Main News of October 18

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

RUSSIA

*The Russian government unanimously backed a ban on smoking in public places.

*A district court in Moscow authorized the arrest of an aide to prominent opposition figure Sergei Udaltsov on accusations of planning an anti-Kremlin coup.

*The commander of Russia’s famed Strizhi (Swifts) aerobatics team, Lt. Col. Valery Morozov, has been fired from the air force for taking bribes, a source at the Kubinka Air Show Center said.

*Wild bears have been making frequent visits to a cemetery in the historic city of Kostroma in central Russia where amputated human body parts were recently scattered, local police reported.

*Russian police have smashed a gang supplying synthetic narcotics to Russia from China and seized 80 kilograms of drugs, the Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) in the city of Perm reported.

 

WORLD

*The Turkish authorities recognize the legitimacy of the cargo seized from a Moscow-Damascus passenger plane but have a problem with its processing, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

*United Nations and Arab League special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi is to visit Damascus on Saturday in a bid to forge a truce agreement in the country during the Eid festival period, a Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.

*The microblog service Twitter has for the first time implemented a regional block on content, its chief lawyer said.

 

BUSINESS

*Russia’s largest state-owned oil company Rosneft has offered British oil major BP $28 billion in a cash and shares deal for its 50 percent stake in the TNK-BP joint venture, The Financial Times reported.

*The venerable US weekly news magazine Newsweek announced that it would cease production of its print version at the end of the year and reconfigure the publication as an exclusively digital product.

 

SPORTS

*He was the best of the best: a paragon of sports prowess, a steely emblem of personal courage, a portrait of human perseverance and triumph against the headwinds of adversity. Lance Armstrong was a larger-than-life figure of inspiration for young and old.