ski slope inside a giant inflatable ball that is to be one of the symbols of next year’s Winter Olympics; it ended in tragedy for the two Russian men inside.
The transparent plastic ball — known as a zorb — veered off course and sailed over a rock ledge in the rugged Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia. The ball picked up speed as it flew down the steep slope, rolling and bouncing. One man was killed and the other badly injured. (AP Photo/Family photo provided by Yekaterina Achkasova, APTN)
Treason on the cheap? National secrets for sale: $3K/month
Struggling with a failed marriage and deep in debt, Canadian navy intelligence officer Jeff Delisle was dressed in civilian clothes the day he walked into the Russian embassy on the corner of Laurier Avenue and Charlotte Street in Ottawa in 2007, asked to speak with a security officer, and offered to sell the military secrets entrusted to him.
“I showed them my ID card and they asked me a bunch of questions, took my name and off I go,” Sub-Lt. Delisle told police after he was arrested last Jan. 13.
Delisle had much to offer the Russians. He worked at HMCS Trinity, a military intelligence facility on the East Coast, where he had access to the flow of secrets shared among the Five Eyes alliance: Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
For the next four years, he fed a stunning volume of classified information to his Russian handlers, who put him on their payroll. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
One Pussy Riot member freed, but court upholds prison sentences for other two anti-Putin protesters
MOSCOW — A member of punk band Pussy Riot was freed on appeal on Wednesday but a Moscow court upheld prison sentences for two others imposed over a raucous cathedral protest against Vladimir Putin, who said they had got the jail terms they deserved.
Moscow City Court confirmed the two-year prison sentences handed down to Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina but suspended the sentence on Yekaterina Samutsevich. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)
Vladimir Putin pilots hang glider to lead flock of endangered cranes, adds mastery of flight to resumé
President Vladimir Putin has piloted a motorized hang glider to lead a flock of young Siberian white cranes in flight.
Dressed in a white costume meant to imitate an adult crane, Putin took part in a project to teach the endangered birds who were raised in captivity to follow the aircraft on their migration to Central Asia.
RIA-Novosti news agency reported that only one crane followed Putin on his first flight, which he attributed to high winds that caused the hang glider to travel faster than usual. On the second flight, five birds followed Putin, but after a few circles only two had stuck with him for the full 15-minute flight.
Vladimir Putin’s presidential job perks include four yachts, 58 aircraft and 20 homes: report
Vladimir Putin once compared ruling Russia to being a “galley slave”, but four yachts that come with the job, as well as a string of palaces and a wealth of luxury perks help explain his refusal to quit the presidency, leading critics said on Tuesday.
Listing 58 planes and helicopters and 20 homes with opulent fittings worthy of the tsars, not to mention 11 watches which alone are worth several times Putin’s annual salary, a report published under the ironic title “The Life of a Galley Slave” by opposition leader Boris Nemtsov denounced the lavish spending as an affront to millions of Russians living in dire poverty.
“One of the most serious reasons prompting V. Putin to hold on to power is the atmosphere of wealth and luxury to which he has become accustomed,” wrote the authors. “In a country where more than 20 million people barely make ends meet, the luxurious life of the president is a blatant and cynical challenge to society. We absolutely cannot put up with this.”
Pussy Riot found guilty of anti-religious ‘hooliganism’ for church protest
A Russian judge found three women from the punk band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred on Friday for staging an anti-Kremlin protest on the altar of Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox church.
Judge Marina Syrova did not immediately issue a sentence but state prosecutors want there-year jail terms for the three women who stormed the altar of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February and performed a “punk prayer” asking the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of President Vladimir Putin.
The defendants “committed an act of hooliganism … based on motives of religious hatred and enmity,” the judge told the Moscow court as the defendants sat in a courtroom cage. (Photo: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)
Related: Canadian twist in Pussy Riot case sparks call for Ottawa to intervene
U.S. gymnast Gabrielle Douglas comforts a crying second-placed Russia’s gymnast Victoria Komova after she won the artistic gymnastics women’s individual all-around final. Make it a pair of golds for Douglas, who added another gold to the one she won with the U.S. team two nights ago.
