10/7 Tass A1
MOSCOW—— The head of the State Duma’s committee on international affairs, Konstantin Kosachyov, hopes that the final wording of the bill authored by FC member Alexander Torshin, which allows for blocking decisions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), will not lead to a conflict with that judicial authority. He expressed this opinion of his in an interview on the round-the-clock news channel Russia-24.
UNITED NATIONS—— The day before the proclamation of South Sudan’s independence the UN Security Council established a new peacekeeping mission, whose purpose is to help this new African country to consolidate peace and lay the foundations of statehood for the long term.
LONDON—— Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has agreed with the estimates Russian companies will be able to draw on the world’s stock markets more than 40 billion dollars by the end of 2013. He made a statement to this effect on Friday in reply to a question from Itar-Tass at a news conference following a working visit to London.
LONDON—— The Russian government plans to privatize the second ten-percent stake in the bank VTB in 2012, Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said at a news conference at the end of his working visit to London.
BERLIN—— Former Soviet prisoner of war John (Ivan) Demjanjuk, accused of involvement in the Holocaust, is no more dangerous, as he is kept under supervision at a home for the aged and disabled, the prosecutor’s office of the southern German city of Munich said.
TUNIS—— Southern Sudan is preparing to declare its independence from the central government in Khartoum on Saturday.
KRASNODAR—— A Russian-French Transplantation Center will open in Krasnodar in the near future soon.
“The governor of Kuban, Alexander Tkachyov, discussed this important theme at a meeting with French Minister of Health, Nora Berra, in Moscow,” the governor’s press-service told Itar-Tass .
LONDON—— Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin held a series of events on the economic agenda of Russian-British relations in London on Friday. He met with his British counterpart, George Osborne, co-chairman of the Russian-British intergovernmental committee on trade and investment, UK Secretary of State for Business Vince Cable, as well as Lord Mayor of the City of London Michael Baer and representatives of British businesses. At a news conference at the official residence of the Lord Mayor Kudrin said he was pleased with the outcome of the meetings.
KHABAROVSK— Neither of the 23 Russian tourists who were hurt in a traffic accident in China on Friday are in hospital, all have safely arrived in the city of Heihe near the border with Russia’s Amur region.
ASHGABAT— Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said on Friday the country should begin getting ready for the presidential elections in 2012.
MAKHACHLAKA— A secondary school director has been killed in the village of Sovetskoye in Russia’s North Caucasian republic of Dagestan, a source in the republican interior ministry told Itar-Tass on Saturday.
KHABAROVSK— Wildfire area in Russia’s Far East has increased up to 261 hectares in the past 24 hours, a spokesman for the local forestry department told Itar-Tass on Saturday.
MAKHACHKALA— A criminal case has been opened over the murder of a secondary school director in the village of Sovetskoye in Russia’s North Caucasian republic of Dagestan, a source in the republican interior ministry told Itar-Tass on Saturday.
ASHGABAT—— Turkmenistan raises wages, retirement benefits, scholarships and other state allowances by 10 percent from January 1, 2012, according to a decree signed by Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, local media reported on Saturday.
ASHGABAT— A criminal gang of banking officials has been exposed in Turkmenistan, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said at a government meeting on Friday and dismissed the country’s deputy prime minister in charge of finance and the chairman of the Central Bank.
VLADIVOSTOK—— The Karymsky volcano on Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula has spewed ash and gas to an altitude of 3.5 kilometres above sea level, a spokesman for the Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) told Itar-Tass on Saturday.
ASHGABAT— President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has sent the country’s government to a ten-day summer vacation.
TBILISI— One of the four photo reporters, who were detained on Thursday in Georgia on espionage charges, has been released, local media reported on Saturday.
Natiya Gedenidze, a photo reported from a Tbilisi-based newspaper, was set free on Saturday morning, media reported with reference to a source close to her family.
PYONGYANG— North Korea’s Central News Agency on Saturday refuted South Korean media allegations that Pyongyang is behind drug trafficking to China.
(ITAR-TASS)