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At least 38 people were killed and more than 60 injured in two suicide bomb attacks on the Moscow Metro during the morning rush hour, officials say.
Female suicide bombers are believed to have carried out the attacks on trains that had stopped at two stations in the heart of the Russian capital.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for being behind the attacks.
But Russian security services believe the bombers are linked to militant groups in the North Caucasus region.
Past suicide bombings in the capital have been carried out by or blamed on Islamist rebels fighting for independence from Russia in Chechnya.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cut short a visit to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk and said a crime that was “terrible in its consequences and heinous in its manner” had been committed.
“I am confident that law enforcement bodies will spare no effort to track down and punish the criminals. Terrorists will be destroyed,” he added.
President Dmitry Medvedev echoed his words after laying a wreath at the site of one of the attacks, saying: “They are animals. I have no doubt that we will find and destroy them all.”
‘Panic’
The first explosion tore through the second carriage of a train at 0756 (0356GMT), as it stood at central Lubyanka station waiting for morning rush hour commuters to board.
The station, on both the busy Sokolnicheskaya and Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya lines, lies beneath the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
“I was moving up on the escalator when I heard a loud bang, a blast. A door near the passageway arched, was ripped out and a cloud of dust came down on the escalator,” an eyewitness named Alexei told Rossiya 24 TV channel.
“People started running, panicking, falling on each other,” he said.
The second blast at Park Kultury, which is six stops away from Lubyanka on the Sokolnicheskaya line, came at 0838 (0438 GMT). It struck at the back of the train as people were getting on board.
“I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast. I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body,” one passenger told the RIA news agency.
“People were yelling like hell,” he said. “There was a lot of smoke and within about two minutes everything was covered in smoke.”
The security services said the bomb that went off at Lubyanka station had an equivalent force of up to 4kg of TNT, while the bomb at Park Kultury was equivalent to 1.5-2kg of TNT.
The devices – believed to have been made with the powerful explosive, hexogen, which is more commonly known as RDX – were filled with chipped iron rods and screws for shrapnel.
“The whole city is a mess, people are calling each other, the operators can’t cope with such a huge number of calls at a time,” said Olga, a BBC News website reader in Moscow. “Those who witnessed the tragedy can’t get over the shock.”
Moscow’s Metro is one of the most-used underground railways in the world, carrying about 5.5 million passengers a day.
The system was partially disrupted following the attacks, but damage to the stations was minimal and both had reportedly reopened by the evening rush hour.
President Medvedev asked officials to increase security on the public transport system nationwide.
“What was being done needs to be substantially strengthened,” he said. “Look at this problem on the scale of the state, not only as it applies to a particular type of transport and a particular city.”
Deadliest attack
In a meeting with President Medvedev, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov said its investigators believed the attacks had been carried out by “terrorist groups related to the North Caucasus”.
“This is likely to be our main conclusion, because fragments of the bodies of two female suicide bombers were found earlier at the scene of the incident and examinations show that these individuals came from the North Caucasus region,” he said.
Federal prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into “suspected acts of terrorism”.
The co-ordinated attacks were the deadliest in Moscow since February 2004, when 40 people were killed by a bomb on a packed metro train as it approached the Paveletskaya station.
Six months later, a suicide bomber blew herself up outside another station, killing 10 people. Both attacks were blamed on Chechen rebels.
Federal security forces have scored a series of successes against militants in the North Caucasus in recent weeks.
In February, at least 20 insurgents were killed in an operation by troops in Ingushetia.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov warned in February that “the zone of military operations will be extended to the territory of Russia… the war is coming to their cities”.
Last November, he said his Caucasian Mujahadeen had carried out a bombing that killed 26 people on board an express train travelling from Moscow to Russia’s second city of St Petersburg.
The attack came six months after President Medvedev declared an end to Russia’s “counter-terrorism operations” in Chechnya, in a bid to “further normalise the situation” after 15 years of conflict that claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.
Despite this, the mainly Muslim republic continues to be plagued by violence, and over the past two years Islamist militants have stepped up attacks in neighbouring Ingushetia and Dagestan.
Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), says it will not take part in the country’s first polls in two decades.
An NLD spokesman said the party had decided not to register because of “unjust” electoral laws.
The laws recently announced by the junta required the NLD to expel its detained leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, because she has a criminal record.
Its refusal to register means the NLD will no longer be legally recognised.
No date has been set for the elections, but the military has pledged to hold them this year.
The NLD won the last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.
The BBC’s South East Asia correspondent, Rachel Harvey, says the party’s decision to boycott the coming election, rather than ousting its charismatic leader in order to participate, was largely expected.
But the move will do nothing to ease international concern about the country’s already heavily-criticised political standards, she adds.
No compromise
The NLD’s decision followed a meeting of more than 100 party members in Rangoon.
NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the party had agreed that it could not participate in the elections under the new laws, which were announced in early March.
“After a vote of the committee of members, the NLD party has decided not to register as a political party because the election laws are unjust,” Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.
The decision did not come as a surprise – last week Nyan Win said Ms Suu Kyi had told him the party should “not even think” of taking part in the polls because of the nature of the election laws.
If the NLD had chosen to take part, it would have implied its acceptance of the military’s constitution – something it has so far refused to do.
Some senior NLD leaders had argued the party risked rendering itself irrelevant if it chose not to contest the polls, even though that participation would be constrained by the military.
