WORLD
*Kazakhstan is puzzled over its inclusion on a U.S. list that requires immigration officials to keep a special eye on its citizens as potential terrorists, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said
*President Dmitry Medvedev rejected on Thursday union leaders’ calls for a major overhaul of Russia’s Labor Code, saying improvements are often made to the document
*Hundreds of Greek taxi drivers for the fourth day are protesting against government plans to simplify licensing procedures and make them cheaper to obtain by blocking roads to airports and seaports in the country, Greek media reported
*Police detained dozens of people at a protest rally in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Wednesday, the Belarusian human rights center Vesna reported
RUSSIA
*Russia continued its domination of the synchronized swimming at the world aquatic championships in Shanghai, winning the team technical competition for its fifth gold medal
*A member of the controversial Russian art collective Voina (War) charged with flipping over a police car has been put on the international wanted list after skipping bail, it emerged in court
*An apparent explosion at a market on the outskirts of Moscow was a short circuit during welding works that injured one man, the market’s director said
*The Russian Investigation Committee said on Thursday it would investigate every lead in the killing of Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, including those proposed by her colleagues
*Platon Lebedev, the business partner and associate of jailed oil tycoon and outspoken Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, filed an appeal against his sentence
*Couples who want to adopt Russian children should undergo special training in the basics of teaching, psychology and first aid, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said
*Russia’s sanitary watchdog Rospotrebnadzor may lift a ban on imports of vegetables from nine European Union states introduced after an outbreak of highly virulent E.Coli infection, chief sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko said
*Moscow police arrested on Thursday a Russian Pension Fund official on charges of the sexual abuse of children and organizing a criminal gang involved in child prostitution, a police spokeswoman said
*Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a bill aimed at protecting children from ‘harmful’ information in all media, the Kremlin said
*A court martial in northern Russia’s Arkhangelsk has given a two-year suspended jail sentence to an Air Force officer who supervised flight operations prior to the crash of a MiG-31 interceptor in March, military investigators said