Main news of October 4

WORLD

* The Nobel Prize for Physics 2011 has been awarded to U.S. and Australian cosmology researchers, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said

* At least 65 people were killed and 50 injured when a bomb went off in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, BBC reported quoting local officials

* Greece can meet its financial obligations for another six weeks, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said

* Georgia is boosting its military potential at its borders with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said

* Lithuania’s top diplomat urged Moscow on Tuesday to start considering the issue of compensation for the Soviet-era “occupation” of his country

* Energy relations between Russia and the European Union are still heavily politicized and a new gas war between Ukraine and Russia is still possible, an EU energy expert said

* A relative of Syrian opposition leader Burhan Ghalyoun has been kidnapped in the city of Homs, the Al-Rai Al-Arabi news portal said

* The Ninth U.S. Circuit Appeals Court ruled that the law on protection of personal data on the Internet also applies to foreigners’ accounts created on U.S. Internet resources

* A bill on the reform of the exchange rates monitoring system approved on Monday by the U.S. Senate will complicate the resolution of economic problems between China and the United States and could spark a trade war, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement

* Former Ukrainian Prime Minster Yulia Tymoshenko will not avoid a conviction for abuse of office, a senior official said, despite introduction of a new law banning detention for economic crimes

* The European Union has invited Kazakhstan to take part in the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline project, European Union Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said

RUSSIA

* Deputies from the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, have approved a bill stipulating chemical castration for pedophiles, in a bid to crack down on sex crime against minors

* Russia and Ukraine are currently in talks on a joint missile defense system, Space Forces commander Lt. Gen. Oleg Ostapenko said

* Former executive vice president of the Yukos oil company, Vasily Alexanyan, died in Moscow on Monday aged 39 of AIDS-caused complications, the Dozhd TV channel reported citing his relatives

* Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich paid countryman and fellow oligarch Boris Berezovsky $2 billion for his political clout in the construction of his businesses in the 1990s

* Policemen detained 24 people at an unsanctioned rally in downtown Moscow on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Moscow police said

* Launches of Rokot carrier rockets may resume in the near future, Commander of Russian Space Forces Lt. Gen. Oleg Ostapenko said

* The Russian Skating Union fired the country’s South Korean short track speed skating national team coach over alleged secretive and cruel training methods that “risked the health” of Russia’s top skaters

* Russian media tycoon Alexander Lebedev has been charged with hooliganism following a brawl with real-estate billionaire Sergei Polonsky during a TV show, the Investigative Committee said

* Russia signed an agreement on international funding for co-financing nature conservation projects operating under the Arctic Council

* A Russian nuclear submarine in which 20 people died during a 2008 sea trial will be leased to India in mid-November, a source in the Russian defense industry said

* RusLeaks founders suspended the Internet resource on Tuesday for publishing excessive personal information of Russians without their consent

* Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko has returned to his old Russian team CSKA Moscow on a three-year contract, but has left the door open to a return to the NBA if the lockout is resolved

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