Russia

(AP) --- Nearly impossible without man-made global warming, this year’s freak Siberian heat wave is producing climate change’s most flagrant footprint of extreme weather, a new flash study says.

International scientists released a study Wednesday that found the greenhouse effect multiplied the chance of the region’s prolonged heat by at least 600 times, and maybe tens of thousands of times. In the study, which has not yet gone through peer review, the team looked at Siberia from January to June, including a day that hit 100 degrees (38 degrees Celsius) for a new Arctic record.

MOSCOW, July 15. /TASS/: Currently 26 variants of a vaccine against the coronavirus infection are being developed in Russia and the research results give assurance that their use will begin in the near future, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova reported on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, July 15. /TASS/: First driverless taxis can start operating in Moscow in 2024, Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Alexei Semyonov said on Wednesday.

"If we efficiently start implementing the plan we are developing on the basis of our stakeholder authorities and key companies - these are the Transport Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Industry and Trade, then, I believe, the year of 2024 is the period when we can launch driverless taxis in a certain regime, as I believe," the official said.

MOSCOW, July 15. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin will take part in the keel-laying ceremony for warships in Crimea’s Kerch on July 16, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.

"The president will work in Crimea tomorrow. He will take part in the keel-laying ceremony for warships," Peskov said. He explained that the ceremony would take place at the Zaliv shipyard in Kerch.

TOMSK, July 15. /TASS/: A resident of Seversk, a closed town in Siberia’s Tomsk Region, has been detained on suspicion of setting up a cell of Jehovah's Witnesses religious group (recognized as extremist in Russia).

According to investigators, the man and a group of other individuals organized meetings in 2017-2020, disseminated extremist literature and recruited new members, the Russian Investigative Committee’s press service said.

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Five establishments in Moscow, including the Helmholtz Research Institute of Eye Diseases, have received bomb threats, an emergency source told TASS on Tuesday.

"Anonymous bomb threats have been reported in five buildings, including the children’s department of the Helmholtz Research Institute of Eye Diseases," he said, adding that probes were underway but none of the buildings had been evacuated.

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Moscow regrets Ankara’s decision to convert Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Over 50 countries, including Brazil and Saudi Arabia, submitted requests to procure the Russian-made Avifavir anti-coronavirus drug, Head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev stated in his column for the Newsweek magazine.

"Avifavir has already been bought not only by Russia's neighbours Belarus and Kazakhstan but also by Colombia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Peru and many other countries with more than 50 countries submitting purchase requests," he said.

14 July 2020; MEMO: The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Vershinin, has defended Turkey’s decision to convert the status of the Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul into a mosque saying the decision is a Turkish internal affair.

“We proceed from the fact that this is a Turkish internal affair in which neither us nor others should interfere,” Vershinin told reporters yesterday, however he stressed the importance of Hagia Sophia for “world culture and civilisation”.

NOVO-OGAREVO, July 13. / TASS /: Russia has managed to prevent a dramatic increase in unemployment during the crisis associated with the coronavirus, said Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects on Monday.

"We did not allow an explosive, as in some countries, dramatic increase in unemployment," President Putin said.

At the same time, the President admitted that "in the early stages of the fight against the epidemic there was a lack of coherence" in actions.