A top Muslim cleric has been shot dead and another injured by a car bomb in Russia’s Tatarstan province, officials said.

THE Russian historian had always been open about his interest in the dead and eagerly described how he loved to rummage through cemeteries, studying gravestones to uncover the life stories behind them.

The jet crash that killed an entire Russian professional hockey team was caused by pilot error, investigators said today.

RUSSIA’S President Dmitry Medvedev called for immediate changes in his country’s troubled aviation industry — including sharply reducing the number of airlines — as the country mourned a crash that killed 43 people and devastated a top ice hockey team.

President Dmitry Medvedev has called for rapid changes in Russia’s troubled air transport industry as the country mourned a crash that killed 43 people, among them most of a leading hockey team.

Investigators were today searching for flight recorders in the shattered remains of an airliner that crashed on the banks of the Volga River, killing 43 people including most of one of Russia's premier hockey teams.

An airliner carrying a top ice hockey team has crashed on take off in Russia, killing at least 43 people.

A Russian airliner carrying an ice hockey team has crashed on take off killing 36 people.

AN overloaded motor boat crashed into a docked barge on the Moscow River in pre-dawn darkness yesterday, killing nine of the 16 people on board, officials said.

An overloaded motor boat crashed into a docked barge on the Moscow River in pre-dawn darkness today, killing nine of the 16 people on board, officials said.

RUSSIA said there was little hope of finding any more people alive after an overloaded tourist boat sank in the Volga river, killing as many as 128 people in Russia’s worst river accident in three decades.

More than 100 people, many of them children, were feared drowned today after an overloaded Russian cruise ship sank on the Volga river.

Nine bodies have been recovered after an overloaded cruise boat sank in Russia’s Volga River, officials said today, but about 90 other people who were on the 50-year-old vessel are still missing.

Dozens of children are believed to be among 101 people missing after a 56-year-old tourist boat with 188 people on board listed and sank in one of the world’s largest reservoirs.

EMERGENCY officials say that 102 people, including dozens of children, are missing and at least one is dead after a passenger boat with more than 180 people on board sank in the Volga River yesterday.

At least one person has been killed and 15 others are missing after a passenger boat with more than 180 people onboard sank on the Volga river in central Russia.

Two people died and eight were hurt today in a massive fire at a shopping mall in central Russia, officials said.

The top judge on a Russian regional court has been wounded in an apparent assassination attempt, officials said today.

A bus exploded in Russia this morning, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens, a spokesman for the emergency ministry said.

Russia’s top intelligence and counterterrorism agency prevented terror attacks during several international summits hosted by Russia, the agency’s chief said today.

RUSSIA and the European Union clashed yesterday over democratic freedoms in Russia at a contentious summit on the banks of the Volga River.

Angry pensioners demanding that their social security benefits be restored staged a second day of protests in President Vladimir Putin’s home city, joining the call from protesters in other cities for him to resign.

A crowded minibus and a car collided on a highway in central Russia today, sparking a powerful fire and killing 13 people travelling in the vehicles.

Russian police have broken up an internet hacker ring that extorted money from British bookmakers, inflicting millions of pounds in losses on their websites in a series of attacks.

A minibus collided with a lorry on a road in central Russia, killing eight people and seriously injuring six others, reports said today.

The wife of a Russian general has confessed to killing her husband during a family quarrel.

Nuclear fuel and waste still pose a hazard in Serbia, despite a secret anti-terrorist project financed by the US that moved most of the weapons grade fuel to Russia, experts said today.

The chief editor of a newspaper in central Russia was shot and killed outside his home in what colleagues said today was a contract killing in retaliation for his paper’s coverage of organised crime.

Five people were killed and about 30 injured in a bomb blast at an outdoor market in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan, officials said.

Five people have been killed and about 30 injured in a bomb blast at an outdoor market in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan.