Main News of November 1

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

*Tbilisi is restarting its ties with Moscow “from a clean slate” but the restoration of diplomatic relations will be linked to the issue of the country’s territorial integrity, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili said.

*As the northeastern US began a massive recovery and cleanup effort following Hurricane Sandy, President Barack Obama got a firsthand look at the destruction during a tour of storm-ravaged New Jersey that showed demolished homes and businesses stretching as far as the eye could see.

*One of the biggest issues in the 2012 US presidential campaign has been defense spending, as incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney battle over how much to spend on the American military. But the sheer amount the US spends on defense is a concept foreign to the rest of the world.

 

RUSSIA

*Platon Lebedev, the jailed business partner of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, will walk free next July after an Arkhangelsk region court reduced his 13-year sentence by three years.

*The Pirate Party of Russia said it would take on the newly introduced governmental Internet blacklist by launching a web service providing access to the banned web resources.

*The ruling United Russia party’s youth wing staged a protest against Mormon missionaries, accusing them of being American spies and calling for them to leave Russia.

 

SCIENCE

*It sounds like Hollywood science-fiction. But a US man plans Sunday to ascend one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers using a bionic leg in a groundbreaking test of a new prosthetic limb that is controlled by mental impulses of the user, researchers said.