RUSSIA
* Russia urged NATO to stop targeting civilian objects in Libya, amid reports that a NATO airstrike on the capital of Tripoli hit buildings in Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s compound
* Investigators have requested a Russian court to issue a formal arrest warrant for five suspected kidnappers of the son of Russian software tycoon Yevgeny Kaspersky, Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said
* A 39-year-old Russian man has been detained on suspicion of planting bombs near the Dom-2 reality television show’s set outside Moscow, leaving one security guard injured from an ensuing blast, a law enforcement source in Novokuznetsk said
* A Moscow Regional court has thrown out a lawsuit lodged by a young woman badly injured in a car crash on January 19 involving presidential envoy Garry Minkh
WORLD
* Syrian security forces entered the southern town of Daraa and opened fire, killing at least five protesters, Al Jazeera television reported
* Thailand and Cambodia are amassing armor and heavy artillery along their common border raising fears that a long-running territorial dispute could escalate into a full-scale war, local media reported
* The United Nations plans to launch several programs aimed at fighting drug trafficking in Afghanistan and neighboring states by the end of 2011, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said
* Iran’s civil defense chief said the country had been hit by its second cyber attack in the past eight months, the Mehr news agency reported
* Two people were killed when a Russian fighter crashed to the east of Paris, French Radio Europe 1 reported
* A Kazakh UNESCO official was restrained by the crew on a flight from Paris to Rome after he threatened a female flight attendant with a knife and demanded that the plane be diverted to the Libyan capital of Tripoli
* Some 500 inmates made a mass prison break via a hand-dug tunnel from a penitentiary in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, regional deputy police chief Nasrallah Yusufzai said
BUSINESS
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed granting benefits to employers who hire people with disabilities
* Russia’s largest private oil company LUKoil and state-run oil mammoth Rosneft are to create the first consortium of local companies to develop maritime shelves, a verbatim report of a meeting between LUKoil President Vagit Alekperov and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said
* HSBC Holdings, Europe’s largest bank, said on Monday it planned to close its retail business in Russia to focus on servicing corporate clients, just two years after starting in the sector
* Russia’s Audit Chamber will sue former Bank of Moscow President Andrei Borodin, who is currently in London, for $1 billion, Chairman Sergei Stepashin said