Third shark-bitten Russian moved to Cairo from Sharm el-Sheikh.

CAIRO, December 4 (Itar-Tass) -- A third Russian who suffered a shark
attack in the Red Sea lately, was transported from Sharm el-Sheikh to
Cairo's Nasser Institute Hospital, where there are already two Russian
women, bitten by sea predators earlier.
As doctors at the intensive care unit have told Itar-Tass, 54-year-old
Yevgeny Trishkin, from St. Petersburg, was delivered late Thursday night
and has undergone an operation on the right hand. He had suffered
shattered bones and torn tendon. Now he can move his fingers. In Sharm
el-Sheikh, he had undergone another major operation on his left hand,
bitten off by a shark above the elbow.
70-year-old Russian woman Lyudmila Stolyarova, from Moscow, lost her
right hand, several fingers of the left hand, and a leg below the knee.
She has undergone two operations at the international hospital in the
resort town and in Cairo.
48-year old Olga Martsinko, from the Moscow Region, on Saturday will
have a third surgery. In the shark attack she lost her left hand above the
elbow, and also suffered strong lacerations below the spine.
As it has turned out, all the Russians who were attacked by sharks,
lived in different hotels in Sharm el-Sheikh. The women were hurt in two
separate incidents on November 30, and the man, on December 1. All say
that at the moment of the attack there were not scuba diving in the open
sea, contrary to claims by the Egyptian authorities, but were swimming
near the shore, within the line of the buoys.
"I was diving with a mask and taking pictures," Yevgeny Trishkin told
Itar-Tass. "Suddenly I saw right in front of me the nose of a shark, which
emerged from the depth. It bit me very badly, and when I started to lose
consciousness, a boat approached, and I was dragged out of the water. Had
I been beyond the buoys, I would have had very few chances of being
saved." The man said he had been a career naval officer all his life. "And
now I am very upset everything happened in such a stupid way," said
Trishkin.
Olga Martsinko recalls that she and her daughter were about to go back
to the hotel for lunch, but decided to take a final swim.
"I was wearing flippers and a mask, my daughter was swimming nearby,
when my hand felt something rough," she said. "At first I thought it was a
dolphin, but then this beast sank teeth into my hand and began to wag me,
and then tried to pulled me down." The woman recalls all she saw was the
mouth of a shark that emerged from the depth, and its sharp fin. The woman
was lucky the shark let her go for a second, and she started swimming
towards the shore as fast as she could. For a while the predator was
swimming nearby, pushing the woman towards a pontoon. "Then the shark
attacked me again, and it would have surely bitten my feet off, but for
the flippers," says Olga. Her young daughter did not suffer - she managed
to get on a coral reef, where she has got help from other Russian tourists.
As for Ludmila Stolyarova, the woman says she was swimming a mere four
meters away from the water edge, when she was attacked by a shark. As
Russian diplomats have said, she will be flown to Moscow late Sunday night.
Two sharks fitting the description of the divers who had managed to
take pictures of them just before the attack have now been caught. One of
the predators - a 2.5-meter-long oceanic shark, gray with white belly -
has very sharp teeth. Its dorsal fin looked partially damaged.
In Egypt, attacks by sharks against tourists did take place in the
past once in a while, but they have never been massive. Most often people
were bitten by predators excited with the smell of the blood of fish,
which tourists had brought with them into the water to attract predators.
Some explain sharks have come from the open sea close to shore
because they had smelled the carcasses of several sheep dumped from a
merchant freighter en route from Australia to Jordan. Some of the animals
the ship was carrying died on the way, and their bodies were simply dumped
into the sea.
Meanwhile, some experts suspect that uncontrolled fishing in the Red
Sea has depleted the resources, and in search of food the sharks have to
come ever closer to the shore.

.Serial production of new Mi-38 helicopter due 2013.

MOSCOW, December 4 (Itar-Tass) -- The beginning of serial production
of a new generation passenger-cargo helicopter Mi-38 is planned in 2013.
As the holding company Helicopters of Russia said this week, the second
prototype of the new Mi-38 helicopter, built at the Moscow based Mil
Helicopter Plant and the Kazan helicopter plant has made its first flight.
A third prototype of Mi-38 is inside the assembly shop of the Kazan plant.
According to Russian Helicopters, the machine that is being tested has
been constructively fine-tuned with due regard for the results of testing
of the first prototype of Mi-38. In particular, the improvements affected
the hydraulic and fuel systems and the design of the rotor blades.
According to the holding company, the helicopter is equipped with turbo
engines manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Canada and modern avionics from
the Transas company, which implements the "glass cockpit" principle.
"The helicopter can also be equipped with Russian engines TV7-117V,"
says the holding company.
The medium-class passenger transport helicopter Mi-38 is designed to
carry passengers and cargoes inside the cabin and on the external sling,
conduct search and rescue operations and provide air support for offshore
development. It can be equipped as a flying hospital.
"The Mi-38 is a new generation helicopter, which can provide the
highest level of safety standards and comfort among the helicopters in its
class," the holding company said.

-0-str