The environmentalist group Greenpeace says two of its activists have been arrested after climbing onto an oil platform in Russia’s Arctic waters. It claims warning shots were fired across the organization’s ship.

A Greenpeace statement says the arrests were made Wednesday in the Pechora Sea, a section of the Barents Sea. The activists, who climbed a platform belonging to state gas company Gazprom, are being held on a Russian Coast Guard ship, according to Greenpeace.

The statement said the Coast Guard fired 11 shots across the Greenpeace ship that brought activists to the area.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Security Service, which includes the Coast Guard, said she had no immediate information on the incident.

The Russian President showed off his skills with a classroom sketch on a white board at a middle school in the Siberian Kurgan.

Pupils were left giggling when the president revealed that he had drawn a cat’s behind for the class.

‘This is for you to remember’  he said, before carrying on with his sketch, the Huffington Post reports.

When a pupil asked what the drawing was, Putin replied: ‘It’s a cat – from the rear’, causing the class to collpase into giggles.

It comes days after the Russian President displayed a less flippant attitude to art, when police seized a painting of him wearing women’s underwear from a gallery, saying the satirical display had broken the law.

An eight-year-old Russian girl has been orphaned after her entire family was wiped out by deadly gas caused from rotting potatoes.

Grief-stricken Maria Chelysheva lost her father, mother, brother and grandmother who were killed one by one after entering a cellar where they stored potatoes for the winter.

Relatives are caring for the girl who is inconsolable over her loss.

Her father, respected law professor Mikhail Chelyshev, 42, was first to enter the cellar, not realising the potatoes had become seriously rotten.

He fainted from the noxious fumes, and soon afterwards died, say police.

When he failed to re-appear, his worried wife Anastasia, 38, went to look for him in the dark and was also overcome by the poisonous gas.

Next the couple’s 18 year old son Georgy went in search of his parents, only to suffer the same tragic fate as his mother and father after inhaling the highly toxic fumes.

Anastasia’s mother Iraida, 68, called a neighbour to say there was something suspicious and to plead for help.

But before assistance arrived, she also went into the cellar, suffocated from the gas, and collapsed and died like the others, say police.

It is understood that as she went in, she left the door open, allowing the fumes to disperse.

When Maria entered the cellar, she found the bodies of her whole family on the cellar floor.

The shocking case was at Laishevo, a town near Kazan, in the Russian republic of Tatarstan on the Volga River.

Relatives and friends are appealing for cash to support the girl.

A memorial service for Professor Chelyshev was held in the marble hall of  Kazan Federal University, where he was head of the department of civil and business law.

The Russian Foreign Ministry is calling for an independent probe by United Nations experts into what Syrian rebels alleged was a chemical weapons attack by government forces on the outskirts of Damascus.

The statement released on Friday said that Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had discussed the situation by telephone on Thursday, and concluded that they had a “mutual interest” in calling for the U.N. investigation.

The statement said Russia had called for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s embattled government to cooperate with an investigation, but questions remained about the willingness of the opposition, “which must secure safe access of the mission to the location of the incident.”

Russia has been one of Assad’s key allies in the international arena.

Two British anglers on an ‘ultimate’ fishing trip in the remote Russian Arctic were killed in a helicopter crash yesterday.

The men and their Russian guide died when they were hit by the rotor blades of their chartered aircraft.

Both Britons were said to be in their late sixties and were on a custom salmon fishing trip to the Kola Peninsula, 90 miles from the port city of Murmansk.

They were named by Russian officials but the Foreign Office would not confirm their identities until their families were informed.

As the craft attempted to take off, it banked suddenly to one side and its rotor blades hit the men where they stood with their guide, Alexander Tushnikov.

The pilot, said to have 25 years’ flying experience, survived the crash with injuries.

Lines of inquiry are likely to include whether the helicopter was caught by a sudden gust of wind, causing it to tilt, or if it suffered a mechanical failure.

The Kola Peninsula was previously a top secret area, home to the Red October submarine base and the Soviet navy’s northern fleet.

Now it is known as the ultimate destination for high-end fishing tours for Atlantic salmon, attracting anglers from around the world.

Operators say the region has not been overfished like many popular salmon rivers and that competent anglers can catch more than 100 salmon in a week, with some fish weighing up to 40lb.

The peak season runs from June to August, when the area north of the Arctic Circle enjoys 24-hour daylight.

Outside the season, the rivers are frozen for three or four months a year.

A Russian lawyer says that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has asked for temporary asylum in Russia.

Anatoly Kucherena said that Snowden submitted the asylum request Tuesday to Russia’s Federal Migration Service. The service had no immediate comment.

He said Snowden made the move following their meeting at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.

Snowden has been stuck in Sheremetyevo’s transit zone since he arrived from Hong Kong on June 23. He said Friday at a meeting with Russian rights activists and public figures that he would seek at least temporary refuge in Russia until he could fly to one of the Latin American nations that have offered him asylum.