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      Russian Prisoner Escapes in Hijacked Chopper

      THE MOSCOW TIMES6

      A murderer escaped from a Russian penal colony aboard a hijacked helicopter but was captured a few hours later. Law enforcement officials say the drama began Thursday morning when two people commandeered the helicopter owned by a private company and ordered its crew to fly to the high security prison in Sheksna near Vologda, 300 kilometers north of Moscow. Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin said the helicopter had been rented by an associate of prisoner, Alexei Shestakov, RIA-Novosti reported.

      «It has been established that in March the convict called this person and asked him to organize a top delegation helicopter visit. He did not understand exactly what was meant but went ahead and rented the helicopter,» Gribakin said. «At the scheduled time today, the helicopter’s crew landed it at the designated place, taking on board a man and a woman. After the aircraft took off, they drew guns and forced the pilot to hover above the penal colony and throw out a rope. The convict used the rope to climb onboard,» he said. The craft flew away, then landed, and the prisoner and the hijackers scattered. Gribakin told Russian news agencies that Shestakov, who had served 12 years of a 24-year sentence, then hijacked a taxi, but it was stopped at a police roadblock. Gribakin says the escaped convict was wounded while resisting arrest, but did not elaborate. The helicopter hijackers remain at large.

      Rogozin Says Population Goal Should Be 500 Million

      THE MOSCOW TIMES7

      Federal authorities have for years been pushing measures to encourage population growth, in an attempt to reverse the country’s demographic downturn. But Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin set the bar a whole lot higher Thursday, saying the country’s goal should be a population of 500 million – more than triple its current size.   «140 million people – that’s [too] little. The solution is either to complain that we have those Chinese people, or not to point to our neighbor but to have children. Without children Russia will not have a population of 500 million, which we absolutely need,» Rogozin said in a speech to university students in Novosibirsk, RIA-Novosti reported. Rogozin called for measures that authorities have advocated before, including cash incentives to promote large families and assistance to families in securing housing. He also suggested creating new population centers across the country, including one that would help to develop eastern Russia.

      «Incentives need to be created for developing the eastern part of the country. First, we have all the necessary resources for this, and secondly, the human ’gulf stream’ washing people away from these regions needs to be stopped,» Rogozin said.