Main News of March 6

WORLD

* The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, ratified an agreement with Italy on the railway transit of Italian personnel, arms, ammunition and military equipment to Afghanistan via Russian territory

* The Libyan authorities should do everything possible to stop the spread of Libyan weapons in the region and beyond, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said

* Igor Sechin, President Vladimir Putin’s special representative and former deputy prime minister, will head the Russian delegation at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s funeral, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday amid concerns about the future of bilateral business ties

* Russia has invited US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey to Moscow for talks which will include the missile defense issue, his Russian counterpart General Valery Gerasimov said

* Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died after a prolonged battle with cancer, Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced on national television

RUSSIA

* A US lawmaker denied a Russian newspaper report suggesting he supports punishing Russian officials who backed Moscow’s controversial ban on US adoptions under the auspices of the Magnitsky Act

* Despite the icy relationship between the United States and Russia, which have squabbled recently over everything from Syrian aid to orphan adoptions, the two countries have formed an unlikely alliance that is leading a global fight this week to save polar bears

* The Russian Foreign Ministry denied that the 2010 maritime delimitation deal with Norway was Moscow’s “gift” to Oslo, as a number of Russian media outlets recently put it

* World leaders have been reacting to the death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, the populist figurehead of Latin American socialism whose larger-than-life personality split both international and domestic opinion, with Russian President Vladimir Putin among those praising his legacy

* A blogger from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk has asked the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to check the legality of the Chechen authorities' decision to grant French actor Gerard Depardieu an elite five-room apartment in Grozny

BUSINESS

* Neftegaz America Shelf LP, an indirect independent subsidiary of Russian state oil company Rosneft, is acquiring 30 percent interest in 20 deepwater exploration blocks in the Gulf of Mexico held by Exxon Mobil, under an agreement signed Wednesday, Rosneft's chief Igor Sechin told reporters

* China Construction Bank (CCB), China’s second largest bank by assets, has opened a subsidiary in Russia in a bid to expand its Russian business, according to materials posted on the Russian Central Bank’s website

* Russian consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has cleared 36 Georgian winemakers and four mineral water producers to resume exports to Russia, its chief Gennady Onishchenko said

DEFENSE

* Russian President Vladimir Putin said he plans to control implementation of a plan to rearm the armed forces that he said was a “historic chance” for Russia

SPORTS

* The state-run construction company set up to build most of the facilities for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics has been accused by Russian auditors of unjustified cost inflations to the tune of $506 million

CRIME

* Three suspects detained by Moscow police over the acid attack on the Bolshoi Theater’s artistic director Sergei Filin, including the organizer, have signed statements admitting their part in the crime, police said