Win Tin, a veteran NLD member and one of Burma’s longest-serving political prisoners, described the meeting as a “life-or-death issue”.
“If we don’t register, we will not have a party and we will be without legs and limbs,” he said ahead of the announcement.
But Tin Oo, the party’s recently-released deputy leader, said that the decision did not signal the end for the NLD. “There are many peaceful ways to continue our activities,” he said.
The new election laws have been condemned by the UN, US and UK, among others.
The laws state that parties cannot have any members with criminal convictions – which rules out many top NLD leaders who have been jailed because of their political activism.
The laws also ban members of religious orders and civil servants from joining political parties. Buddhist monks were the driving force behind anti-junta protests in 2007.
Critics say both the election laws and the constitution under which the elections will be held are designed to ensure that the military retains a firm grip on power in Burma.
neophyte \NEE-uh-fyt\ , noun;
1. A new convert or proselyte.
2. A novice; a beginner in anything.
Examples:
- I was a complete neophyte and knew nothing about the choreographic process, but seeing the steps pour out of this man was a revelation.
- She, the neophyte, with as yet no experience of this, had settled eagerly to the task.
- As a neophyte in politics, I didn’t understand that ducking the issues was the goal of most campaigns.
portentous \por-TEN-tus\ , adjective;
1. Foreboding; foreshadowing, especially foreshadowing ill; ominous.
2. Marvelous; prodigious; wonderful; as, a beast of portentous size.
3. Pompous.
Examples:
- This victory is without doubt a very special andportentous gift of the gods, she said, “for I believe that there now stands before you the one leader who is the single most qualified to lead us to the peace we long for.”
- Death of a Salesman has been debunked as a didactic commentary on the bankruptcy of the American dream of success, while Miller has been dismissed as an epigone of Ibsenism, a preachy, pompous and, yes,portentous writer who belongs, like Clifford Odets and Lillian Hellman, to a middlebrow, pre-modernist past.
impecunious \im-pih-KYOO-nee-uhs\ , adjective;
Not having money; habitually without money; poor.
Examples:
- Her father, Bronson, was a respected butimpecunious New England transcendentalist who had ‘no gift for money making’, according to [Louisa May] Alcott’s journal.’
- He had gotten to know Garibaldi during theimpecunious soldier’s last years and would send him woolen socks, underwear, and money.
- It may be urged that an impecunious defendant would be unable to bear the expense of an appeal and would have to let it go by default.
US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have agreed a new nuclear arms reduction treaty after months of negotiations.
The final agreement came in a phone call between the two leaders.
The deal replaces the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December. It will be signed in Prague on 8 April, the White House said.
Both sides agreed to cut their arsenals last year, but disagreements on verification have held up a deal.
In a speech in Prague last year Mr Obama set out his vision of moving towards a world without nuclear weapons.
The US is said to have more than 2,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, while Russia is believed to have more than 2,500.
The new agreement limits the US and Russia to a maximum of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads each.
The cuts are substantial – well over 30% for the Russians and around 25% for the Americans, whose current arsenal is smaller, says BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins.
The timing and symbolism are crucial, enabling both countries to claim some moral high ground going into next month’s Washington Summit on nuclear security, and the critical talks in May aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons around the world, our correspondent says.
Presidents Obama and Medvedev hope the new deal will increase pressure on Iran, in particular, to abandon any ambition to develop nuclear weapons, he adds.
“This landmark agreement advances the security of both nations, and reaffirms American and Russian leadership on behalf of nuclear security and global non-proliferation,” the White House said in a statement.
The agreement – called the Measures to Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms – replaces the Cold War-era Start treaty signed in 1991 and the Moscow Treaty signed in 2002.
It furthers Mr Obama’s commitment to “reset” relations with Moscow, the statement added.
lucre \LOO-kuhr\ , noun;
Monetary gain; profit; riches; money; — often in a bad sense.
-> Lucrative (adj) = profitable
Examples:
- His stories began to be published in the American Mercury before he moved to L.A., lured by the dream of Hollywood lucre.
- They ought to feel a calling for service rather than lucre.
- But surely there are other motives for writing, and they range from the desire for filthy lucre to the pleasure in doing the thing itself to the impulse to delight readers.
- Picture the place where you grew up. Now, imagine it trampled by an avalanche of capital and the stampede of lucre-crazed hordes chasing after it.
President Obama explains how the reform bill he signed into law earlier in the morning will make a positive impact in the lives of Americans at an event at the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC. March 23, 2010.
defenestrate \dee-FEN-uh-strayt\ , transitive verb;
To throw out of a window.
Examples:
- Some of his apparent chums . . . would still happilydefenestrate him if they caught him near a window.
- I defenestrated a clock to see if time flies!
- A woman, driven to fury by the manner in which her lover prefers to lavish his attention on a match on the telly rather than her, starts to throw his possessions out of the window. He’s finally moved to stop her when she tries to defenestrate his new Puma boots.
Origin:
Defenestrate is derived from Latin de-, “out of” + fenestra, “window.” The noun form is defenestration.
Inspiration for your “Run Away” essay! 
An Indian boy runs across a parched field on World Water Day in Berhampur, Orissa state, India. Clean Water for a Healthy World is the theme for World Water Day 2010.
Photo; Biswaranjan Rout/AP
A man dives into the pollution section of the River Yamuna, in Delhi, India, to scavenge for ornaments and coins left by Hindu rituals. Officials say factories are ignoring regulations and making the water toxic
