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News summary for November 20

Main news of the day

PHNOM PENH — Russia and the United States still have disagreements concerning the future of adopted children from Russia in America, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after the talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

 

PHNOM PENH — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have discussed business problems in the two countries. “We confirmed our proposals to lift barriers for businesses, in particular, our president’s proposal to create a mechanism for assessing investment problems that Russia’s business people are facing the United States and U.S. representatives can see in Russia,” he said after the talks in Cambodia’s capital on Tuesday.

 

PHNOM PENH — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday he personally warned U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Russia will give an adequate response to the Magnitsky law.

 

PHNOM PENH — Russia and the United States agreed “in every possible way to support efforts of Egypt and other countries to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after the talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

 

PHNOM PENH — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has confirmed U.S. President Barack Obama’s intention to search for compromise agreements on missile defence, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after the talks with Clinton in Cambodia’s capital on Tuesday.

 

PHNOM PENH — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has confirmed U.S. President Barack Obama is invited to visit Russia. “Our leaders had not a few opportunities to meet on the sidelines of international meetings – the G8 summit in Great Britain and the G20 summit in St. Petersburg,” Lavrov said after the talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

 

PHNOM PENH — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted the importance of Russia's participation in integration within the framework of the Asian-Pacific Region /APR/, both for modernization of the country in general and for the development of Siberia and the Far East.

 

RIGA — Andris Spruds, the director of the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, was denied a visa to St Petersburg to attend an international conference on Russia-EU relations. The Latvian Foreign Ministry received the confirmation from the Russian Foreign Ministry that Spruds was on the list of persons denied the entry to Russia, says the official statement of the Latvian Foreign Ministry circulated here on Tuesday.

 

MOSCOW — The issue of the prospects for the shale gas extraction in Russia will be resolved in 7-10 years, President of the Russian Gas Society Valery Yazev said at a briefing within the international forum Gas of Russia 2012.

 

MOSCOW — Russia is increasing uranium mining. “The volume of natural uranium mining over the first 9 months of 2012 at ARMZ enterprises in Russia and Kazakhstan has amounted to 5,358 tonnes - 106.6 percent against the production volume during the same period last year,” the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom told Itar-Tass.

 

MOSCOW— Russia’s gas giant Gazprom still has no plans to start legal proceedings against Ukraine, which cut gas imports under the effective contract, Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on the sidelines of the forum Gas of Russia 2012.

 

NOVOVORONEZH — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on arrival in the Voronezh Region has visited the observation deck of the Novovoronezh NPP-2 nuclear power plant that is currently under construction.

 

NOVOVORONEZH — Russia’s state-run nuclear corporation Rosatom plans to increase tenfold its expenses on research and development, Rosaton director general Sergei Kiriyenko said on Tuesday at a meeting of the presidential council on economic modernization and innovation development.

 

NOVOVORONEZH — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday he was satisfied with the current level of research and development in Russia’s nuclear sector.

 

NOVOVORONEZH — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday visited the Novovoronezh nuclear power plant where he observed the training of operators, and then at the exhibition of new technology has undergone a test, which had shown that the prime minister did not hold explosives.

 

NOVOVORONEZH — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has instructed to continue development of super computers. At a meeting of the Presidium of the Presidential Council on modernization of the economy and innovational development on Tuesday Rosatom Chief Sergei Kiriyenko asked the prime minister to issue instructions on the development of super computers."I will be sorry if the project is dropped," Kiriyenko said.

 

VIENNA — Russia thinks it important to see to it that the authority in the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is passed over to its new director general smoothly, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Tuesday.

 

PRETORIA — Combined nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of the dynamically developing economies of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is estimated at 13.7 trillion U.S. dollars, which accounts for about a fourth of global GDP, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told a briefing on Tuesday.

 

BAKY — Milli Majlis (parliament) of Azerbaijan has ratified a package of documents for the project aimed at the construction of the Trans-Anatolian (TANAP) gas pipeline. This gas trunk line, which will run from Turkey’s eastern to western borders, will become an important segment of the export infrastructure for the transportation of Azerbaijan’s natural gas to Europe.

 

TOKYO — Large and specific investment projects are in the focus of the tenth meeting of the Russian-Japanese intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation that is ongoing in Tokyo on Tuesday.

 

MINSK — Belarus is not satisfied with Russia’s oil supplies plans to the country for 2013, Belarusian Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovich said on Tuesday.

 

CHISINAU — A Moldovan lawmaker on Tuesday demanded that criminal proceedings be initiated over the incident at a vocational training school in the town of Beltsy, where a teacher insulted Russian-speaking students, calling them "occupants" and demanding that they "get out of Moldova."

 

MOSCOW — President Putin has sent a message of condolences to the relatives of famous science-fiction writer Boris Strugatsky in connection with the writer's death, the Kremlin press service said on Tuesday.

 

MOSCOW — The Russian Interior Ministry has declared that it is conducting no investigation against the Rostelecom company directly. The Russian Interior Ministry has been conducting an investigation against concrete citizens on the matter connected with allegedly illegal appropriation of credit funds from one of the bank structures, the press service of the Interior Ministry said.

