Terror inquiry after 60 hurt in train crash

MOSCOW Russian prosecutors launched a terrorism inquiry yesterday after a bomb derailed a train on the Moscow to St Petersburg route favoured by tourists, injuring 60 people (Helen Womack writes).

The bomb was planted near a bridge 300 miles north of Moscow. Investigators said that many passengers could have been killed if the train, carrying 270 people, had been travelling more slowly and had toppled over the bridge into the river below.

Security services were quick to point the finger at Caucasus terrorists, although in the tense atmosphere before elections others blamed Russian nationalists trying to discredit Chechen rebels.

Polar nature reserve

MOSCOW Russia is proposing to create a nature reserve in the Arctic covering 32,000 square miles (83,000sq km) but denied that the plans were connected to territorial claims prompted by oil and gas reserves. Yesterday Russian strategic bombers began five days of exercises over the North Pole. (AFP)

Loan for dam

ANKARA Turkey has signed a deal with an international consortium for a loan of €1.2 billion (£814.6 million) to build a dam on the Tigris River near Dargecit, a town 30 miles from the Syrian border. It is feared that the Ilisu dam could ruin a historic site and displace thousands of Kurds. (AFP)

Widow shunned

TUNIS The widow of the late Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat has been stripped of her Tunisian citizenship. Officials gave no explanation and no reference was made to Suha Arafat’s daughter Zahwa, 12, who became a Tunisian citizen on the same day as her mother. They have lived there since 2004. (AP)

Lesson of war

JERUSALEM The Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor a refund for tuition fees paid by his father before the Second World War. The Nazi invasion of Poland prevented Barukh Kaplan from studying chemistry in June 1939 and he fled to the Soviet Union. (Reuters)

Out on a limb

TOKYO A Japanese motorcyclist rode two kilometres (1.2 miles) down a road without noticing that his right leg had been severed. Kazuo Nagata hit a dividing barrier on Monday and lost his leg from the knee down. His friends went back to collect it and sent it with him to hospital. (AFP)

Family away day

MOSCOW The Russian region of Ulyanovsk, 550 miles east of Moscow, has declared a Day of Conception on September 12 and is giving couples time off work to procreate. It hopes for a baby boom on Russia’s national day to counter a declining birth rate. Couples who have a child on June 12 will win prizes. (AP)

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