Main news of August 19

RUSSIA

* Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that NATO had taken Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili under its protection

* Russia and Georgia have carried out a prisoner exchange near Georgia's capital Tbilisi, a day after a similar deal failed to go ahead, the Russian Defense Ministry said

* Russia said it will not participate in the NATO-led Open Spirit 2008 naval exercise in the Baltic Sea, and will refuse to receive a U.S. warship in the Far East port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky

* Georgian troops are not implementing President Mikheil Saakashvili's orders on their withdrawal from the South Ossetian conflict zone, said Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian General Staff

* Russia is boosting security measures, mostly in its southern areas, over reports that Georgian special forces may be plotting terrorist acts, the head of Russia's anti-terror committee said

* Russia condemned two major terrorist attacks in Algeria, which left at least 55 people dead and about 45 wounded

* A Proton-M carrier rocket, launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, has successfully orbited an Inmarsat-4 (I-4) satellite, a spokesman for Russia's space agency said

* Atomstroyexport, a Russian nuclear power construction company, said it had completed repairs on the concrete and steel shell encasing the Chernobyl reactor one month ahead of schedule

WORLD

* NATO foreign ministers said that the alliance is freezing contacts with Russia until it pulls its troops out of Georgia, but stopped short of harsh measures against Moscow

* Germany has decided to double its humanitarian aid to Georgia following the recent conflict to 2 million euros, the German foreign minister said

* At least 43 people were killed and 38 wounded in a major terrorist attack in Algeria, the official APS agency reported, citing Algeria's Interior Ministry

* The CIS Executive Committee has received a note from Georgia on its intention to pull out of the organization, a spokesperson for the alliance of former Soviet states said

* Georgia has barred broadcasts by the Russian-language RTVi television channel, a Russian radio station said

* The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) decided to immediately send 20 unarmed military observers to Georgia's buffer zone near the border with South Ossetia

* Habib Miyan, India's oldest man, died in Jaipur at the age of 130, the Sahara Samay TV channel said

* On Day 11 of the Beijing Olympics Russia took gold and bronze in the men's high jump, gold and bronze in the men's freestyle wrestling, silver in the men's over 105 kg weightlifting event and bronze in the men's Madison event

BUSINESS

* Mining giant Mechel will be fined 790 million rubles ($32 million), or 5% of its annual turnover, for violations of anti-competition laws, the Russian antimonopoly regulator said

* Russia's oil exports declined 5.2% year-on-year in January-June to 122.5 million metric tons (897 million barrels), the country's top statistics body said