Main News of August 6

Roundup of what has happened over the last 24 hours

RUSSIA

* Four people were killed in a an apparent suicide bombing in the Chechen capital of Grozny around 1 p.m. on August 6, according to Russia's Interior Ministry

* One of the three Pussy Riot punk band members on trial in a Moscow court on charges of hooliganism said on Monday that the accusation against them was absurd and illegal

* Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny found a listening device in his office of the RosPil fund, which campaigns to expose corruption inside the Russian government, Navalny wrote on Twitter

* Russian state oil major Rosneft and American energy giant ExxonMobil have set up a tender for the design and construction of oil rigs that would facilitate their exploration of the Arctic shelf, Rosneft said in a statement

* The Russian ruble and stocks continued their rally on Monday as Europe’s stimulus expectations and strong U.S. labor data pushed up world oil prices and increased investor appetite for risk, traders said

WORLD

* Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab emerged in Jordan on Monday, saying he had defected from the Assad regime in Damascus and joined the opposition, his spokesman Muhammad el-Etri told Al Jazeera

* The Syrian television and radio building in Damascus has been rocked by a powerful bomb blast, local television reported

* The Iranian foreign ministry denied on Monday that the 48 Iranians kidnapped in Syria on Saturday were members of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Arab-language Al-Alam TV said

* Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi said that Egypt remains a stable and safe destination for tourists, despite the revolution in 2011 that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak

* Armenia’s flagship air carrier Armavia had returned its Superjet-100 (SSJ-100) medium-haul aircraft to the manufacturer, for which it was the launch customer

* Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will take part in the meeting of the 57-member pan-Muslim Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which will be focused on the Syrian conflict among other topics, Iran's Mehr news agency reported

* A possible Russian citizen detained in Spain last week on suspicion of belonging to al-Qaeda has been identified as one of the terrorist group’s 15 leaders in Europe, according to Spanish media reports

SPORTS

* Russia's Aliya Mustafina became the Olympic champion in women's uneven bars

* American judoka Nicholas Delpopolo has been disqualified from the London Olympics after testing positive for cannabis, the International Olympic Committee said