Main News of March 01

WORLD

* An autopsy and medical examiner’s report on the cause of death for a 3-year-old Russian boy who died at the home of his adoptive parents in Texas on January 21 has been completed, Ector County Sheriff Mark Donaldson said

RUSSIA

* The presidents of Russia and the United States tasked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry with working out new initiatives to resolve the ongoing conflict in Syria, the Kremlin said in a statement

* President Vladimir Putin laid flowers at a memorial in western Russia to 84 soldiers killed in Chechnya on March 1, 2000

* A resolution adopted by the Friends of Syria Group in Rome on Thursday encourages extremists there to seize power by force, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said

* Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted a bill to parliament that would significantly revise current parliamentary electoral procedures, the Kremlin said

* Self-exiled former Bank of Moscow chief executive Andrei Borodin has been granted political asylum in Britain, his lawyer said

* Texas authorities investigating the Jan. 21 death of 3-year-old Russian adoptee Max Shatto adamantly denied statements made Thursday by Russia’s child rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov, claiming a Texas social worker said the boy’s adopted mother is responsible for his death

SCIENCE

* US private company SpaceX launched its Dragon space freighter on a second resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), but the capsule experienced an issue with its thruster pods, NASA and SpaceX reported

* Russia began designing a new launch pad for the Amur heavy carrier rocket at the Vostochny Space Center that is currently under construction in the Amur Region in the country’s Far East, the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) reported

DEFENSE

* In the first two months of 2013, Russia sold over $2.5 billion worth of weapons to other countries, the head of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation said

CRIME

* Lt. Gen. Valery Ivanov, deputy chief of Russia's Aerospace Defense Forces (VKO), has been suspended from office on suspicion of causing the state an estimated $1 billion in damage by organizing an illegal dumpsite in the Moscow Region, a military legal source said

BUSINESS

* British oil major BP’s CEO Robert Dudley has been nominated for the Board of Directors of Russia’s state-run oil major Rosneft as a state representative, according to a government decree