Main News of August 13

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

*Syrian rebels said on Monday they had shot down a government MiG-23 fighter jet in the east of the country.

*One of the leaders of an organized crime group of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province in eastern Tajikistan, Tolib Ayembekov, and his followers have surrendered to authorities.

 

RUSSIA

*Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov has been reappointed as chief of religious affairs issues in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's cabinet.

*An activist of the Other Russia unregistered opposition movement and his wife have applied for political asylum in Ukraine, the Russian human rights group Agora said.

*Some 14,000 people have died in traffic-related accidents in Russia since the beginning of the year, according to fresh statistics from the country’s road police.

*Relations between the United States and Russia may suffer as a result of new, wide-ranging U.S. sanctions introduced against Iran, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said.

*A local court upheld on the weekend a fine slapped on a Siberian artist for painting fake “icons” in support of the arrested punk band Pussy Riot, which he plastered over his native town of Novosibirsk.

 

BUSINESS

*Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of the energy giant Gazprom, posted a half-year IFRS net profit of 78.726 billion rubles ($2.5 billion), up 0.4 percent on the same period last year, the company said.

*Czech private equity group PPF has swapped its shares in Nomos Bank for a stake in the world’s largest potassium chloride producer Uralkali in a deal with Otkritie Financial Corporation, Otkritie said.