In brief: Russians vote in elections heavy with Putin loyalists

Moscow – Voters on Sunday cast ballots across Russia for local legislators and governors in elections expected to be won by candidates loyal to President Vladimir Putin.

Legislative elections were held in 11 of Russia’s 83 regions, but the anti-Putin opposition was allowed to run only in Kostroma, a region a few hundred miles north of Moscow.

Opposition candidates Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Andreichenko campaigned throughout the rural, economically depressed region, but they came up against a general feeling of apathy. Most Russians still see no alternative to Putin and have little interest in a political process now controlled by the Kremlin.

Sunday’s elections were seen as a dress rehearsal for next year’s vote for a national parliament.

Police seek shop owner following deadly India blasts

New Delhi – Police are looking for a shop owner who they say illegally stored mining explosives that set off a series of blasts that killed 88 people in central India over the weekend, officials said Sunday.

The explosions Saturday at a restaurant in the town of Petlawad in Madhya Pradesh state were caused after gelatine sticks in an adjoining shop caught fire – not by a cooking gas cylinder blast as first claimed by the police.

“Investigations show that a fire from an electric short circuit set off powerful explosions of the gelatine sticks,” district police officer Sima Alawa said.

Local media reported the shop owner and his family fled from their home after the explosions.

Doctor pulls stolen diamond from suspect’s large intestine

Bangkok – The good news for the Chinese visitor to Bangkok was that a doctor had successfully removed a foreign object from her large intestine that could have damaged her digestive system.

The bad news: It was a $278,000 diamond the woman was accused of stealing from a jewelry fair, adding a piece of rock-hard evidence to the case against her.

Police Col. Mana Tienmaungpak said Sunday that authorities got to the bottom of the theft when a doctor wielding a colonoscope and the medical equivalent of pliers pulled the 6-carat gemstone from the large intestine of the woman alleged to have stolen it, after nature and laxatives failed to get it out.

The woman, identified as 39-year-old Jiang Xulian, and a Chinese man were arrested Thursday night at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport on their way out of Thailand on the basis of surveillance video from the fair just outside Bangkok, where earlier that day the duo allegedly switched a fake stone for the real one after asking to inspect it.

If convicted, the two face up to three years in prison, according to police.