Russian lawmakers propose progressive tax aimed at top income bracket, Scientists dabble in quantum teleportation, Ukraine announces mobilization, Russian hacking suspect faces extradition to U.S. from Spain, Downed airliner black boxes may not reveal much, Human rights groups slam offensive in Gaza. These issues in the Voice of Russia's daily Press Review.
Izvestia reports that a group of State Duma deputies has come up with a new proposal to modify Russia’s tax system. A special ‘solidarity tax’ is aimed to feed investments into the Crimea region and Sevastopol. The newspaper talked with Andrey Krutov, head of the workgroup behind the proposal and member of the Energy Committee. The spokesman said that currently the bill is going through final legal analysis and this fall it will be submitted to the lower house of parliament after coordination with relevant governmental agencies. “New subjects of the Russian Federation – Crimea and Sevastopol – lacked financing for decades. Currently the budget doesn’t have enough funds to invest into them. This is why a comprehensive solution to the problem is required: not a one-time use of funds of the population (such as the pension funds) and not a sweeping tax hike. I’m sure our option will be supported by the majority of the population and the government.” The lawmakers are proposing increasing income tax from 13% to 30% for those citizens who earn over 12 million rubles per year. According to the workgroup’s calculations, this would be applicable to .2% of Russians – at the same time, it would bring 300 to 500 billion rubles to the Russian budget per year.
Russian physicist Sergei Filippov along with his colleague from Slovakia Mario Ziman came up with a unique method to transfer quants. Essentially, scientists have managed to create a perfect copy of an atom at another location, Moskovskiy Komsomolets reports. Filippov, the 27-year-old scientist, explained that such quantum technology will not be available to the general public for at least twenty five years more. Once it becomes widespread, however, applications are wide and far-reaching, including drugs, defense industries, new materials and energy saving technologies. The daily notes that he met his colleague during internship; they were united by their interest in quantum entanglement – particles the quantum state of which cannot be described independently, but which can be used to describe information of any kind and transfer it in an isolated environment. The daily reminds that in 2011 researchers attempted to transfer a signal from one island to another, but the experiment failed due to weather conditions. Filippov and Ziman developed technology allowing isolation of the signal from external interference, the newspaper highlights. For now quantum teleportation is limited to elementary particles – the article explains that an immense amount of energy and calculations would be required to teleport something sizeable.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta reports that on Tuesday Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, has approved the decree issued by President Petr Poroshenko announcing further mobilization. The daily notes that on the backdrop of this ‘patriotic’ initiative deputies plan to impose heavy taxes on fledgling industries of the county’s economy. Specifics of the mobilization were not made public, as the spokesman for the Ukraine’s Security Council refused to share such information, saying it was a military secret. The presidential decree is also quite vague on what exactly this mobilization entails – regardless, 232 deputies out 450 voted for the initiative – just seven votes over half of all deputies. Meanwhile, ‘budget mobilization’ is quite more concrete, the daily notes – latest amendments to the Budget policy for 2014 entail elimination of tax breaks for developing industries in favor of supposedly cutting down on the deficit of the pension fund. The article reminds that according to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, the country spends one hundred fifty to one hundred sixty million dollars per month on the so-called ‘anti-terrorist’ operation in the south-east region.
A St. Petersburg resident who is suspected of selling about $10 million worth of e-tickets that he stole by hacking into users' accounts has been detained in Spain and faces extradition to the United States, The Moscow Times writes. Vadim Polyakov, 30, is being held in custody in Madrid and is awaiting trial, a spokesman for Russia's consulate in the Spanish capital said. The Russian consul has visited Polyakov twice, and the consulate has found a lawyer to defend him. Extraditing Russians to the U.S. has historically caused uproars between the two countries, the newspaper reminds. Roman Seleznev, the son of a Russian federal lawyer, was arrested in the Maldives in early July on allegations of hacking and fraud and was taken to the U.S. territory of Guam to face trial. Russia considered the maneuver "kidnapping." The article notes that Russia's Foreign Ministry said at the time that Seleznev's arrest was "not the first time that the U.S. government, ignoring a bilateral agreement on mutual cooperation regarding criminal issues, has literally kidnapped a Russian citizen."
The black boxes from Malaysia Air Flight 17 are unlikely to reveal what caused it to plunge from the sky six miles above Ukraine, The Washington Post writes. On the other hand, holes in the scattered wreckage can provide telltale evidence it was struck down by a missile, experts said Tuesday. There could be one hole or there could be dozens, but they are unmistakable evidence that a missile did the damage, the daily notes. Robert Benzon, a former lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board said: “It’s a very distinct type of damage. The fastest you’re going to crash an aircraft might be 800 or 900 miles an hour, and these shrapnel pieces are going thousands of miles an hour.” end quote Benzon stressed that surface-to-air missiles are designed to detonate when they come close to planes and spray them with high-velocity particles. One of America’s leading airplane-crash investigators, now retired, Jim Wildey said examiners would need at least two months on the ground in Ukraine to gather the evidence.
More children than Palestinian fighters are being killed in the offensive on Gaza, according to the latest United Nations statistics, despite Israel's claims to be waging a targeted military campaign. The Telegraph reports that according to Gaza's health ministry 580 Palestinians had been killed, including 155 children. The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that, as of Tuesday morning, 149 children had been killed, compared with 87 confirmed members of armed groups. Even including unconfirmed combatant deaths, more children would still have died.The Palestinian monitoring group Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights has given the daily the names of 132 of the dead, all under the age of 18. In addition, Save the Children said almost a third of those injured were children. Less than a quarter of all casualties are thought to be Hamas militants. Israel says that Hamas bears responsibility for civilian deaths because it launches rockets from and stores weapons in civilian areas, the article notes.
