India: Shock Dowry Deaths Increase Revealed

By Neville Lazarus, Sky News Producer

A woman dies every hour in India due to the demands placed upon her family as a result of the dowry system, according to figures from the country's National Crime Records Bureau.

This is an age old custom where the wife's family has to hand over endless amounts in cash and gifts at the wedding and beyond to secure her wellbeing.

It is illegal and the punishments are severe, but the number of cases is on the rise in a country that continues to grapple with the issue of violence against women.

Most of the victims of the dowry system die in the most painful way - burnt by their husband's family.

Neha, a 29-year-old mother-of-two, was treated in the intensive burns unit of a hospital in Delhi after suffering deep burns over almost half of her body.

She said her in-laws threw gasoline on her and set her alight. Doctors said it will take another six months before the bandages can be removed from her body.

Neha told Sky News: "The demands of dowry started right from the time I got married. My father gave whatever he could but their demands were endless and so was the violence and harassment.

Seema Mishra with her daughter

"It got worse when my daughter was born. I never thought they would do this to me; they would beat me up and throw me out of the house in the middle of the night. But I never thought they would try to kill me by burning me."

The case is being investigated and four people are in police custody. Neha is now looked after by her parents at their home on the outskirts of Delhi.

Her father Virender Yadav said he did everything possible to make sure his daughter was safe, but never imagined the situation would get this bad. He wants the severest punishment for all those involved in the attack. 

Seema Mishra said she saved herself from unbearable misery when she left her husband's home with her eight-year-old daughter.

She said the demands made were beyond her father's means. This resulted in physical violence and harassment which caused her to lose her first child. Unable to cope, and in fear for her daughter's life, she left.

Laws aimed at protecting women were passed after the Delhi bus gang rape

Her case has been in court for five years now, and Seema's family have poured their savings into fighting it.

She told Sky News: "There is no justice in sight. There is no future for us, if have no hope for any support from anyone."

Since 2001 an estimated 100,000 women have been killed due to dowries. But the worrying factor has been the increasing numbers of such deaths and dowry cases registered by the NCRB.

Kamla Bhasin, a women's rights activist for more than four decades, told Sky News she was shocked by the rising numbers and believes there is a direct correlation with India's economic progress.

"It's really linked to greed of money and its linked to patriarchy. Traditional patriarchy is bad enough. This combination of capitalist patriarchy is lethal," she said.

The system has far-reaching effects on Indian society. It is the primary reason for female foeticide and infanticide. Activists estimate 500,000 female foetuses are aborted illegally every year.

Kamla Bhasin sees a correlation with India's economic progress

For many families it is the boy who brings in the riches while a girl continuously depletes it.

Mrs Bhasin said: "Female foeticide takes place in the progressive states like Delhi, Haryana and Punjab, resulting in a distorted sex ratio.

"It's not the uneducated or tribals that practise this but the affluent societies in large cities and towns of the country. And all this for the want of money."

The horrific Delhi bus gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in December 2012 led to unprecedented protests across the country.

Under pressure from the public, the government passed tough laws aimed at protecting women. Fast track courts were established to try cases of violence against women and punishments were increased.

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Inuit In 'Sealfie' Protest Against Oscar Tweet

A community of Inuit in Canada have launched a protest against Ellen DeGeneres' famous Oscars "selfie" which has raised $1.5m (£900,000) for an anti-seal hunting charity.

The comedian's photo with a host of Hollywood stars became the most retweeted post of all time and even caused Twitter to break for a short amount of time on March 2.

The picture also proved very lucrative for sponsor Samsung which also agreed to make a donation to the Humane Society of the United States, a charity chosen by DeGeneres which campaigns against killing the animals.

The website for The Ellen Show calls seal hunting "one of the most atrocious and inhumane acts against animals allowed by any government".

Ellen was joined by a host of stars in the selfie. Pic: @TheEllenShow

But members of the Inuit indigenous population have now started their own online "sealfie" campaign.

