RUSSIA
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met with Danish Queen Margrethe II, who paid her second official visit to Moscow since 1975
* A Russian Mikoyan MiG-31 fighter jet crashed in the Urals on Tuesday, killing both pilots, officials said
* Relatives of the late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky requested that the tax evasion case against him prior to his death in a pre-trial detention center be dropped
WORLD
* Japan’s trade minister said all of the country’s nuclear reactors would be shut down, following the recent nuclear crisis at Fukushima
* Al-Qaeda’s North African branch has acquired weapons in Libya, EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove said at a news conference
BUSINESS
* Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin launched the Nord Stream pipeline, designed to bring Russian natural gas to Germany via the bed of the Baltic Sea and to avoid shipments through central Europe
* Russia’s top mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) saw second quarter 2011 net profit increase 2.6 percent year-on-year to $367 million to US GAAP, the company said in a statement
* Russia’s largest bank, state-run Sberbank, and the owner of a mid-sized lender bought Inteco, the real estate firm of the wife of Yury Luzhkov, the former Moscow mayor whom President Dmitry Medvedev fired last fall over a lack of trust, Sberbank said
* Electricite de France (EDF) and Germany’s Wintershall will each get 15 percent and Italy’s Eni will obtain 20 percent in Russia’s $21.5-billion South Stream project, intended to deliver Central Asian and Russian natural gas to Europe under the Black Sea, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said
SPORTS
* Ireland survived a fierce Russian onslaught in Moscow on Tuesday to salvage a point in their Euro 2012 qualifier