Main news of December 3

RUSSIA

* A national “day of silence” kicked off at midnight on Saturday in Russia prior to parliamentary elections on December 4

* Russia will start building modernized Borey-A class strategic nuclear-powered submarines in 2012, the Sevmash shipyard said

* President Dmitry Medvedev urged government agencies to work out a way to punish foreigners for violent treatment of adopted Russian children in the wake of recent acquittal rulings in the United States

* Moscow airport customs confiscated a laptop from the leader of the Golos independent election monitoring group accused of violations ahead of the Sunday parliamentary polls

WORLD

* The White House expressed concern over the political pressure on Russia’s independent election monitoring group Golos ahead of Sunday general election

* The UN Security Council has extended the mandate of the UN support mission in Libya where the new government is facing a post-war proliferation of weapons

* South Ossetia:

– Supporters of former presidential candidate Alla Dzhioyeva demanded incumbent leader Eduard Kokoity’s immediate resignation

Supporters of Dzhioyeva want to inaugurate the politician as president on December 10, spokesman for Dzhioyeva’s staff said

Thousands of opposition protesters in the partly recognized South Ossetian republic refused to leave the square to cast their votes in the Russian parliamentary elections due on Sunday

* Syrian diplomats dismissed a new resolution of the UN human rights watchdog as unfair and blatantly politicized, the Foreign Ministry said

*A Pennsylvania court sentenced U.S. businessman and patron of arts Kenneth Schneider to 15 years in jail for having intimate relations with a Russian teenaged ballet dancer, NBC said

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