RF nature ministry's council on uranium prospecting to meet in Tomsk.

TOMSK, August 25 (Itar-Tass) -- The council on uranium prospecting of
the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources will hold a field meeting in the
Siberian city of Tomsk to discuss a program of prospecting works for raw
materials for nuclear plants, a source in the Tomsk regional
administration said on Wednesday.
The meeting will be attended by Russia's leading experts in uranium
geology, including specialists from All-Russia Research Institute of
Minerals, the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Ore Deposits,
Petrography, Mineralogy and Geochemistry, the Uranium Geology
international innovation and training centre of the Tomsk Polytechnic
University, the Atomredmetzoloto holding co, and other specialized
institutions.
"We will recommend to include a section of the West Siberian Plain
into the prospecting program. We believe uranium ore deposits might be
discovered in the north of the Omsk, Novosibirsk, and Toms regions,"
Leonid Rikhvanov, the head of the Uranium Geology centre, told Itar-Tass.
In his words, uranium deposits might be located at the depth of 800 to
1,000 metres. "It is an economically accessible depth," he said.
The meeting will last till August 28.

.Russia's Primorsky territory to subsidize fish processing enterprises.

VLADIVOSTOK, August 25 (Itar-Tass) -- The administration of Russia's
Far Eastern Primorsky territory will subsidize fish-processing enterprises
starting from 2011, the territory's governor Sergei Darkin said on
Wednesday after a conference on the development of the fishing industry
held by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
on Tuesday.
According to Darkin, such subsidies will help boost the fish products
output in the Primorsky territory by 2.6 times already in 2013 as compared
with 2009. Moreover, such measures will create new jobs, increase wages
and taxes to budgets of all levels. Apart from this, it is expected that
more than 100,000 tons of frozen fish, which are currently exported
abroad, will stay for further processing in Russia.

.US looks forward to see Russia's Bout in US court - State Department.

WASHINGTON, August 25 (Itar-Tass) -- Washington looks forward to
seeing Russian businessman Viktor Bout, suspected of arms trafficking, in
a U.S. court as soon as he is extradited from Thailand, U.S. State
Department spokesman Philip Crowley said on Tuesday.
Thai English-language newspaper The Nation reported earlier, referring
to its own sources, that Bout might be extradited to the United States on
Wednesday, August 25. He will be guarded by 50 armed police officers
during the transfer from the Bang Kwang maximum security prison to the
local airport, the paper said.
"As you know, the extradition has been approved by the Thai judiciary.
His extradition to the United States is pending. We look forward to seeing
him in a U.S. court," Crowley told journalists but refused to comment on
when he will be extradited.
"I think for security reasons, we are not going to discuss the
logistics of how and when he travels from Thailand to the United States.
You will know when Viktor Bout has arrived in the United States; he'll
appear in a U.S. court and then will answer charges against him," he said.
Former Russian air force pilot Viktor Bout, 44, faces a maximum
sentence of life in prison if convicted in the United States on charges
including conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and to provide material
support or resources to rebels from Colombia's Marxist FARC group, which
Washington considers a terrorist organisation. A U.S. indictment accuses
Bout of using a fleet of cargo planes to transport weapons and military
equipment to parts of the world including Africa, South America and the
Middle East. It alleges that the arms he has sold or brokered have fuelled
conflicts and supported regimes in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
Bout rejects the charges and says that he ran a legitimate air cargo
business.
Last Friday, the Thai appeals court ruled to extradite Bout to the
United States.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the Thai court's
decision as illegal and politically motivated and said it was taken "under
strong pressure from outside."
In an interview with Itar-Tass last February, Bout said he was a
victim of a "many years' political persecution" in the United States after
he had refused to collaborate with U.S. secret services and "in view of
unethical competition on the part of Western companies, especially those
controlled by the CIA."
-0-ras