Main News of March 19

WORLD

* Nationalist lawmakers in Ukraine’s rowdy legislature brawled Tuesday with deputies from the ruling Party of Regions in a standoff over which language should be used in parliament

* An explosion during a training exercise at the Hawthorne Army Depot in Hawthorne, Nevada has left seven US Marines dead and several others wounded the military said

* Russia sounded the alarm on Tuesday over the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syria’s armed opposition, saying that it would lead to an escalation of the conflict

* Prosecutors in Ector County, Texas said Monday that Alan and Laura Shatto, the American parents whose adopted Russian toddler died suddenly in January, will not be charged in the boy’s death

RUSSIA

* Russia’s child rights ombudsman and Foreign Ministry criticized on Tuesday the decision by Texas prosecutors not to charge the adoptive parents of a Russian toddler who died suddenly in January

BUSINESS

* Parliament in Cyprus on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a bill aimed at charging steep levies on bank deposits, jeopardizing the country’s chances of securing a desperately needed international bailout

* Russia’s former finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, said Tuesday that Cyprus’ plans to force all bank-account holders to agree to a levy on their deposits ignored the interests of Russian investors

CRIME

* Russian investigators said they were ending a criminal probe into the 2009 death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail because they had determined that no crime had taken place – an assertion the late lawyer’s family swiftly rejected

SPORTS

* Russian President Vladimir Putin called Tuesday for visa-free travel for foreign athletes competing in major sports events scheduled to take place between now and 2018, which include next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi and the 2018 soccer World Cup

DEFENSE

* The government of Kyrgyzstan has approved a bill allowing the transit of NATO military cargo by land to and from Afghanistan, the government's press service said

SCIENCE

* For the first time, two Russian cosmonauts simulated a manually controlled landing from the orbit on Mars after they spent half a year in the space, a deputy head of the Russian Space Training Center said