Itar-Tass Russia, CIS news summary for Wednesday, July 27=1.

28/7 Tass 2

(Two takes)

GORKI— Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed three laws, which improve the election system, the president said at a meeting with members of the election committees here on Wednesday.

GORKI— Present-day voting instruments at the 2011 parliamentary elections should be put at more than 5,000 polling stations in all Russian regions, President Dmitry Medvedev said at his meeting with members of regional election commissions on Wednesday.

GORKI — Parliamentary elections are always a serious political struggle and people’s confidence in their outcome depends on professionalism of election commissions, President Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with representatives of regional election commissions on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a law stipulating the length of the period, within which the issuance of absent voter ballot applications can be requested, as well as imposing a restriction on the number of portable ballot boxes that are taken to private houses and apartments on election days upon requests from the people with disabilities.

BAKU – Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan finds it necessary to build a unified global platform to fighting with international terrorism. As he addressed a news conference here Wednesday upon the completion of talks with Azerbaijani Prime Minister Ilham Aliyev, he said the countries should lead a struggle against terrorism together and a unified platform is needed for this.

WASHINGTON – New restrictions on the issuance of U.S. travel visas have been introduced against the Russian officials who Washington believes were guilty of the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, U.S. Department of State senior spokesman Mark Toner told a daily news briefing Wednesday.

MOSCOW — Iranian national nuclear program has reached a stage of development where it cannot be stopped, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Wednesday.

MOSCOW — Russian Secretary of State, Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said Moscow, together with the USA and the European Union, is ready to be a guarantor of the commitments by Abkhazia, Georgia and South Ossetia not to use force.

MOSCOW — Lawmakers at the State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament criticized the decision by the U.S. Department of State to introduce visa sanctions against the Russian citizens on the so-called Magnitsky list, saying the move undermines trust in Russia-US relations and threatens the course towards “resetting” in a most ridiculous way.

MOSCOW — The Russian Embassy in Damascus is holding meetings with members of the Syrian opposition, spokesman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Lukashevich said on Wednesday.

ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan arrives on Wednesday in Baku for an official visit to discuss supplies of natural gas and the situation in the region.

WASHINGTON — The United States fears that the parliamentary elections in Russia due in December will fail to meet international standards, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas O. Melia said on Tuesday at a hearing in the House of Representatives.

VILNIUS — The Russo- Lithuanian relations never pause in a practical field and are characterized by a positive dynamics, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius A·ubalis declared, commenting on bilateral contacts on a state and humanitarian level.

OMSK — Over 200 Russian and foreign industrial and agricultural enterprises are taking part in the IX Siberian Exhibition and Fair AgroOmsk 2011, which opens in the city on the Irtysh River on Wednesday.

MEXICO— Russia delivered 250 passenger buses to Nicaragua. Russia’s GAZ Group delivered the buses under the program for modernization and improvement of the public transport system in the republic. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega attended a ceremony to hand over the buses in the Nicaraguan capital on Tuesday.

MOSCOW —Raising pension age in Russia up to 65 years is inevitable, deputy of Russian Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio station.

MAKHACHKALA — The newly built exhibition center Caspian EXPO was unveiled on Wednesday in Makhachkala within the framework of the Dagestan Economic Forum.

MOSCOW — Russia intends to develop economic and nuclear cooperation with Japan, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin said on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — The Russian largest diamond production company ALROSA increased by eight percent its diamond production to 19 million carats in the first half of this year and remained the world leader in the production of these gems, the ALROSA press service reported on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — Andrei Nikitin is elected as Director General of the Agency of Strategic Initiatives, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with members of the expert council under the Agency of Strategic Initiatives here on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a federal law, “On Amendments to the Federal Law On ‘Science and State Scientific-Technical Policy’”, the Kremlin press service reported on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — The number of offences, which football fans commit, went up 50% in Russia, the chief of the main department for public order of the Interior Ministry Yuri Demidov told reporters on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — A bill that should spell out security measures during sport events should be offered for public debates, the chief of the main department for public order of the Russian Interior Ministry Yuri Demidov said on Wednesday.

LVOV — Mass celebrations on the occasion of the 67th anniversary since liberation of Lvov from Nazis have been banned in the city on Wednesday for the first time in the city’ s post-war history.

MOSCOW— City police detained a Muscovite who had laser-blinded the pilots of an aircraft landing in Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, a representative of the city police department said on Wednesday. The suspect was detained by detectives of Moscow’s western administrative district. They found a sound and lighting device in his BMW M5, which he had apparently used, the police representative said.

MOSCOW — The Federal Migration Service (FMS) reported that no classified information was in its documents, which were leaked in the Internet search engines.

MOSCOW — The Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FNPR) will not be cooperating with a number of trade unions and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) in drawing amendments to the Labor Code, FNPR leader Mikhail Shmakov said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We won’t tie in with them, it’s foolishness, and we won’t be involved,” he said in response to an Itar-Tass question. He assured that FNPR and government experts would consider proposals on the Labor Code from any group of citizens this way or another.

MOSCOW — There is no political aspect in the criminal prosecution of the Other Russia movement’s activist Taissia Osipova, an official at the press center of the Russian Interior Ministry told Itar-Tass.

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