BEIJING – China is to carry out its first spacewalk in the second half of 2008, when a Chinese astronaut will step out into open space from the Shenzhou-7 spacecraft, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

China, which has recently unveiled comprehensive space exploration plans, is only one of three countries in the world capable of independently launching manned spaceflights, after the United States and Russia.

The news agency also said, citing an official with the Chinese manned space program, that the spacecraft would be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province, in the northwest of China.

In 2003 and 2005 the Shenzhou-5 and Shenzhou-6 spacecraft carried three Chinese astronauts into space.

Train plows through crowd in India

NEW DELHI – At least 16 people, including a child, have died in western India after a high-speed train ran over them as they were walking along railway tracks, national television reports said on Thursday.

The accident occurred about 1.8 miles from the city of Surat in the Gujarat state, a major diamond production center, late on Wednesday. The dead bodies were spotted by another train driver the same day. Luggage was scattered around the scene.

The victims are believed to have been migrant laborers from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, who were walking to Surat in search of work.

– McClatchy news service

“They disembarked from the train from Manikpur and were walking to Surat, when a train ran over them,” a railroad official said on television.

The victims are believed to have climbed the tracks to cross a dike. Police are continuing their investigations.

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RUSSIAN DOOMSDAY CAVE CULT COULD BE GASSED OR POISONED

MOSCOW – Russian doomsday sect members, who have been barricaded in a cave in the country’s central Penza Region since the fall, could die from infection and poisonous fumes, the Tvoi Den tabloid paper said.

The group of about 35 cult members, including four children, are holed up in the cave waiting for the apocalypse, which they say will happen in May 2008. They have threatened to set fire to themselves if any attempt is made to force them out.

“The situation in the Penza cave is very serious. Three dozen people have been in a small enclosed space for a long time. Even if they have a toilet with a septic tank it will not save them from poisonous ammonia gases,” an extreme tourism instructor, Nadezhda Moiseyeva, said.

The cult members are being choked by the stench of their own excrement, she added, and with the onset of warmer weather they could simply suffocate or their water could become infected by bacteria, as their well is located next to the toilet.

“Poisonous fumes are the greatest threat to the children living in the cave … I’m frightened to think about their fate,” she said. The youngest child is thought to be less than eighteen months old.

She added: “Any cave is a source of radiation.” Radon, a naturally occurring gas, causes headaches, decreased immunity and hair loss, the extreme tourism specialist explained.

According to the sect’s founder, Pyotr Kuznetsov, the cave is said to have been divided into five cells, with one large “room” set aside for prayers. The prayer room is also to be used for the eventual burial of the sect members.

Kuznetsov, who calls himself a saint, is currently being treated for paranoid schizophrenia in a psychiatric hospital in Penza, about 600 km (370 miles) southeast of Moscow.

Moiseyeva also warned that the cave was located near an abattoir, where cattle and dead animals are buried. “The situation could be called catastrophic, as a virus will have certainly reached their drinking water. They are poisoning themselves without knowing it.”

The government of the Penza Region is currently considering the possibility of setting up a rescue station near the cave in case of spring flooding. “We are ready to provide aid to the cult members hiding underground …We will do everything we can to help these people in case of a threat,” a government spokesman said.

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GIANT PYTHON SWALLOWS FAMILY PET IN AUSTRALIA

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – A five-meter-long scrub python (16.5 ft) stalked an Australian family’s dog before devouring the beloved pet, while the family watched in horror, local media said.

The attack was the third time in a month the family have lost a family pet to snakes, after their guinea pig and cat were recently eaten.

Although the couple threw chairs at the enormous python to try and stop it from eating their Chihuahua, the reptile ignored their attempts and swallowed the dog in front of the horrified children.

“We’d had the dog about five years, so it was part of the family,” the dog owner, Daniel Peric, told the Cairns Post newspaper.

Peric said his two children, aged five and seven, could also be at risk in the family’s north Queensland home. “Actually watching it unfold before your eyes was pretty gut wrenching,” Peric said.

Stuart Douglas, owner of the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, said that a snake of that size was “quite capable of killing a small child.”

Scrub pythons usually feed on small mammals in the north Queensland rainforest, but as towns like Cairns develop and more and more houses are built close to their natural habitat, snakes are starting to prey on family pets.

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BOOKS AND CHINA MOST POPULAR PRESIDENTIAL GIFTS FOR PUTIN

MOSCOW – The most traditional gifts given to Vladimir Putin during his eight years in office are books, china and glassware, but he has also been sent horses, falcons, dogs and a white goat.

The president accepts gifts during state visits from foreign leaders and officials on behalf of Russia, which are then kept in the Kremlin. Presidents and other high-ranking officials in Russia are only allowed to keep presents with a value below $150.

Russians have sent the president a range of gifts from traditional Caucasus coats and cloaks to ancient swords and even wax models of the president.

