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Putin seeks Kremlin return
Naked protest in Moscow
Arms depot blast leaves over 200 dead in Congo
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16 die in Poland train crash
Mitt Romney gets a boost ahead of ‘Super Tuesday’
Obama invokes Gandhi, Mandela
Violent storms kill 38 in America
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Moscow, March 4 Russian observers and opposition leaders alleged widespread violations in polls by supporters of Putin. An independent watchdog agency Golos said it has received reports of so-called "carousel voting," in which bus loads of voters are driven around to cast ballots multiple times, allegedly for the ruling United Russia Party candidate. Earlier, voters turned out at 90,000 polling stations across Russia spread over 21 hours for the marathon electoral process, that is being monitored through election observers and over 100,000 webcams. Today's vote sees Putin, the 59-year-old ex-KGB spy hoping to become president for a third time after swapping role as prime minister with his close aide Dmitry Medvedev. Putin voted in Moscow with his wife, Ludmila. "I'm expecting a good turnout, because presidential elections are an important event. I am confident that people will act responsibly", he told Russian newspaper Izvestia. Putin's main challenger is considered to be Communist Gennady Zyuganov, who is running for a fourth time. If Putin fails to achieve more than 50 per cent of the vote he will face his nearest rival in a run-off. The other candidates are ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, who is standing as an independent, and former upper house speaker Sergey Mironov, from the centre-left A Just Russia party. Putin was Russia's president from 2000 to 2008, but was barred by the constitution from standing for a third consecutive term. He faces four challengers, three of whom he has defeated in previous elections. — PTI
Naked protest in Moscow
A group of Ukrainian female protesters bared their breasts on Sunday at the polling station where Vladimir Putin had just voted in the presidential race and tried to steal the ballot box with his vote.
The Femen group, known for their topless protests against trafficking of women and prostitution in several countries, turned up at the polling station in the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow minutes after Putin voted with his wife Lyudmila. The three women pulled off their tops, shouted "Putin is a thief!" and tried to steal the ballot box with his vote before being detained by police, the group said in a statement on its blog. The women revealed slogans painted on their chests and backs including "I steal for Putin" and "Kremlin rats". — AFP
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Arms depot blast leaves over 200 dead in Congo
Brazzaville, March 4 Hundreds more were injured by the blasts which rocked the riverside capital of the oil-producing nation early in the day, flattening houses near the scene and sending a plume of smoke high above the city. "According to sources at the central hospital around 200 persons were dead and many injured," Betu Bangana, head of protocol in the president's office in Brazzaville, told Reuters. "Some people are still (trapped) in their houses... They're saying the entire neighbourhood of Mpila has been destroyed." Defence Minister Charles Zacharie Bowao dismissed any talk of a coup attempt or mutiny, and told state radio that the explosions had been caused by a fire in the arms depot in the Regiment Blinde base in the riverside Mpila neighbourhood. Panic also spread to Kinshasa, across the Congo River, which separates the former French colony from the larger Democratic Republic of Congo, where windows were shattered by the force of the blasts up to 4 km away. Both governments called for calm. China's Xinhua news agency cited Chinese officials as saying three Chinese workers were killed by the explosion and dozens were injured, some in serious condition. — Reuters
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Szczekociny, March 4 Maintenance work was being done on the tracks in the area, but officials say it's too early to determine the cause of the disaster. President Bronislaw Komorowski visited the site today and said when rescue efforts are over he would make an announcement about a period of national mourning due to the scope of the suffering involved. Several of the passengers were foreigners, including people from Ukraine, Spain and France, but none of them were among the dead or mostly seriously injured, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. "This is our most tragic train disaster in many, many years," he said. The accident happened on Saturday around 9 p.m. and rescue workers labored through the night to recover bodies and the injured. They brought in heavy equipment to free a body from the mangled wreckage of the train, and ended up finding two, a spokesman for firefighters, Radoslaw Lendor, told TVN24. A doctor in one of the hospitals, Szymon Nowak, said many of the injured were in a serious condition, with some in artificially induced comas. The tragedy was Poland's worst involving trains since 1990, when 16 people were killed in a collision involving two trains in the Warsaw suburb of Ursus. Since then, the most serious Polish rail accident was in 1997, when 12 people were killed in Reptowo. — AP
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Mitt Romney gets a boost ahead of ‘Super Tuesday’ Washington, March 4 With 99 per cent of the vote in, Romne had 38 per cent. Texas Representative Ron Paul secured 25 per cent and came second.Rick Santorum came third with 24 per cent of votes. They were trailed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 10 per cent. "I'm heartened to have won the Washington caucuses, and I thank the voters for their support today," Romney tweeted. Romney said the result proved Washington's voters wanted "a conservative businessman who understands the private sector". The victory in Washington gives Romney some momentum heading into the big contests this week on Super Tuesday, when 10 states vote. Super Tuesday is the day in the US campaign calendar, usually in February or early March of an election year, when a large number of states hold primary elections. Romney has so far won contests in seven states — New Hampshire, Florida, Nevada, Maine, Michigan, Arizona and Washington — in the race to secure Republican nomination. — PTI
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Obama invokes Gandhi, Mandela
New York, March 4 "The change we fought for in 2008 hasn't always happened as fast as we would have liked... real change, big change, is always hard," Obama said at a fundraiser held here. "Around the world —Gandhi, Nelson Mandela —what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term," he said. — PTI
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Violent storms kill 38 in America West Liberty, March 4 But amid the flattened homes, gutted churches and crunched up cars, startling stories of survival emerged, including that of a 2-year-old girl found alone but alive in a field near her Indiana home after her family was killed, a couple who were hiding in a restaurant basement when a school bus crashed through the wall, and a pastor nearly buried in his church's basement. The storms, predicted by forecasters for days, killed at least 38 people in five states Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, where Gov John Kasich proclaimed an emergency. President Barack Obama offered Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance as state troopers, the National Guard and rescue teams made their way through counties cut off by debris-littered roads and toppled cellphone towers. The landscape was littered with everything from sheet metal and insulation to crushed cars and, in one place, a fire hydrant, making travel difficult. No building was left untouched in West Liberty, a small eastern Kentucky farming town in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Two white police cruisers had been picked up and tossed into city hall, and few structures were recognisable. — AP
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Russians today voted in marathon presidential polls as strongman Vladimir Putin faced fresh allegations of rigging and fraud, putting a question mark on the legitimacy of the vote, which is set to return him to the Kremlin for a record third term.
Over 200 persons were killed today when an arms dump exploded in Brazzaville, capital of the Congo Republic, a senior official in the presidency said, citing hospital sources.
Two trains running on the same track collided head-on in southern Poland late yesterday, leaving 16 persons dead and 58 injured, the country's worst train disaster in more than 20 years. The powerful collision occurred near the town of Szczekociny, just north of Krakow, after one of the trains ended up on the wrong track.
