Russia hits top-10 on global terrorism index. Dangerous territories. Medvedev advocates smoking ban, mentions new anti-tobacco bill

Russia hits top-10 on global terrorism index

Russia has been ranked 9^th in the list of countries mostly affected by terrorist attacks since 2001, according to a report by an international research NGO.

This is five positions higher than Syria, which is in the midst of an ongoing civil war, and 11 positions above Israel, a permanent conflict zone between Israelis and Palestinians, according to The Institute for Economics and Peace.

The Global Terrorism Index 2012 has assessed the level of internal terrorist activities taking into account four figures: the number of terrorist attacks, numbers of those killed and injured, as well as the level of material damage.

Dangerous territories

The research published on Tuesday by the Center of Humanitarian Technologies, compared data from 158 countries from the period of 2001-2012.

The top three countries most affected by terrorism were Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. India, Yemen, Somali, Nigeria and Thailand followed in the ranking. Russia and the Philippines closed the top ten.

Among CIS countries, Russia has climbed up the list highest of all. The second most dangerous former Soviet republic was Belarus, which ranked 32.

Most of Russian terrorist attacks have been registered in the North Caucusus where militant groups continue to fight against the authorities.

Medvedev advocates smoking ban, mentions new anti-tobacco bill

After upholding the tough bill on banning any amount of blood alcohol for drivers, the Russian government has started a campaign against smoking. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke about fighting smoking in his video-blog published on Tuesday.

He said that the advertising of tobacco should be banned and the taxes for tobacco producers raised. He also said that smoking should be banned in public places.

"Apart from banning smoking in public places and selling cigarettes at every corner, we should also completely ban the advertising of tobacco and significantly raise taxes for producers," Medvedev said.

He added that Russia "is the country with the most smokers in the world."

"Some 44 millions of Russians are dependent from nicotine , this is a third of the population of the country, including children!" the PM said. He added that the new anti-smoking bill, which will be soon introduced at the parliament, is not aimed against those who smoke. According to Medvedev the bill will fight "discrimination" against non-smokers.

The anti-tobacco bill will be considered by the ministerial cabinet before November.

Chief Moscow mufti says there are not enough mosques in Russia

According to the latest poll by the Levada polling center, the largest religion in Russia is Orthodoxy with 79% of respondents considering themselves to be followers. The next largest faith at 6% are Muslim. The remaining religious faiths (Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and others) are represented by no more than 1% of respondents each, the survey showed.

There are now four large mosques in Moscow. In September 2012 Moscow authorities announced plans to build a fifth large mosque and a Muslim culture center in the city's North-Western district of Mitino.

On September 20, some 1,500 Mitino residents took to the streets and held a rally under the slogan "Say 'no' to a mosque in Mitino." They said they were protesting because of fears that the newly built mosque would gather thousands of Muslims to the district during holidays and that it would complicate the transport situation in the district.

As a result, the city's town-planning commission declined the plan to build a mosque in Mitino, and Moscow's mayor Sergey Sobyanin declared that " Moscow will probably not need any more mosques."

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