Russia's lower house of parliament Friday stripped a leading anti-Vladimir Putin deputy of his mandate, in an unusual move critics said was revenge for his scathing criticism of the Kremlin.

The State Duma voted 291 in favor with 150 against and three abstentions to strip A Just Russia party member Gennady Gudkov of his mandate over alleged conflicting business interests.

President Vladimir Putin has urged the creation of a new sense of patriotism to serve as the basis of Russia's future to replace the vacuum left by the fall of the ideologically driven USSR.

Putin -- who has made restoring Russia's great-power status a chief aim of his rule -- said the country had forgotten to construct a sense of national pride and lashed out at opponents who "pour shit" over its name.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday the Middle East was at risk of descending into "chaos" following a deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Libya and incidents in Egypt and Yemen.

"We are afraid that the region may descend into chaos, which is essentially what is happening already," he said in comments broadcast on state television from his summer residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Scientists have discovered well-preserved frozen woolly mammoth fragments deep in Siberia that may contain living cells, edging a tad closer to the "Jurassic Park" possibility of cloning a prehistoric animal, the mission's organizer said Tuesday.

Russia's North-Eastern Federal University said an international team of researchers had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow some 328 feet (100 meters) underground during a summer expedition in the northeastern province of Yakutia.

Ten people died and four were injured Wednesday after a small plane crashed in far-eastern Russia, an emergency ministry official told Agence France Presse.

The An-28 passenger plane made a hard emergency landing in the far-flung Kamchatka region of Russia after noon local time (midnight GMT), said a spokeswoman with the far-eastern branch of the emergency ministry.

Fourteen workers were killed when a building in the Moscow region caught fire Tuesday, Russia's Emergency Ministry said, adding that the victims could be Vietnamese migrant workers.

The three-story building in the town of Yegoryevsk, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Moscow, is a former factory, a spokesman for the ministry told AFP. At lead one person was hospitalized with injuries, he added.

An influential lawmaker known for criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin was Monday on the verge of being expelled from parliament after a panel agreed a vote should be held on his ouster.

A parliamentary commission reviewed documents provided by investigators regarding the business interests of Gennady Gudkov, deputy head of the Just Russia party, deciding that Gudkov broke the law by combining work in business and public service.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday a new U.N. resolution on Syria would be pointless if it had "no teeth,” as President Bashar Assad would ignore it.

On a visit to Russia, Clinton said she was willing to work with Moscow on a new U.N. resolution on Syria but warned that the United States would step up support to end Assad's regime if the measure did not carry consequences.

A Russian Mi-35 army helicopter crashed Saturday in the volatile Caucasus state of Dagestan, killing three people, the Ria Novosti news agency reported, citing a defense ministry official.

The helicopter slammed into the mountains around 2:30 pm (10:30GMT), killing all the crew on board, the defense official, Igor Konashenkov, said.

Georgia on Saturday said it has detained a Russian militant fighter, one of the remnants of an armed gang that recently clashed with security forces near the enemy states' border leaving 14 dead.

"The Georgian interior ministry has detained one of the members of the armed group in the Lopota Gorge, Akhmet Chataev, a citizen of the Russian Federation from the North Caucasus," the ministry said in a statement.