 

MOSCOW — The Interior Ministry rejected the accusations by the Investigative Committee (SK) of inappropriateness of comments on the investigation into the case against Oboronservis officials. It said it would continue to comprehensively report on its work. "As for correctness and authenticity of the information provided by police to the mass media, who better than the detectives who directly obtained, checked and documented the information about the wrongdoers' illegal activity can evaluate the expediency of its coverage in the mass media," an Interior Ministry official said.

 

MOSCOW — Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich will represent Russia’s application to host the World Expo 2020 international exhibition in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in Paris on November 22. The presentation will take place within the framework of the 152d General Assembly of the International Exhibitions Bureau.

 

NIZHNI NOVGOROD— Russia will press for an intergovernmental agreement with Finland to protect the rights of Russian children, Children’s Rights Commissioner, Pavel Astakhov, told the national forum called The Sanctity of Motherhood in Nizhny Novgorod on Tuesday.

 

TOKYO — Russia and Japan have agreed to set up a working group on the development of urban environment. The decision to this effect was reached on Tuesday at a meeting of the bilateral intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation in Tokyo.

 

MOSCOW— Russia’s Proton-M launch vehicle with a Briz-M upper stage and a U.S. telecommunications satellite EchoStar-16 has been launched from the Baikonur space ground.

 

MOSCOW — The Briz-M upper stage with an American communications satellite EchoStar-16 has undocked from the Proton-M booster. “The upper stage undocked from the booster nine minutes after the launch, at 22:40 Moscow time, and is carrying the American satellite into its dedicated orbit,” a spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.

 

BEIJING — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived in China on a visit on Tuesday. On November 21, he will take part in the 17th session of the Russian-Chinese intergovernmental military cooperation commission. "In the course of the commission's meeting, it is planned to sum up the results of Russian-Chinese military cooperation in 2012 and set the priorities for its further development," Russian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Darya Zatulina said.

 

MOSCOW — New missile systems have been simultaneously supplied to more than two missile divisions this year, for the first time in two decades. The supplies of new equipment and armaments will continue in 2013, with three more divisions to be re-equipped, commander of the Strategic Missile Forces /RVSN/ Col Gen Sergei Karakayev told reporters on Tuesday.

 

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY – Flights between the Kamchatka Peninsula and other parts of Russia resumed Tuesday afternoon after a day-long break caused by a heavy cyclone, a source at the air controllers service of the airport of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky told Itar-Tass Tuesday.

 

MAKHACHKALA — One policeman was killed and another one was wounded in a special operation in Dagestan’s Karabudakhkentsky district on Tuesday. “A group of militants, which was blocked in a private house in the village of Gubden at 04:30 Moscow time, refused to lay down arms and opened fire at law enforcers,” an official at the republic’s investigative committee told Itar-Tass.

 

MAKHACHKALA — The ringleader of the Gubdenskaya terrorist group, 43-year-old Taimas Taimasov has been killed during a security sweep conducted in the village of Gubden, the Karabudakhkentsky district on Tuesday morning, a source from the Dagestan Interior department told Itar-Tass.

 

TVER — A jury at the Tver region court on Tuesday found former head of the Konakovo district Viktor Krysov and his deputy Vitaly Osipov guilty of attempted taking of a 45-million-rouble bribe. All the 12 jurors said the defendants did not deserve clemency.

 

MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee /SK/ called the statements by the Interior Ministry regarding the Oboronservis case "inappropriate spin". "Due to numerous publications and comments by police officials on the crimes committed by executives of the Oboronservis holding and by a number of directors of commercial bodies, related to the activity of the Defense Ministry, the Investigative Committee explains that these criminal cases are being handled by the SK's main military investigation department," an SK official said.

 

MOSCOW — Moscow's Zamoskvorechye court on Tuesday began preliminary hearings over the statement by city prosecutors demanding that the video of the notorious Pussy Riot pank prayer in the Christ the Savior Church be recognized as extremist.

 

ULAN-UDE — The Zabaikalye Territory court on Tuesday sentenced former director of the regional department of the Emergency Situations Ministry /EMERCOM/ Maj-Gen Vyacheslav Korolkov to four years in prison a 5.8-million-rouble fine for bribery.

 

MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee /SK/ is looking for the persons from the Emergency Situations Ministry /EMERCOM/ who took bribes from the former director of the Ministry's branch in the Zabaikalye Territory.

 

YEKATERINBURG — The Investigative Committee finished the probe into the criminal case against head of the police department of the town of Verkhnyaya Pyshma Col Marat Khalimov, accused of negligence that resulted in disturbances in Sagra, SK Sverdlovsk region department spokesman Alexander Shulga told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.

 

ROSTOV-ON-DON — The Federal Security Service exposed the use of inferior quality parts at a company in the Rostov region in manufacturing products for the state defense order, the regional FSB department told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.

 

MOSCOW — About 700 million roubles have been seized by police investigating into large-scale theft of federal money under a state contract with Russia’s defence ministry, the press service of the Russian interior ministry reported on Tuesday.

 

MOSCOW — Moscow’s riot police detained more than 60 football fan of the Locomotive team who sought to provoke a mass brawl with Spartak fans near the Luzhniki stadium late on Tuesday, according to an Itar-Tass correspondent.