They have been posting photos of themselves dressed in clothing made from seal fur.

Iqaluit film-maker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, with friends Nancy Mike and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, spearheaded the protest which aims to show the importance of seal hunting from the Inuit point of view.

The activity is an important part of Inuit culture and provides much needed warmth, food and income.

Ms Arnaquq-Baril tweeted a photo alongside the words: "@TheEllenShow  I am an Inuit seal meat eater, and my fur is ethical, humane. #sealfie vs. #selfie".

Her tweet has spawned a host of others on the micro-blogging site, including by @papatsirojas who wrote: "@TheEllenShow First pair of sealskin kamiks I've sewn for myself. #Sealfie #embracingmyculture #cultralpide #inuit."

Ms Rojas told Sky News: "I'm passionate about this campaign because, as Inuit, we are defending our right to embrace our culture, which includes the use of the seal. My Inuit heritage is a source of great pride for me."

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Mudslide: Many Reported Missing Found Safe

The number of people missing after a mudslide devastated a tiny community in Washington state has fallen sharply.

Many of the 90 residents of Oso who were feared to have been caught up in the disaster have since been found safe.

Search teams continue to hunt for 30 people who may be buried beneath the rubble.

It comes as the number of people confirmed dead by the medical examiner's office rose by one to 18.

Rescuers, who have located one additional victim in the debris field, face a harrowing search for further victims.

Jason Biermann, program manager at the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management, said: "Due to the destructive nature of the mudslide, they're often making only partial recoveries.

"That is a challenge for the medical examiner's office as they attempt to identify bodies."

The mudslide flattened many objects in its path, levelling homes and trees and leaving much of Oso, about 55 miles (90km) north of Seattle, unrecognisable.

A 50-metre wall of mud crashed into the town when part of a rain-soaked hillside collapsed on March 22.

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Russian Cossacks Ready For Ukraine 'Rescue'

Russian Cossack leaders have plans to cross into the Ukraine to 'rescue' Russian-speaking communities in the east of the country, after providing militias which helped Vladimir Putin's Crimean land grab.

Atamans, or headmen, of two Cossack communities, said they had traditional claims on the lands on both sides of the border, adding: "One day we will take them back."

But they warned they would expect rewards for acting as the Russian president's muscle.

Romanticised by the Tsars but crushed by the communists, Russia's Cossack communities are rapidly rebuilding themselves and have become a powerful symbol of nationalist fervour.

Ukrainian soldiers are on alert for any Russian incursion from the east

To many Russians, they have betrayed their martial roots to become henchmen for the worst aspects of Mr Putin's rule.

Most recently, they have been seen on the streets of Crimea, often heavily armed and sometimes drunk, blockading Ukrainian troops in their barracks and running road blocks.

They were also filmed whipping members of the band Pussy Riot when the all-female group attempted a street performance at the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

They also admit being close to other hard-line Slav nationalists, Serbs in particular.

Pussy Riot members were whipped by Cossacks in Sochi

Earlier this month, Alexei Sushkov was responsible for hosting a group of black bearded Chetniks, Serb militia, in Sevastopol.

They serve under a death's head insignia and volunteered to help with Russia's invasion of the Crimea.

"You have to have great personal discipline. You need to be religious and of good character to be a Cossack," he confided.

Mr Sushkov is not so much a bear of a man as a man who looks like he ate a bear, and the meal was a little wanting.

Pro-Kremlin activists celebrate the incorporation of Crimea into Russia

He says that when the Cossacks invaded Crimea, they brought their own weapons or picked them up from local authorities when they arrived. They also turned up with an armoured personnel carrier - or a "mini-tank", as they called it.

He spoke with passion about how he wished he had been able to help the Serbs fight in the former Yugoslavia and of how they were bilked of the province of Kosovo, which won its independence after a civil war with Serbia and Nato bombardment of Serb forces.

