... blow up the balloons, RIA-Novosti reported, citing a statement by the country's emergency services ministry. The balloons were apparently not filled with helium or regular air, both of which are commonly used for the purpose and neither of which are explosive. As a result of the explosion, 154 demonstrators standing near the balloons at a rally of the Armenian Republican Party received burns and were hospitalized. As of early Saturday, more than 70 people remained in the hospital, Interfax reported...

A fire at a munitions depot northeast of Vladivostok set off a series of explosions early Friday, prompting area residents to evacuate. A fire at an ammunition warehouse northeast of Vladivostok early Friday set off a series of explosions, injuring a soldier and prompting the evacuation of area residents, the Emergency Situations...

An explosion ripped through an ammunition disposal site in central Russia on Wednesday, killing six soldiers and injuring four. An explosion ripped through an ammunition disposal site in central Russia on Wednesday, killing six soldiers...

A woman convicted of planning to carry out a suicide bomb attack during 2010 New Year's Eve celebrations on Red Square has been sentenced to 10 years in jail, investigators said Friday. The plot was foiled after another suicide bomber was killed by explosives that accidentally detonated in her hotel room only hours before the planned attack. Investigators said Zeinap Suyunova fled Moscow for Volgograd after the hotel room blast damaged the explosives she planned to set off. (Reuters)

... discovered 10 caches of weapons and ammunition on May 4 to 5 in Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia, which lies just kilometers from Sochi. The arms seized included portable surface-to-air missiles, grenade launchers, flame throwers, grenades, rifles, explosives and maps, it said. The terrorists were planning to smuggle the explosives and arms into Sochi "between 2012 and 2014 to use them during the preparations and during the games," it said, without elaborating on how it came to this conclusion...

... attention from the imprisonment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Interior Ministry investigator Vasyl Farinnik, however, said Friday that he saw no politics in the attacks, which he said appeared to be of a criminal nature. Ukraine has seen previous explosions connected to criminal extortion. The attack has unsettled authorities who are preparing to host the Euro 2012 football championship together with Poland. Dnipropetrovsk is not a championship venue itself and is located about 240 kilometers...

... on religious pilgrimage sites and police stations. Officials said 40 people have been arrested. Weapons seized included 13 assault rifles, one machine gun, 12 handguns, three rifles, 3,400 rounds of bullets, 62 hand grenades and several kilograms of explosives. "The armed group set itself the aim of mounting terrorist attacks in several regions of Azerbaijan, creating a mood of powerlessness and lawlessness, sowing panic, ethnic and religious enmity, disrupting the public peace and damaging...

... government to quicken the pace on creating resorts as part of the project. The North Caucasus region has been plagued by violence for years, including two separatist wars in the neighboring republic of Chechnya. Dagestan's capital was rocked by twin explosions in a suspected terrorist attack at a police checkpoint earlier this month that killed more than a dozen people. 179742

... exploded in a Mitsubishi sedan on the outskirts of town at about 10:28 p.m., near a checkpoint called Alaska-30 along the Makhachkala-Astrakhan highway. The bomb contained about 30 kilograms of TNT, officials said Friday. Twelve minutes after the first explosion, a bomb containing about 50 kilograms of TNT, which was hidden in a minibus, exploded, sending deadly shrapnel flying and leaving a 30-centimeter crater in the asphalt, police said in a statement . Investigators have found fragments of bodies...

... mathematician." Popov's refusal to comply with the police request was most likely justified, since it might contradict current legislation, in particular the law "On personal information." But the response on the Russian blogosphere was explosive, garnering Popov both copious praise and aggressive insults. An anonymous blogger commented on Popov's blog on the Komsomolskaya Pravda site: "Popov, take your family and go to the Caucasus. You'll get vaccinated against tolerance! The...

... soldiers had nearly destroyed everything in the town, located 150 kilometers west of Moscow, in their eagerness to prevent it from being seized by Nazi troops. The author also told him about a Rzhev "church that had all these people inside of it with explosives — they were going to blow up all these people, but for some reason they did not go off," Sadler said. "Maybe it was that church where the picture was taken." During his research, Sadler determined that the pictures had...

... public, to blame them upon outsiders, especially the West. While these actions may have originated in the need to protect from enemies, they also become inevitably entwined with ego and grandiosity. A classic example occurred in 2000 with the tragic explosions on the Kursk submarine. Russia did not have the capabilities to rescue the men trapped on the doomed vessel and declined rescue offers from British and Norwegian teams. All 118 of the sailors and officers aboard perished. It will never be known...