Russia

MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/: Together with huge oil and gas export potential the Russian economy has high non-oil and gas export potential, experts polled by TASS believe. Exports of food, information technologies and creative products are among such growth drivers.

Speaking at the headquarters of the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) last week, US President Joe Biden recalled the Geneva summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and stated that the Russian economy is based exclusively on nuclear weapons and oil resources.

MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/: Head of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin suggested creating a special module for tourists on the future Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).

The Roscosmos Scientific and Technical Council discussed the ROSS architecture at its meeting on July 31, Rogozin said.

"I suggested that the project should include the creation of a separate module for visitors," the Roscosmos chief said during his lecture at the Summer Space School.

MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/: Twenty-four Russians are in the list of the top 500 wealthiest individuals rating, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Severstal steelmaker’s owner Alexei Mordashov added $6.14 bln since 2021 year-start and has a total wealth of $29.2 bln. CEO of the Russian gas producer Novatek Leonid Mikhelson earned $5.82 bln and saw his wealth increase to $30.6 bln. Vladimir Lisin, the owner of NLMK steelmaker, grew his wealth by $5.48 bln to $29.3 bln.

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/: The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is among the world’s top three strongest and most authoritative intelligence services, along with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, director of the Russian Service, said on Sunday.

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/: Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin warned about provocations being plotted from outside at the upcoming parliamentary elections in September 2021 and presidential elections in 2024 in Russia.

"Our opponents are preparing to the fullest," Russia’s foreign intelligence chief said in a live broadcast of the Solovyov Live YouTube channel shown on the Rossiya-1 TV Channel.

"This will be both in 2021 and 2024, of course," Naryshkin said in response to a question about when such provocations might be staged.

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/: New confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia grew by 22,804 in the past 24 hours to 6,288,677, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Sunday.

The relative coronavirus growth rate equaled 0.36%, the latest figures show.

In particular, 1,911 new coronavirus cases were registered in St. Petersburg, 1,658 in the Moscow Region, 535 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 520 in the Sverdlovsk Region and 486 in the Voronezh Region in the past day, the latest figures show.

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/: Clinical trials of another Russian coronavirus vaccine, Betuvax-CoV-2 developed by the Institute of Human Stem Cells, may begin in September after a Russian health ministry issues a corresponding permit, the press service of the National Technological Initiative (NTI) Platform told TASS on Sunday.

MOSCOW, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Russian cosmonauts have given a video tour of the interior of a research module which briefly threw the International Space Station out of control on Thursday a few hours after docking.

Russian space officials said a software glitch and possible lapse in human attention were to blame for the mishap that caused the entire space station to pitch out of its normal flight position 250 miles above the Earth with seven crew members aboard.

MOSCOW, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) agree that the COVID-19 origin tracing should not be politicized, Sputnik reported Friday citing Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program.

"The one consistent thing we've heard from all countries has been 'let's not politicize the science,' and the next thing that happens is the science is politicized," Ryan said.

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/: The likelihood of displacing the Delta strain of coronavirus with the Lambda variant is doubtful, a representative of the Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology told TASS.

Earlier, Japanese biologists discovered that the lambda strain has a stronger infectivity and is able to hide from the immune system.