"Russia was weak back then," he growled.

On the outskirts of Taganrog, a few miles from the border with Ukraine, Cossacks demonstrated how they were reviving the tradition of horsemanship which was central to the Cossack's culture.

Russian troops have been massing along the Ukrainian border

Their warlike tendencies and citizen cavalry meant their regiments became a celebrated part of Tsarist imperial life.

The Don Cossacks ruled a vast Host on both sides of the River Don for centuries and were given a degree of autonomy from central government.

When many sided with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks in the early part of the last century, though, they were crushed by the Soviet rulers who snuffed out any potential threats to the Party's hegemony.

They are gentle with their horses, ride with light hands, and are freely affectionate towards their mounts - kissing and cuddling them like beloved children.

Mounted Russian Cossacks on patrol near the Ukrainian border

Such tenderness is in sharp contrast to what they have planned, the details of which they won't share, in the neighbouring Ukrainian region of Donetsk.

"We are ready to go in whenever the time comes to protect our people," said Andrei Lovlenski, the ataman of the Taganrog Cossacks. "We are ready."

In Rostov-on-Don, a city of one million people and home to a vast helicopter factory, the Cossack revival is being driven by Timor Okkert, the local ataman.

He is a combat veteran of Russian conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Cossacks check an empty building in the border city of Rostov-on-Don

Close to the Patriots' Sports Club where his Cossack disciples work out and learn martial arts, his offices house an impressive collection of swords and automatic weapons.

He led Cossacks into Crimea and is convinced he will be asked to go into other parts of Ukraine too.

"We've been used like this for many centuries," he said.

But what does he expect from Mr Putin in return?

Mr Okkert allows a brief sneer to cross his face.

"That's a rhetorical question," he said. "We're still waiting for an adequate answer from our government."

That's a warning - it means once unleashed, the Cossacks may be hard to control.

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Missing Plane Families Demand Malaysia Apology

Learning Lessons From Missing Flight MH370

Updated: 9:23am UK, Saturday 29 March 2014

By Ian Woods, Senior Correspondent

The small consolation that should come with every airline crash is that the knowledge gained from the tragedy should help prevent it happening again.

But if that were true, we might already know more about what happened to flight MH370.

After the Air France accident of 2009, in which 228 people died when their flight from Brazil plunged into the Atlantic, 120 representatives of the international aviation industry got together to recommend ways to make it easier to find aircraft which crash into the sea. 

None has been implemented.

They suggested that the flight data recorders - the black boxes - should have larger batteries so they would carry on transmitting a beacon for 90 rather than 30 days. 

But bigger batteries mean extra weight and extra cost for the airlines to install them.

They also suggested the recorders should be designed to break away and float to the surface, rather than sink to the sea floor along with the rest of the fuselage.

And that the frequency of the transmission should be altered to boost how far away it can be heard, beyond its current 2,000 metre maximum.

Salvage expert David Mearns, from Blue Water Recoveries, told Sky News: "If you reduce that frequency, the lower the frequency, the greater the range. 

"You go from 37.5khz , to say, 8.8khz as recommended, I think that would increase the range to over 10,000 metres.

"So that's a five times increase in your detectable range and that would help the teams out there now looking for these black boxes."

As for why the recommendations weren't acted upon? 

"It's a very big industry. It's an international industry," said Mr Mears.

"It takes a lot of time for these things to work themselves through the regulations; how they would operate, how the pilots would be trained to use them; they have to be implemented on the aircraft, so it takes years for these things to be done."

In an age when we can all track most passenger aircraft on our smartphones and computers, how can a plane still go missing? 

Most, but not all, areas of the world are now covered by the Acars ADS-B system, allowing them to be constantly tracked. Although smaller, older aircraft are not equipped.

There are new regulations being introduced around the world compelling airlines to fit them in all passenger aircraft. 

But in some places the deadline is 2020.  

