NASA, universities and private groups in the US are working on asteroid warning systems that can detect objects from space like the one that struck Russia last week.

Jonathan Wilson examines what lies in store for Trap and his team in Astana tomorrow night

Three members of the Pussy Riot punk band have lodge an appeal over a court’s decision to jail them for two years for their “punk prayer” against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Between Shades of Gray

RUSSIA basked in the limelight yesterday as the future first-time host of the World Cup in 2018, but media questioned how the country will pay the bill which they said could reach €37 billion.

RUSSIA fought a deadly battle yesterday to prevent wildfires from engulfing key nuclear sites as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took to the air in a water-bombing plane to join the firefighting effort.

A heatwave across much of Europe is starting forest fires, causing crops to wither and roads to melt, while fridges and fans are buckling in the searing sun.

IT’S so hot that women in bikinis are sunbathing in Moscow.

Boris Akunin

FLAGS flew at half mast and entertainment programmes were cancelled across Russia yesterday as the country mourned 113 victims of a weekend nightclub inferno and dozens more fought for their lives in hospitals.

Russia’s top investigative body said the number of people who died in a nightclub fire in the Urals city of Perm has risen to 109.

A RUSSIAN-BORN German man was sentenced to life behind bars yesterday for the brutal murder of a pregnant headscarved Egyptian woman, a crime that sparked outrage in the Muslim world.

A MAN who complained to doctors of severe chest pains was stunned when told his suspected tumour was actually a fir tree growing inside his lung.

Richard Collins says slender-billed curlew may be Europe’s ‘Dodo’

RUSSIAN investigators yesterday sifted through the wreckage of an Aeroflot jet that crashed in the Ural mountains killing all 88 people on board, as the region marked a day of mourning.

Russian President Vladimir Putin today signed a law suspending his nation’s participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, the Kremlin announced.

LATE summer is a lean time for the birdwatcher.

Russia’s foreign minister suggested on Friday that the true reason the United States wants to put an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe is not to defend Europe from Iranian missile attacks but to spy on Russia.

A private helicopter with five people on board crashed into a large reservoir in the Urals mountains region of Russia tonight, killing at least three, authorities said.

President Vladimir Putin today emphasised Moscow’s opposition to the planned US deployment of missile defence systems in central Europe and said Russia would take measures in response.

AIRTOURS has a number of specials ex-Dublin to Greece, saving as much as €400 to various destinations.

RESCUERS last night abandoned hope of finding more survivors in the wreckage of an exhibition hall that collapsed in southern Poland.

A spell of Arctic cold claimed five more lives in Moscow overnight, pushing Russia’s nationwide toll beyond 40 and killing five people in Estonia and Moldova, delaying trains and slowing traffic, officials said today.

A new bird flu outbreak has been recorded in a Siberian region that was hit by the disease last summer, officials said today.

Veterinary workers have discovered bird flu in a flock in the central Russian region of Tambov, the Emergency Situations Ministry said today.

PRELIMINARY tests on fowl from a region south of Moscow where hundreds of birds died suddenly detected the H5N1 strain of bird flu, Russia’s Agriculture Ministry said yesterday.

FROM Middle-earth to Mallow, Minas Tirith to Tallaght, Gandalf to Galway, the whole world is like one big shire in homage to the second movie of the Lord of the Rings trilogy which opens tomorrow everywhere this side of the Urals.

HUNDREDS of people crowded into a square in the Urals city of Ufa yesterday to mourn the 45 Russian schoolchildren who died in last week's mid-air disaster over Germany.

President George Bush crossed Europe’s old Iron Curtain divide today and offered his vision of a new, more unified continent where nations, including Russia, cooperate to ‘‘build the house of freedom.’’