In 2002, when Putin celebrated his 50th birthday, a woman from the central Russian city of Kursk presented him with a hand-knitted 50-meter scarf. Other birthday presents from Russians that year included a copy of the Cap of Monomach, the Russian tsars’ inherited crown, a map of the Russian Federation made from jasper quartz, and a sack of onions.

Putin has declined some gifts like three Arabian race horses worth $2.5 million from the King of Jordan. And he handed over a BMW car presented by German businessmen to a Russian priest and an expensive Swiss watch to a Kremlin guard officer.

A longtime judo and downhill skiing aficionado, Putin also loves horse riding. Among the horses he has received, which live at his official country residence at Novo Ogaryovo, there is a white goat presented by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and three dogs, including the famous Labrador Connie.

Of all the gifts he received as president, Putin, an Orthodox believer, is reported to have only kept an icon given by the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, an embroidered image of Our Lady, an Easter egg, and a geographical globe.

The popular president is expected to step down after the March 2 presidential election. The Russian Constitution bars him from running for a third term. But Putin is expected to become premier if his longtime ally Dmitry Medvedev wins the polls, which is almost certain to happen.

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INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION’S ORBIT RAISED 3 MILES

MOSCOW – The orbital altitude of the International Space Station (ISS) has been increased by 5 kilometers (3 miles), a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said on Thursday.

“The correction of the orbit of the ISS started at 8:16 a.m. Moscow time by using thrusters on the Russian module Zvezda,” the spokesman said, adding that the procedure had lasted 123 seconds.

He said the correction was made without the participation of the space station’s crew.

The ISS’s orbit has been adjusted for the upcoming arrival of the U.S. shuttle Endeavor, whose launch date is scheduled for March 11, to compensate for the Earth’s gravity and ensure a successful docking.

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RUSSIAN SURFER GOES MISSING DURING BLACK SEA STORM

KRASNODAR, Russia – Russian coastguards are searching for a surfer who has gone missing after a storm in the Black Sea, emergency service officials reported on Thursday.

The surfer, from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, headed into the sea off the coast of Anapa on Wednesday evening.

“The sportsman went into the sea on his surfing board during a storm…and disappeared,” an emergency service official said.

He added that only the surfer’s board had been found, and that a decision would be taken on Thursday as to whether or not to involve a helicopter in the search.

In brighter news, two men who went missing in the early hours of Thursday morning after ice-fishing in an estuary of the nearby Sea of Azov have been found.

The men’s relatives had assumed that the men had been carried away to sea by an ice floe. However, the fishermen had simply got lost, and later called for help, according to emergency officials.

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TEENAGE JAM THIEF JAILED IN RUSSIA

MOSCOW – A Russian teenager convicted of stealing 11 jars of jam from a neighbor has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison, local prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The 18-year-old from the Republic of Bashkiria, in the southwest Urals, smashed a lock to gain entry to the neighbor’s store room stealing six jars of raspberry and five pots of currant jam.

The thief also took a light, a stainless steel ladder and a bowl. The total value of the goods stolen was estimated at 2,100 rubles ($90), a spokesman said.

The defendant confessed that he liked sweets, especially home cooked.

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FOUR DEAD IN SOUTH KAZAKHSTAN HELICOPTER CRASH

ASTANA, Kazakhstan – Four people were killed on Thursday after an Emergency Situations Ministry helicopter crashed in the south of Kazakhstan, the ministry said.

“According to preliminary information, 17 people were on board the helicopter. Four people died and the rest were taken to the nearest hospital,” the ministry said.

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GEORGIAN OPPOSITION TYCOON LAID TO REST IN HIS HOME COUNTRY

TBILISI, Georgia – Badri Patarkatsishvili, the Georgian businessman and opposition leader who died in London earlier in February, was buried at his private residence in the capital of Georgia on Thursday.

Patarkatsishvili died on February 13 at the age of 52. A post mortem indicated a heart attack was the cause of death.

More than 10,000 people gathered near the former tycoon’s residence in Tbilisi blocking traffic. The funeral was attended by a host of dignitaries, including Georgia’s ex-president Eduard Shevardnadze, religious leaders from the Caucasus state and Israel. A private jet flew about 50 people, his former business partners, from Russia.

Earlier reports said the brothers of ex-first lady and current U.S. presidential contender Hillary Clinton were also expected to attend.

Fellow tycoon Boris Berezovsky was denied entry to the country, Georgian television reported. Another fellow businessman Andrei Lugovoi, now a Russian lawmaker, chose not to attend fearing he could be extradited to Britain, where he is wanted as a chief suspect in the Litvinenko murder case.

Patarkatsishvili made his fortune, which is estimated in unofficial reports at $12 billion, in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, along with Berezovsky, who now lives in London after fleeing Russia to escape prosecution on a series of charges.

Patarkatsishvili ran in January’s early presidential polls in Georgia, but lost to the incumbent leader Mikheil Saakashvili. The opposition said the vote was rigged.

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(c) 2008, RIA Novosti

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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