Moscow authorities launched a criminal investigation on Thursday, after 29 school children with food poisoning symptoms have been hospitalized, the Moscow Interregional Investigative Directorate said in astatement.

As the US tried through sanctions to limit Venezuela’s involvement in the global financial system as a way to oust Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro, Russia shipped loads of cash to the South American country.

A Moscow court ordered on Thursday two catering companies to compensate the families of schoolchildren who suffered food poisoning with the equivalent of US$4,700, days after it ordered an NGO to pay nearly 300 times that much to one of the companies for reporting about the incident.

A Moscow court ordered on Monday the foundation of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to pay 88 million Russian rubles (US$1.4 million) to an alleged protege of the Russian President for blaming his company for food poisoning in Moscow schools and kindergartens last year,Kommersant reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin opened on Wednesday the first ever Russia-Africa Summit, which gathered dozens of African leaders in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, promising them “no-strings-attached business and protection from Western pressure,” but also from China, RT reported.

A special commission of the Russian Duma called last week for measures against a number of foreign media for violating the Russian election laws, alleging that some of them were spies, theCommission said in a report.

US senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, asked Braidy Industries CEO Craig Bouchard to explain how come a controversial Russian company is investing in the aluminum rolling mill Braidy plans to build in Kentucky, although it was under federal sanctions until early this year.

Russia’s Ministry of Justice declared on Wednesday opposition leader Alexei Navalny’sFoundation for the Fight Against Corruption (FBK) - a “foreign agent,” which forces the anti-graft group to from now on disclose its donors and objectives.

Fourteen media workers have been murdered in Russia since the beginning of 2017, ananalysis by the London-based Justice for Journalists Foundation (JFJ) said on Monday, marking the 13th anniversary of the murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist, Anna Politkovskaya.

Personal information of up to 60 million credit card holders of the Russia’s biggest bank ended up for sale on the online black market, the Kommersant newspaperreported Thursday, quoting the DeviceLock cybersecurity company, which first noticed the internet add.

A Russian hacker pleaded guilty before the US District Court in Manhattan on Monday, admitting “one of the largest thefts of customer data from a US financial institution in history,” Geoffrey S. Berman, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York,announced.

The European Court ruled on Tuesday that the Russian government violated several articles in the European Convention on Human Rights over the course of its 11-month pre-trial detention and posthumous criminal conviction of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax auditor and government corruption whistleblower, who was found dead on the floor of his small jail cell in northeastern Moscow ten years ago. 

For the third weekend in a row Moscow authorities have gone after protesters agitating for free city elections, arresting demonstrators at a higher rate than earlier, even though the crowd was smaller.

Russian authorities have begun investigating the Foundation for the Fight Against Corruption of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny, on suspicion of laundering one billion rubles (US$15.3 million), the Investigative Committee of Russia said in a statement. 

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin offered on Monday to approve the next round of free-election protests planned for Saturday on the condition that they be held in a less central location, a suggestion which organizers quickly rejected.

Moscow authorities detained on Saturday more than 1,000 protesters who were demanding free elections while opposition leader Alexei Navalny was hospitalized after being exposed to a substance that resulted in an allergic reaction.

Russian businessmen used a network of shell companies to buy a South Carolina theme park before leaving it bankrupt.

Moscow police detained six people suspected of illegal cash withdrawals, after the group’s monthly turnover reached 100 million Russian rubles (US$1.59 million),TASS news agency reported Friday quoting the police.

The Russian Ministry of Interior Affairs announced on Wednesday that it detained a suspect in a case of 16 stolen barrels of pine seed worth four million rubles (USD$63,500).

The Russian Ministry of Interior announced on Friday that 10 people will stand trial for allegedly conducting 4 billion rubles (US$64 million) of illegal banking activities in the Russian Chuvash Republic.