Ingush Attacker Was Male

A DNA analysis has revealed that the suicide bomber who attacked Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov on June 22 was male, investigators said.

"According to DNA testing, the biological material found in the blown-up car belongs to the male genotype. So, we can say that the suicide bomber was a man," an Investigative Committee in spokesman told Interfax on Tuesday.

Yevkurov's condition was stable Tuesday, Interfax said. (MT)

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Court Backs Copyright Case

A Tomsk court has ordered French publisher and modern art collector Pierre-Christian Brochet to pay 200,000 rubles ($6,250) to photographer Yevgeny Ivanov for using one of his photos in a catalog without permission, RIA-Novosti reported Tuesday.

The ruling marks the first time that a Russian court has authorized meaningful compensation in a copyright infringement case. Compensation usually runs in the hundreds of dollars.

Curiously, Ivanov last year was fined 700 rubles ($23) by a court for photographing elections officials during the 2008 presidential vote without their permission. (MT)

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Putin Offers Media Prize

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin approved on Tuesday a new annual prize of 1 million rubles ($33,000) to Russian-language media writing about Russia from abroad.

The idea was proposed by Communications and Press Minister Igor Shchyogolev as a measure to support Russian-language media abroad. (MT)

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Khodorkovsky in Congress

A group of U.S. congressmen are calling the trial of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev politically motivated and are urging Russian authorities to drop the charges against them.

The congressmen have spelled out their sentiments in two resolutions that they have presented to the Congress, Ekho Moskvy reported Tuesday.

Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, criticized the resolutions as meddling in Russia's judicial system.

Howard Berman, Kosachyov's counterpart in the U.S. House of Representatives, said Russian officials should ignore "isolated" statements. (MT)

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Rebel Leader's Son Located

The son of a Chechen rebel leader who was deported from Egypt on June 19 and reported missing after arriving in Moscow has been in Chechnya for over a week, Interfax reported Tuesday.

Maskhud Abdullayev, 22, son of rebel leader Supyan Abdullayev, appeared on Chechen state television saying he had been moving freely around Grozny. He shrugged off suggestions by human rights activists that he might have been detained by security services to put pressure on his father, a deputy of Chechen warlord Doku Umarov. (MT)

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