Mikael Robertsson, the founder of Flightradar24.com, told Sky: "Maybe authorities in these countries don't want to rush or I guess it costs quite a lot of money for airlines to upgrade their equipment on board."

In any case, it appears the system on MH370 was switched off. 

One current 777 pilot told Sky he could not think of a good reason why he would do such a thing. 

And with so many flights criss-crossing vast expanses of water, knowing the plane's last position is crucial to a swift recovery. 

Mr Robertsson said: "I think this is something that should be discussed: How much pilots should be able to turn off, and how easy it should be to turn some systems off?"

The backgrounds of the pilots have been scrutinised to assess the likelihood of criminal or suicidal behaviour. 

Professor Robert Bor is a clinical psychologist who has studied those who fly, and was specifically asked to review an incident involving an American Jet Blue pilot who had a psychotic episode while flying from New York to Las Vegas.

Captain Clayton Osbon left the cockpit and screamed at passengers before being subdued by some of those on board. 

His co-pilot landed the plane safely in Texas. 

Prof Bor and others concluded there were no warning signs beforehand which could have prevented the incident.     

"Every year an airline pilot will have at least two formal medical checks which address not just their physical health but their mental health. Every time they are doing the job they are scrutinised by people."

Pilot suicide is not unheard of, and is considered the most likely explanation for the crash of an Indonesian SilkAir flight in 1997. 

The pilot was heavily in debt - 104 passengers and crew were killed.

Airlines may also be studying how Malaysia Airlines has handled the disaster from a public relations perspective. 

The families of the passengers have gone from grieving to protesting, angry at being kept waiting for news, furious about misinformation, and the final indignity - some of them were told the plane had crashed by text message. 

Crisis management expert Raine Marcus told Sky News: "The communications with the families didn't inspire trust from the beginning.

"If you don't build up trust and goodwill right from the beginning, that has a direct impact afterwards on communications with the families and also directly on your business."

In the months and years ahead, as details emerge of what happened to MH370, there will undoubtedly be calls for lessons to be learned.

And in the meantime millions of us will continue to fly, hoping that our flight will not be one of the very rare ones, which does not have a safe landing.

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North Korea Threatens New Nuclear Test

North Korea has warned it has not ruled out a test of its nuclear deterrent in retaliation for the US conducting "madcap nuclear war" exercises in South Korea this month.

A statement issued via the country's state news agency KCNA said it was unacceptable the UN Security Council condemned North Korea's military exercises while ignoring simultaneous drills by the US.

"It is absolutely intolerable that the UN Security Council - turning a blind eye to the US madcap nuclear war exercises - 'denounced' the Korean People's Army's self-defensive rocket launching drills and called them a 'violation of resolutions' and a 'threat to international peace and security'," the statement said.

The country's foreign ministry added it would respond with an "appropriate step" involving "more diversified nuclear deterrence" used for hitting medium and long-range targets "with a variety of striking power".

Replicas of North and South Korean missiles in Seoul

Every year the US and South Korea conduct joint battle exercises involving some 12,500 US and as many as 200,000 South Korean troops.

Operation Key Resolve is a computer-simulated drill which plays out war-time scenarios that could result from a North Korean invasion of the South, while Operation Foal Eagle is a two-month air, sea and land field-training exercise.

The annual drills are regularly condemned by the North as preludes to a US invasion, though Washington insists the exercises are defensive.

North Korea conducted its third nuclear test in February 2013 and claims to have made progress securing a functioning atomic arsenal, though experts note it is unlikely the country possesses warheads capable of reaching the US.

US and South Korean ships conduct exercises in 2009

Tensions have increased in recent weeks after North Korea tested its medium-range rocket capability by firing two Rodong Missiles into the sea off the east coast last week, a move condemned by the UN Security Council.

It was also reported that a Chinese passenger plane also crossed the path of a ballistic North Korean missile during a test launch.

