WORLD
* Michael Jackson’s personal physician Conrad Murray was sentenced in Los Angeles to four years in prison
* The Russian Embassy in London hailed the British Special Immigration Appeals Commission’s (SIAC) decision to uphold alleged Russian spy Katia Zatuliveter’s appeal against an order to deport her
* Dozens of Iranian protesters stormed the British Embassy in Tehran in protest against sanctions imposed earlier this month by Britain on the Islamic Republic over its controversial nuclear program
* South Ossetia’s Supreme Court declared null and void the outcome of the November 27 runoff presidential elections because of violations, court spokesman Atsamaz Bichenov said
* Anders Breivik, the man accused of killing 77 people in Norway last summer, is insane and can not stand trial, according to a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation announced
RUSSIA
* Russian businessman Viktor Baturin, the brother-in-law of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, was charged with attempted fraud
* Lawyers for jailed oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky filed a supervisory complaint over the second verdict of Moscow’s Khamovniki court in which he was found guilty of embezzling oil and money laundering
* Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, passed away in the United States at the age of 85
SPORTS
* The worldwide organization that represents the rights of professional football players released video footage purportedly showing the beating of a Russian football player by stadium security
DEFENSE
* The launch of a new anti-missile radar station in the Russian Baltic Sea region of Kaliningrad should be treated by the West as the “first signal” of Russia’s readiness to counter “threats” posed by NATO’s missile defense plans, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said
BUSINESS
* Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog cleared the local subsidiary of Microsoft to acquire the local division of Skype, the Internet communications company