Impasse over nuclear liability provisions, other civil issues

India and Russia have put off their high-level engagement planned for November 1 by almost two months in order to reach an agreement on some contentious military and civil issues. The announcement about the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Vladimir Putin was first made by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) here in a statement and later by the Russian government.

Catastrophic forest fires — spurred by hot and dry weather — have ravaged vast areas of Siberia, and ruined the region’s ecosystem, said Russian ecologists.

Fires have destroyed 100,000 sq km of forests across Russia — an area bigger than Bihar — since the start of the summer season this year, according to Russia’s Greenpeace. The situation is worst in central Siberia, where fires have ravaged 50,000 sq km of forests. Authorities claim the estimates are greatly overblown. The Emergencies Ministry said the fires have so far covered an area of 6,530 sq km. However, Greenpeace maintains that its figures are far more accurate as they are based on satellite imagery.

Manmohan confident of going ahead with Unit I in a couple of weeks

A top Russian nuclear constructor does not rule out delays in starting up the first unit of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) in the face of continuing protests against the project.

On April 26, 1986, a reactor at Chernobyl exploded, setting off the world's worst nuclear catastrophe. It is tragically symbolic that exactly 25 years later, another nuclear disaster struck Japan. It is doubly tragic that the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant may eclipse what happened at Chernobyl.

A Russia-Ukraine stand-off over gas price results in a stoppage of Russian gas supply to Europe.