WORLD
*The U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a new defense strategy that seeks to cut the country’s armed forces as a part of major cuts to the U.S. defense budget by almost $500 billion, RIA Novosti reported
*At least 68 people are reported to have been killed in Thursday’s suicide attacks targeting several Iraqi cities, the BBC reported
*Egypt’s Prosecutors General’s Office demanded a death sentence for the Egyptian ex-president, Hosni Mubarak, the country’s former interior minister and six other defendants, Egyptian state news agency, MENA reported
*Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev during a telephone conversation that Tehran backed Moscow’s diplomatic efforts to settle the dispute over Iranian nuclear program, the Kremlin said
*Syrian authorities freed 552 people arrested during anti-government protests, the national TV channel Syria reported
*A Kharkov court banned any protests on the steps of the penal colony where Ukraine’s ex Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is serving her 7-year sentence
RUSSIA
*Russian Interior Ministry’s experts, who examined video clips, appearing to expose ballot-stuffing at the December’s parliamentary elections, has found layouts what could mean the clips had been edited, the head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov said
*Activist who took part in the recent opposition rallies across Russia should set up coordination centers for better dialogue with the authorities, Left Front opposition movement leader Sergei Udaltsov told Ekho Moskvy radio
*A team of Russian conservation experts have launched a probe into the death of a rare Amur leopard, one of only an estimated 40 left in the wild, in a natural reserve in the country’s Primorye Territory, a spokesman for the Russian Academy of Sciences’ wildlife study project said
*Russia won the 4×6-kilometer women’s relay at the biathlon World Cup in Germany’s Oberhof