fainted,” she said. Early estimates suggested more than 100,000 square metres of glass had been broken and 3,000 buildings hit. The total cost of the damage in the city was being valued at in excess of one billion roubles (£20m). The meteorite over Chelyabinsk arrived less than a day before asteroid 2012 DA14 was expected to make the closest pass to Earth (about 17,510 miles) of any recorded cosmic body. But experts said the two events were linked by nothing more than coincidence. Rumours and conspiracy theories, however, swirled in the first few hours after the incident. Reports on Russian state television and in local media suggested that the meteorite was engaged by local air defence units and blown apart at an altitude of more than 15 miles. The ultranationalist leader of Russia’s Liberal Democrat party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said it was not a meteorite but military action by the United States, echoing much of the speculation voiced on amateur film footage. “It’s not a meteorite falling – it’s a test of new American weapons,” Zhirinovsky said. Some were quick to take advantage of the confusion. Enterprising people were offering lumps of meteorite for sale through internet sites within a few hours of the impact. President Vladimir Putin and the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, were informed about the incident, and Putin convened a meeting with the head