Main News of July 3

A roundup of what has happened over the past 24 hours

WORLD

*Pakistan is reopening NATO supply lines to Afghanistan following an unprecedented official U.S. apology for the accidental killing of Pakistani troops last year.

*Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said he regretted "100 percent" that a Turkish warplane was shot down by Syrian forces.

*Russia is against any misinterpretation of the results of a recent international conference on Syria, which approved a new a peace plan to end the bloodshed in the war-torn country, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

*The Ukrainian parliament approved in the final reading a bill significantly enhancing the status of the Russian language in the country.

 

RUSSIA

*A Russian version of Hollywood - Kolliwood - may soon be opened on a 3.5-hectare lot in Kolomna, a town outside Moscow, Kommersant daily reported.

*Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Russia's Far East Kuril Islands, some 18 months after his visit to the disputed territory sparked a diplomatic row between Moscow and Tokyo.

 

BUSINESS

*Russia's newly integrated MICEX- RTS stock exchange is to be officially renamed "Moscow Exchange", the stock exchange said.

 

STRANGE BUT TRUE

*Highlighting the dangers of improper hygiene, a man in Russia’s Stavropol region was killed and dismembered by his wife for refusing to take a shower, local investigators said.

*An allegedly drunken lecturer in central Russia forced students to sit an exam for 23 hours, and even forbade them to leave the examination hall to use the toilet, national media said.

*A woman in Kursk region in southern Russia has paid a ransom to free her son from frauds posing as policemen – forgetting she never had male offspring.