Toll could go much higher

Explosions in a Siberian mine in Russia late Saturday and early Sunday have taken the lives of at least 43 people, according to Russian authorities, but another 47 are still missing. Hopes are “dimming” for their survival, says national news agency Ria Novosti. Nineteen of the dead were rescue workers who arrived on the scene after the first blast, but were caught by the second. More than 70 people were injured by the blasts near the town of Mezhdurechensk in the Kemerovo Region

Links to other sites: Ria Novosti, Xinhua

Twelve people have been confirmed dead following the explosion Monday 17 August of Russia’s largest power plant, Sayano-Shushenskaya in Siberia, but the owner of the plant says the 63 missing people are likely to have drowned. The cause of the explosion is not yet known, but turbines were destroyed and power cut to a large area. Late Tuesday the Natural Resources Ministry said transformer oil had spread 80 kilometres along the Yenisei River. The oil, used for insulating and cooling, was released when a transformer exploded.  Financial Times, Novosti

Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister and fitness fanatic, is unlikely to have a lot of immediate competition from other world leaders as poster boys showing off the results of their exercise regimes. Putin, in a series of photos and television footage released this week, is seen topless with rippling muscles on horseback, swimming and doing a powerful butterfly stroke and – a special bonus for his gentler admirers – fondly feeding a horse. The gallery of photos shows him visiting Tuva, Siberia during his holidays. Times, UK and Novosti photo gallery

The BBC says it is the first reported accident of its kind: two intact spacecraft hitting each other at high speed, one from a US company and the other a defunct Russian satellite. They were reportedly 780 km over Siberia and have left a cloud of debris that scientists are now tracking, but they hope the pieces will burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The BBC reporter in Miami says while there are concerns for the International Space Shuttle the risk of it being hit by debris is “low.”