Main news of August 21

RUSSIA

* Russia's Defense Ministry has temporarily suspended military cooperation with NATO ahead of a political decision being made, the Russian envoy to the alliance Dmitry Rogozin said

* Russia is ready to supply Syria with defensive weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said following a meeting between the two countries leaders in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi

* Georgia has lost the right to conduct peacekeeping operations in its breakaway republic of South Ossetia, said Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian military's general staff

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the country's future ties with NATO depend on how the Western military alliance chooses to act

* Russia proposed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution on ensuring peace in Georgia as an alternative to a Western-backed version it rejected on August 19

* Russia is continuing to pull back its troops from the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict zone, a Russian Defense Ministry source said

* A regional court in Chita, East Siberia, adjourned a parole hearing for Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, currently serving an eight-year term for fraud and tax evasion, until Friday

WORLD

* Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia sent official appeals to Russia's president and parliament to recognize their independence

* Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko said Russia should start preparing to withdraw its Black Sea Fleet from the Sevastopol base, which it rents in Ukraine's Crimea

* Ukraine's Defense Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov signed instructions to implement an earlier presidential decree complicating the rules of deployment for Russia's Black Sea fleet

* Almost 18,000 refugees have returned to South Ossetia from Russia over the last nine days, Russia's emergencies ministry said

* British pedophile rocker Garry Glitter is soon to be thrown out of Thailand again, leaving him in international limbo after a failed attempt to enter Hong Kong, the Foreign Office said

* Ukraine's security service has been given presidential instructions to check the government - right up to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko - for any activity that could "harm the country's national interests," the UNIAN news agency reported

* NATO is to help Georgia rebuild its defensive capability, the military alliance's regional representative said

* Georgian border guards permitted some 300 Russian citizens to cross the border and enter Russia, a spokesman for the Russian Border Guard Service in North Ossetia said

* A requiem concert given by the Mariinsky Theatre led by the renowned Ossetian-born Russian conductor Valery Gergiev was held in South Ossetia's war-torn capital

SPORT

* Russia's Olga Kaniskina won Russia's 14th gold medal of the Beijing Olympics in the women's 20 km walk

* Defending Olympic champion Andrei Moiseev won Russia's 16th gold medal in the modern pentathlon on day 13 of the Beijing Olympics

* Russia's Maria Abakumova had to settle for a silver medal in the women's javelin competition at the Beijing Olympics

* Russia and Holland drew 1-1 in Moscow on Wednesday evening in a keenly fought friendly encounter that came just two months after Russia knocked the Dutch out of Euro 2008

* Russian wrestlers enjoyed mixed success in their freestyle weight categories winning gold, silver and bronze at the Beijing Olympics