The China Southern Airlines flight was flying from Narita airport in Tokyo to the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang as the rocket was in the course of descending, according to South Korea's defence ministry.

It said the civilian plane, which had 220 passengers on board, "passed as the ballistic missile (from North Korea) was in the course of descending".

Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said China had contacted the North Korean side to convey its deep concern.

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Latvia 'Concerned' Over Russia's Crimea Actions

Putin Keen To Block Europe's March

Updated: 9:18am UK, Tuesday 18 March 2014

By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor in Moscow

Two events, miles apart, and nothing to do with Crimea's widely condemned referendum on leaving the Ukraine for Russia, will reinforce the Kremlin's view that Vladimir Putin's stealthy grab of the peninsula was a smart strategic move.

One was the small march through Riga by veterans and supporters of Latvia's Waffen-SS - Hitler's willing servants.

The second are snap elections under way in Serbia.

The parade by the supporters of the vile ideology of Nazism could also have been deliberately orchestrated by Mr Putin himself.

The 1,500 pro-Nazis marched through Riga, the capital of a European Union state that's not so much in Russia's back yard but in its porch.

"You see," the Kremlin's heavies will tell themselves. "You let Europe into our sphere and the Nazis come back."

They point incessantly, as does the Russian media, to western Ukraine's pro-Nazi past.

The Maidan revolution which brought Kiev's new government to power and kicked out Victor Yanukovych, a Moscow client, is portrayed as a conspiracy of "fascists" - the heirs to the SS marching through Riga.

Close to a third of Latvians are of Russian extraction.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were invaded by Stalin in 1940. Russian communities were established in each one. And each of these Baltic States is anxiously watching Moscow's next move and hoping that they can rely on their membership of Nato to protect them from a Crimean-style invasion.

But that doesn't matter to Mr Putin's supporters.

They're interested in a bright new era in which Russia re-asserts itself as the bulwark against American hegemony.

This is as much a spiritual as it is a physical mission.

The West, Mr Putin's supporters will say, is materialistic, hollow, lacking soul and homogenised by American cultural exports.

The US has thrown its weight around the world, invading Iraq and Afghanistan, bombing Serbia, crowbarring Kosovo away from Belgrade.

Until Mr Putin, modern Russia could do little about this.

The economy was on its knees. Not long ago one could buy a Soviet bomber or a submarine for chump change and Moscow's Top Gun pilots flew air taxi services in Africa and were paid in meat, veg and vodka.

Those days of shame are over, Mr Putin's supporters believe.

Now the rot must be stopped.

Nazis are on the march in the Baltics, Serbia is leaning dangerously towards the European Union and Bosnia has the begging bowl out.

These are all new opportunities for a newly confident oil and gas-rich Russia.

Its armed forces are back up to scratch.

It has spare cash to wean Sarajevo away from Brussels.

And Slav nationalists will work hard and ruthlessly to keep Serbia inside the Slavic and Orthodox religious dispensation.

The Crimean grab is not the end of the matter, Mr Putin's many supporters believe. It's probably a warm up. Moscow is on a salvation march.

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Missing Plane: Crews Fail To Find MH370 Debris

Learning Lessons From Missing Flight MH370

Updated: 9:23am UK, Saturday 29 March 2014

By Ian Woods, Senior Correspondent

The small consolation that should come with every airline crash is that the knowledge gained from the tragedy should help prevent it happening again.

But if that were true, we might already know more about what happened to flight MH370.

After the Air France accident of 2009, in which 228 people died when their flight from Brazil plunged into the Atlantic, 120 representatives of the international aviation industry got together to recommend ways to make it easier to find aircraft which crash into the sea. 

None has been implemented.

They suggested that the flight data recorders - the black boxes - should have larger batteries so they would carry on transmitting a beacon for 90 rather than 30 days. 

But bigger batteries mean extra weight and extra cost for the airlines to install them.

