Main news of August 5

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country would launch its first manned spacecraft in 2017 instead of in 2019, IRNA news agency reported

* Moscow has moved to request that Kazakhstan and Belarus suspend grain exports due to the worsening drought, the Russian government said

* Members of the Kyrgyz opposition gang who organized Thursday's mass protest in the capital Bishkek planned to assassinate all the high-ranking officials in the Kyrgyz interim government, President Roza Otunbayeva said

* Russia signed a contract with the Republic of South Africa on the delivery of enriched uranium

* Kyrgyz police refused to allow opposition leader and businessman Urmat Baryktabasov to enter the capital to join a protest, a rally organization committee representative

* South Korea has begun naval exercises in the Yellow Sea despite North Korea's threat of a "counterattack," the Yonhap news agency said

* Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is to visit South Ossetia on September 20 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the republic's declaration of independence, South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity said

* Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk offered help tackle the deadly wildfires in Central Russia

* A 7.0-magnitude quake was recorded in Papua New Guinea's New Britain region

*The Ariane 5 carrier rocket launched from the Kourou space center in French Guiana delivered its dual-satellite payload into orbit

RUSSIA

* The scorching heat and thick smog in Moscow have not reached levels that could be considered critical, the Russian capital's chief pulmonary specialist said

* Russia will temporarily ban exports of grain and grain products due to the worsening drought, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said

* Russian investigators confirmed that two militants linked to July's attack on a hydroelectric power station in the North Caucasus had been killed

* A former deputy chief of a Russian football club, also a key prosecution witness in the recent case against his ex-boss, was gunned down in downtown Moscow

* Russia's chief sanitary official Gennady Onishchenko said the start of the 2010/11 school year in Central Russia may be postponed due to disastrous environmental situation caused by raging wildfires

BUSINESS

* Russia's ROLF SCS logistics company and Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), a Scandinavian transportation services provider, are to set up a joint venture to deliver cars and spare car parts to Russia, ROLF SCS said

* The Russian government expects to raise 883 billion rubles ($29 billion) from the sale of state assets in 2011-2013 to boost investment and help bridge the budget deficit

* A Russian government foreign investment commission has approved a merger between major milk producer Unimilk and the dairy assets of France's Danone in Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine

* The Russian Economic Development Ministry has drawn up a draft plan for a new fund to help encourage investment in Russia, business daily Vedomosti reported

* The Russian government's commission for foreign investment has approved a $365 million purchase of the Dvoinoye and Vodorazdelnoye gold and silver deposits in Russia's easternmost Chukotka region by Canada's Kinross Gold Corp