Double air disaster hits Russia
BBC

Two planes have crashed in Russia within minutes of each other after flying out of Moscow.

All passengers and crew, more than 40 people, on the first plane died, after it went down south of the capital.

A second plane with at least 44 passengers on board went out of contact near Rostov-on-Don after activating an alarm indicating it had been hijacked.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the state security services, the FSB, to launch an investigation.

FSB investigations are normally held only when an accident occurs in suspicious circumstances, a security source told Reuters news agency.

Security has been tightened at Russian airports and the authorities say they are not ruling out a terrorist attack as a cause for the crash.

It is not yet known whether there are any survivors from the second crash.

Police suspect Moscow bus stop blast was terrorist attack
Interfax

MOSCOW. Aug 24 (Interfax) - A senior police source said the bomb explosion at a bus stop in Moscow on Tuesday evening may have been a terrorist attack.

"The power of the explosive device was equivalent to more than 150 grams of trotyl [TNT]. The explosive device was stuffed with shrapnel," the source, who is an official with the city police authority, told Interfax.

He said the bomb went off at the moment when a bus was leaving the stop.

Putin possible target of terror attack in Russia
Maariv International

Russian president currently vacationing near Sutchi, one of the hijacked planes destinations. 98 people feared dead in terror attack, black box recovered.

Ninety eight crew ans pasengers were killed in last night's terror-hijacking attack on two civilian aircraft. Russian authorities are accusing Chechenyan terrorists of perpetrating the attack.

As many as 98 people are feared killed. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, there were no Israelis on board.

Russian authorities are investigaitng the possibility that the hijackers may have intended targeting President Putin, who is currently vacationing near Sutchi, one of the destinations of the two hijacked planes.

'Hijack signal' on missing plane
news.com.au

THE Russian plane that went missing around the time as another jet crashed issued a signal indicating a hijacking or seizure before disappearing from radar, the Interfax news agency has reported.

The signal came at 11:04 pm yesterday (0404 AEST today) from the Tu-154 airliner that went missing in southern Russia's Rostov region, Interfax quoted a source in Russia's "power structures" as saying.

Emergency workers were still searching for the plane hours after it disappeared from radar screens on a flight from Moscow to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

The source said the signal was activated shortly before the plane disappeared.

Another passenger jet that went missing at about the same time crashed in the Tula region south of Moscow. There was no word on survivors among the 89 people believed to be aboard the two planes.

Focus : Operation Bojinka (Failed)
Wikipedia

Operation Bojinka (also known as Project Bojinka, Bojinka Plot, Bojinga, from Arabic -- slang in many dialects for explosion and pronounced Bo-JIN-ka, except in Egyptian where it is Bo-GIN-ka) was a planned large-scale terrorist attack and precursor to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks.

The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 and 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill John Paul II on January 15, 1995, and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and other buildings.

Article from TIME Magazine...

Putin orders secret service to investigate plane crash
ABC News Online

Russian news agencies say President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Federal Security Service (FSB) to investigate this morning's crash of one passenger plane and the disappearance of another.

A Government source told Reuters that the FSB is only called in on such investigations when there are suspicious circumstances.

The news agencies say security was immediately tightened at airports throughout the country.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the two Tupolev jets within a few minutes of each other.

Russian Computer Expert Predicts Internet Terrorist Attack
Moscow News

Terrorist will paralyze Internet on August 26, a Russian expert in antivirus programs said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the conference hosted by Russian Information Agency Novosti, Aleksandr Gostev from Kaspersky Labs said information on this terrorist attack was published on special websites. He did not elaborate