They also suggested the recorders should be designed to break away and float to the surface, rather than sink to the sea floor along with the rest of the fuselage.

And that the frequency of the transmission should be altered to boost how far away it can be heard, beyond its current 2,000 metre maximum.

Salvage expert David Mearns, from Blue Water Recoveries, told Sky News: "If you reduce that frequency, the lower the frequency, the greater the range. 

"You go from 37.5khz , to say, 8.8khz as recommended, I think that would increase the range to over 10,000 metres.

"So that's a five times increase in your detectable range and that would help the teams out there now looking for these black boxes."

As for why the recommendations weren't acted upon? 

"It's a very big industry. It's an international industry," said Mr Mears.

"It takes a lot of time for these things to work themselves through the regulations; how they would operate, how the pilots would be trained to use them; they have to be implemented on the aircraft, so it takes years for these things to be done."

In an age when we can all track most passenger aircraft on our smartphones and computers, how can a plane still go missing? 

Most, but not all, areas of the world are now covered by the Acars ADS-B system, allowing them to be constantly tracked. Although smaller, older aircraft are not equipped.

There are new regulations being introduced around the world compelling airlines to fit them in all passenger aircraft. 

But in some places the deadline is 2020.  

Mikael Robertsson, the founder of Flightradar24.com, told Sky: "Maybe authorities in these countries don't want to rush or I guess it costs quite a lot of money for airlines to upgrade their equipment on board."

In any case, it appears the system on MH370 was switched off. 

One current 777 pilot told Sky he could not think of a good reason why he would do such a thing. 

And with so many flights criss-crossing vast expanses of water, knowing the plane's last position is crucial to a swift recovery. 

Mr Robertsson said: "I think this is something that should be discussed: How much pilots should be able to turn off, and how easy it should be to turn some systems off?"

The backgrounds of the pilots have been scrutinised to assess the likelihood of criminal or suicidal behaviour. 

Professor Robert Bor is a clinical psychologist who has studied those who fly, and was specifically asked to review an incident involving an American Jet Blue pilot who had a psychotic episode while flying from New York to Las Vegas.

Captain Clayton Osbon left the cockpit and screamed at passengers before being subdued by some of those on board. 

His co-pilot landed the plane safely in Texas. 

Prof Bor and others concluded there were no warning signs beforehand which could have prevented the incident.     

"Every year an airline pilot will have at least two formal medical checks which address not just their physical health but their mental health. Every time they are doing the job they are scrutinised by people."

Pilot suicide is not unheard of, and is considered the most likely explanation for the crash of an Indonesian SilkAir flight in 1997. 

The pilot was heavily in debt - 104 passengers and crew were killed.

Airlines may also be studying how Malaysia Airlines has handled the disaster from a public relations perspective. 

The families of the passengers have gone from grieving to protesting, angry at being kept waiting for news, furious about misinformation, and the final indignity - some of them were told the plane had crashed by text message. 

Crisis management expert Raine Marcus told Sky News: "The communications with the families didn't inspire trust from the beginning.

"If you don't build up trust and goodwill right from the beginning, that has a direct impact afterwards on communications with the families and also directly on your business."

In the months and years ahead, as details emerge of what happened to MH370, there will undoubtedly be calls for lessons to be learned.

And in the meantime millions of us will continue to fly, hoping that our flight will not be one of the very rare ones, which does not have a safe landing.

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Rio Slum Raided By Troops Ahead Of World Cup

Troops in Brazil have raided one of Rio's largest violence-plagued group of slums in an effort to "pacify" the area ahead of the World Cup.

Around 1,000 soldiers and police, backed by more than a dozen armoured vehicles, entered the vast Mare favela which is seen as a  drug-trafficking stronghold and one of the most dangerous places in the city.

The dawn offensive in the poverty-stricken district forms part of a push by the authorities to curb favela violence in the countdown to the tournament which kicks-off on June 12.

