Russia: Missing plane made emergency landing in East Siberia

Russia's Emergencies Ministry said on Saturday that a missing An-2 aircraft with four people on board had been forced to make an emergency landing and had not crashed.

"The plane made an emergency landing after a fault occurred," a spokesman said, but gave no details of the cause of the problem.

Over half of Poles are in favor of sanctions against Russia

Over 50% of Poles think that economic sanctions should be imposed on Russia following the conflict in South Ossetia, the Gfk Polonia research center said on Saturday.

According to the opinion poll, carried out in Poland, 53% of respondents said Warsaw should push the EU to introduce sanctions against Russia during an emergency meeting on the crisis in Georgia and South Ossetia on Monday. While 49% of respondent think Russia should be blocked from joining the WTO and 46% think Russia should be excluded from the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations.

Hypocrite Miliband And The Myth Of Western Moral Superiority

David Miliband was making great show today of fulminating in Kiev against Russian disregard of international law. Yet simultaneously he is continuing the sorry British record of participation in war crimes and contravention of the UN Convention Against Torture, Article IV of which covers "complicity" in torture. Both of these are serious breaches of international law.

Chinese chemical plant blast death toll rises to 18

The death toll following an explosion at a chemical plant in southwest China has reached 18 with 60 people injured and two workers still missing, local media said on Wednesday.

Two of the dead have yet to be formally identified, but sixteen of the bodies are reported to be plant workers. The plant owner said that two employees are still missing following the fire, which occurred early Tuesday morning in Yizhou city, in Guangxi province.

Russia could build naval base in Abkhazia

Russia's Black Sea Fleet may eventually use the Abkhazian port of Sukhumi as a naval base, former fleet commander said on Friday.

After Russia recognized the independence of Georgia's two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh suggested that Russia's Black Sea Fleet could use one of the ports in the republic to station its warships.

"Sukhumi could easily host Black Sea Fleet ships, for instance a naval brigade of up to 30 vessels," said Admiral Eduard Baltin, commenting on Bagapsh's statement.

Baltin, 71, said a naval brigade might comprise a division of small ASW ships, a division of small missile ships or boats, and a division of minesweepers.