An anonymous reader writes: While plans to clone a woolly mammoth are not new, a lab used in a joint effort by Russia and South Korea is. The new facility is devoted to studying extinct animal DNA in the hope of creating clones from the remains of animals found in the permafrost. IBtimes reports: “The Sakha facility has the world’s largest collection of frozen ancient animal carcasses and remains, with more than 2, 000 samples in its possession, including some that are tens of thousands years old, such as a mammoth discovered on the island of Maly Lyakhovsky; experts believe it may be more than 28, 000 years old.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Russian Laboratory To Study Mammoth Cloning
Remember that awful news of Russian hackers stealing the personal information of 100, 000 taxpayers ? Turns out the Internal Revenue Service lowballed the number . The agency now says that over 600, 000 people were targeted with 300, 000 unlucky persons losing their data privacy completely. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes: After a pair of high profile launch failures in the past few months, Russian space agency Roscosmos is making headlines again: this time for corruption. A public spending watchdog reported that the organization had misused 92 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in 2014 alone. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said their space efforts have been undermined by rampant corruption. “We have uncovered acts of fraud, abuse of authority (and) document forgery. With such a level of moral decay, one should not be surprised at the high accident rate.” He also said Roscosmos is to be “abolished, ” and replaced by a state corporation of the same name by the end of the year. “In its new, corporate identity, Roscosmos will be responsible not only for setting mission goals but managing wages for space industry workers and modernizing production facilities.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
On April 27th, a Russian resupply ship to the ISS started spinning out of control shortly after reaching space. For more than a week, Progress 59 has been hurtling around the Earth in an increasingly unstable orbit, but tonight, it re-entered safely (and violently) over the Pacific Ocean. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes There’s great news coming out of Russia for epic road trip lovers. Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin has proposed building a highway that would reach from London to Alaska via Russia, a 13, 000-mile stretch of road. “This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project, ” the Siberian Times quoted Yakunin. “The project should be turned into a world ‘future zone, ‘ and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The fallout from Hillary Clinton’s homebrew email setup is getting weird. The Department of State just shut down part of its unclassified email system in an attempt to eradicate malware they just found from Russian hackers. But State’s spokespeople say everything is okay. Probably. Read more… 
This is María José Cristerna also known as The Vampire Woman, in a photo just taken at the Venezuela Tattoo International Expo in Caracas, Venezuela. She was considered the woman with the most tattooing and body modifications in the world, but that hasn’t stopped her from getting even more. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes: On Friday a U.S. federal judge approved a settlement in the Apple ebook price-fixing case that could see the technology giant paying $450 million. $400 million of that would go to the roughly 23 million consumers thought to be affected by the price fixing, and the rest would go to lawyers. Though the case is now settled, the dollar amount is not necessarily final — an appeals court still has to rule on a previous verdict. If the appeals court finds in Apple’s favor, then the total settlement drops to only $70 million. If they find against Apple, then it’s the full amount. “The settlement appeared to reflect fatigue by Apple, the Justice Department, state attorneys general and class-action lawyers eager to conclude a case that has dragged on, largely because of delays by Apple.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.