Main news of August 22

RUSSIA

* Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the military had completed the withdrawal of troops from Georgia as stipulated in a peace deal brokered by the French president last week

* A Siberian court has denied parole to Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year term for fraud and tax evasion

* Russia's Mirazh guided missile corvette returned to its Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol, which Russia rents from Ukraine, after patrolling waters off the Georgian coast

* Pirates have seized a vessel in Somalia with two Russian nationals among crewmembers, the International Maritime Bureau said

* Sulim Yamadayev has been officially dismissed from his post as commander of the Defense Ministry's Vostok battalion in Chechnya, a military source said

WORLD

* Georgia is preparing for military action in its breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian military's general staff warned

* The United States has refused to participate with Russia in NATO's Operation Active Endeavour naval antiterrorism exercise, a source in the Russian Black Sea Fleet said

* About 50 protesters gathered in the Crimean capital of Simferopol, urging Russia to pull out of a friendship agreement with Ukraine and to make a territorial claim on the peninsula

* The joint Rubezh-2008 command-and-staff exercises of the Collective Security Treaty Organization finished in Armenia

* Ukraine's opposition party has pledged to send 365 neckties to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was recently caught on camera nervously chewing his garment while discussing the Georgian-Russian conflict

* Pakistan's electoral commission announced that presidential elections to find a successor for Pervez Musharraf are to take place on September 6

* Georgia's recent military operations in South Ossetia caused some 100 billion rubles ($4.1 billion) in damage, according to the breakaway republic's preliminary estimates

* The Nuclear Suppliers Group has failed to lift a 34-year-long ban on nuclear trade with India, delaying a U.S.-sponsored deal on civil nuclear cooperation, Indian NDTV reported

BUSINESS

* A mining subsidiary of Severstal is seeking to buy the business of U.S. PBS Coals Corporation (PBS) for $1.3 billion, the Russian steel producer said in a statement

* Russia's three largest cell phone operators have struck a deal with Apple which could see the U.S. company's hugely popular iPhone 3G go on sale in Russia in October, a business daily said

SPORT

* Russian athletes stormed home to win the women's 4x100 meters relay and take Russia's 17th gold at the Beijing Olympics

* Steve Hooker won Australia's 12th gold medal of the Beijing Olympics in the men's pole vault competition, leaving Russia's Yevgeniy Lukyanenko with silver

* Russia's Tatyana Lebedeva leapt to silver in the women's long jump at the Olympics in Beijing

* Russian boxer Georgy Balakshin won an Olympic bronze medal in the 51 kg flyweight category after losing in a semifinal bout to Cuba's Andris Laffita Hernandez

* Russian athlete Denis Nizhegorodov took a bronze medal  in the men's 50km walk at the Beijing Olympics with a time of 3 hours 40.14 minutes