Rome: Thousands of young Italians are becoming shepherds as a way to make a living after facing the worst employment opportunities in more than a decade, according to a new report. Around 3,000 youths have followed their parents into the livestock shepherding business, said Coldiretti, an Italian agriculture trade group [...]

St. Petersburg: A 261,000-acre national park in Russia’s Far East created to protect Amur leopards began operating this week. “This is the first Russian national park created expressly to protect wildlife,” said presidential chief of staff  Sergei Ivanov, who is chairman of the supervisory council of the Eurasian Center for [...]

Moscow: A convict who fled a prison in Russia on a helicopter bought himself the opportunity with a bribe of 10,000 rubles (around $340), prosecutors said. Prison officials had illegally removed 35-year-old Alexei Shestakov from a list of convicts likely to try to escape from prison in 2011. This allowed [...]

Moscow: A Russian battalion commander who died after diving on a grenade to protect others has been posthumously awarded the country’s highest honour, the “Hero of the Russian Federation”. According to the Kremlin website, Major Sergei Solnechnikov pushed a soldier away from a grenade and threw himself over it after [...]

Moscow: A Russian has been sentenced to 15 months behind bars after his dog accidentally triggered a shot from his rifle that killed a friend on a hunting trip. Igor Solomin, 44, was jailed after his dog fired the shot from a hunting rifle when he and his friends were [...]

Berlin: huge explosion rocked a chemical industrial park in Marl in western Germany, leaving one or two workers injured and three missing, police said Saturday. Marl police confirmed a pressure vessel in the park blew up at 13:36 local time (1136 GMT), reported Xinua. Three staff members were missing, police [...]