Main news of April 9

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Former South Ossetian KGB head Leonid Tibilov has won the presidential election in the breakaway republic with 54.12 percent of the ballot with all votes finally counted, an election committee source told RIA Novosti.

* Georgia sharply criticized on Monday presidential elections held in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, which were won by a pro-Russian, former KGB head.

* Afghanistan's Anti-Corruption Network (AACN) has approved President Hamid Karzai’s proposal to set up an investigation into the near collapse last year of Kabul Bank, Pajhwok Afghan News Agency reported on Monday.

* Syrian army snipers on Monday injured three refugees who had taken shelter across the border in Turkey, Turkish NTV reported.

* A Russian guided-missile destroyer that called in the Syrian port of Tartus last week left it to carry out unspecified tasks near the country’s shores, a military-diplomatic source said on Monday.

 

RUSSIA

* Russian security services confirmed on Monday media reports that a capsule believed to contain the extremely toxic nerve agent sarin had been discovered in the country’s western Bryansk region.

* Russia has deployed a battalion of S-400 Triumph air defense missile systems at a Baltic Fleet base in the exclave of Kaliningrad, the Izvestia daily reported on Monday.

* Prosecutors have closed a criminal case against a doctor at the pre-trial detention facility where 37-year-old lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died because the charges brought against her have been decriminalized, the Russian Investigative Committee said on Monday.

* Moscow economic crime police have detained a man on charges of attempting to sell a job in the city government, the police press service reported on Monday.

* Russia’s Children’s Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov on Monday publicly defended a businessman who killed three robbers, saying Russians have the right to use any possible mean to protect themselves and their relatives.

* Russian airline UTair is to maintain flights using its ATR 72-500 aircraft, the airline said on Monday, after the national transport watchdog Rostransnadzor issued a notice the same day advising the company against operating all ATR 72 variants.

* Police officers in the Moscow region have filed a formal complaint about the ‘detention quotas’ set by their chief, a law enforcement source said on Monday.

* A working group, instructed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss the possibility of convoking a constitutional assembly to discuss amendments to Russia’s constitution, came to a conclusion that it was unnecessary, the Kremlin administration chief said on Monday.

* The Russian Orthodox Church is mobilizing supporters in the wake of recent scandals questioning its moral authority but it has lost the chance of winning over the active young urbanites that it reached out to, analysts and theologians said.

* Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday a new economic crisis in Russia may lead to regime change.

* Scores of demonstrators gathered in driving rain on Monday afternoon in downtown Moscow to protest disputed elections in a major south Russian city and lend their support to hunger strikers calling for a revote there.