Main News of September 26

WORLD

* Egypt speaks against the use of military force to settle the crisis in Syria, President Mohamed Morsi said as he was speaking at the UN General Assembly

* Egypt has decided to tighten security measures in the north of its Sinai Peninsula over fears of terrorist attacks after upholding death sentences for Islamist militants

* U.S. Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who recently branded Russia as America’s number one geopolitical enemy, invested in the shares of Russian firms in 2011 through his equity fund, according to his and his wife’s tax returns, international media reported

RUSSIA

* Russian investigators brought charges of public disorder and battery against billionaire businessman and Kremlin critic Alexander Lebedev in a case that could see him face up to five years behind bar

* A Russian Morality Coalition protested the European Parliament’s decision to nominate three jailed members of the punk group Pussy Riot for the Andrei Sakharov human rights award

* President Vladimir Putin criticized as unacceptable attempts to use force in circumvention of the UN Charter

* Russian President Vladimir Putin urged tough resistance to religious extremism in Syria, Libya and other countries, but also called for respecting people’s religious sentiments

* The Russian Supreme Court upheld the 15-year sentence handed down to Igor Sutyagin, a former disarmament researcher, who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the USA in 2004 but later pardoned

DEFENSE

* Russian Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Viktor Bondarev banned all training exercises over motorways at super low altitudes

BUSINESS

* The U.S. biotechnology company at the heart of a study purportedly linking genetically engineered corn to tumors in lab rats says the study is not credible and Russia’s decision to suspend imports of the corn will have little impact on its sales

POLITICS

* Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his backers have unleashed an unprecedented drive to portray President Barack Obama as a shaky supporter of Israel, but the campaign shows few signs of swaying significant numbers of Jewish voters this November

* U.S. President Barack Obama has expanded his lead over Republican rival Mitt Romney in the race for the White House by as much as 12 percent in three critical “battleground” states, according to a new poll

* The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, approved the second Sunday of September as Election Day in Russia

SPORTS

* Maria Sharapova defeated Lucie Safarova of Czech Republic to reach the quarterfinals of the Japan Open

SCIENCE

* An undocking of Europe’s ATV-3 unmanned resupply spacecraft from the International Space Station (ISS) has been postponed for at least another day, a spokesman for the Mission Control said