Main News of October 9

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

*France's Serge Haroche and American David Wineland have won the Nobel Prize for physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

*Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez on his re-election as president for a fourth term.

*The North Korean military said that the US mainland was within the strike range of its strategic missile forces, Xinhua reported citing North Korea’s official KCNA news agency.

 

RUSSIA

*Residents were evacuated after munitions at a military ammunition disposal site exploded near the Donguz rail station in Russia’s Orenburg region, the Emergencies and Civil Defense Ministry said.

 

POLITICS

*The Kremlin’s liberalization of the electoral process failed to materialize, with authorities on the ground coming up with new methods of meddling with the vote, an independent watchdog said.

*Russia hopes the new Georgian government will improve its relations with its neighbors, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but any talks on changing their status are out of the question, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

 

BUSINESS

*The International Monetary Fund has lowered its forecast for Russia’s 2012-2013 GDP growth outlook by 0.3 and 0.1 percentage points respectively, compared with July estimates.

*The Iraqi government has approved a contract worth at least $100 million for Russian oil producer LUKoil and its partner Japan’s Impex Corp. to explore and produce oil at bloc 10 in southern Iraq, LUKoil said.

*MegaFon, one of Russia’s top three mobile firm operators, intends to hold an initial public offering (IPO) in Moscow and London in the fourth quarter of this year, MegaFon said, in a flotation which could be worth up to $4 billion.

 

DEFENSE

*Russia will deliver attack helicopters and mobile air-defense systems to Iraq in arms deals worth $4.2 billion signed earlier this year, it was disclosed during a visit to Moscow by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in which he met his counterpart Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.