About 1,000 soldiers and police were sent in

It follows a series of attacks by drug gangs on police posts in Rio's slums, which has cast fresh doubt on efforts by the authorities to tighten up security less than three months before the arrival of tens of thousands of football fans.

The group of 16 neighbourhoods in the Mare favela, which is home to around 130,000 people and is close to Rio's international airport, are viewed as havens for organised crime.

The vast Mare flavela is close to the city's international airport

Police seized "large quantities of drugs and weapons" near the Olympic Village and a public school, the GloboNews chain reported.

The military are expected to start patrolling the area in the coming days.

Military will begin patrolling the area in the coming days

However, the intelligence services said many drug traffickers left Mare after the imminent raid was announced on Monday and a long-term battle for control was likely.

The city will stage seven matches, including the July 13 final. It will also host the Olympics in 2016.

Troops were backed by helicopters and armoured vehicles

Rio state secretary for security affairs Jose Mariano Beltrame insisted last week that authorities "are not thinking about the World Cup so much as the citizens of Rio, of police gunned down in cowardly fashion" on the streets.

"Our response to the traffickers is to occupy more territory, to make them lose more territory" and show the state is stronger than the dealers.

Meanwhile, it has been announced another construction worker has died at the Sao Paulo stadium that will host the opening match.

He is the third person to be killed working on the arena, and the seventh to die building Brazil's World Cup venues.

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Kerry And Lavrov To Hold Ukraine Crisis Talks

Russia Feeling The Pinch Of Western Sanctions

Updated: 11:11pm UK, Friday 28 March 2014

By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor

Russia's foreign minister came close to quoting Marx, not Karl, Groucho, in his reaction to the blackballing of Russia from the G8 community of rich nations by the remaining members of the G7.

"The G8 is an informal club, with no formal membership, so no one can be expelled from it. If our western partners believe that such format is no longer needed, so be it," said Sergei Lavrov.

"We aren't clinging to that format and we won't see a big problem if there are no such meetings for a year, or a year-and-half."

So there.

Well, not quite.

Russia may be trying to shrug off the limited sanctions the international community imposed in response to the Crimean annexation – but the cat-like claws of asset freezes and visa bans are already digging into the Russian economic body.

Andrei Klepach, Russia's deputy economics minister, has been an Eeyore ever since the Crimean adventure got under way.

This week he warned that capital flows out of Russia for the first quarter of this year were likely to soar to $70 billion (£42.4bn) - that's $7bn more than the total outflow from Russia last year.

He had already warned of declining growth, pressure on the Rouble and growing inflation.

"Capital outflow was already significant before this, and, of course, growing tensions and cooling relations make it even worse," said Klepach.

He hasn't joined the triumphalist parades and Soviet-style Putin praise parties which have gummed up local TV channels since the Crimea was taken from Ukraine.

Putin's move on the Peninsula might have been a strategic plan. Or a visceral response to the revolution in Kiev which seemed to drag the country, finally, away from the Russian sphere of influence.

He may have calculated on the loyalty of the oligarchs closest to him. Some of whom have, indeed, said they see the sanctions imposed on them as a badge of honour.

But investors want money, not medals.

So already, according to the Financial Times, companies which left profits in Russia to be used for future investment are now repatriating them fast.

They are fearful that their assets could be confined to Russia if a trade war breaks out in earnest.

Russia's economic position has also been weakened with China.

Putin has been looking to expand trade with the Asian giant - and especially to secure a deal to supply it with more oil and gas.

He's expecting, perhaps, to ink such an agreement in May.

But it had been negotiated before the West decided to start seeking alternatives to Russian gas, which supplies around a third of Europe's needs.

Now the Chinese can drive a harder bargain because they are not an additional buyer - but an alternative one of Russian fossil fuels.

Vladimir Putin's foreign minister may agree with Groucho's principal that "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member".

But in the long term, Russia's economy will cool as it presses its face against the G7 club window.

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