Main News of April 3

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* North Korea has banned South Korean workers from entering Kaesong, a joint industrial zone, South Korean media reported

 

* Protest movements in former Soviet republics are bankrolled by states seeking to destabilize the situation there, the head of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) said

* A Russian-born teenager at the center of a brewing international scandal has denied allegations that she was sexually abused by her adoptive American father in Texas, a local law enforcement official told RIA Novosti

RUSSIA

 

* Russia’s parliamentary committee on security urged the parliament to pass in a first reading a presidential bill that would allow the Federal Security Service (FSB) to dispatch its officers abroad on a permanent basis

* Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered energy giant Gazprom to return to the plan to build a second section of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline

* The tallest skyscraper of the Grozny City complex caught fire in Chechnya’s capital

BUSINESS

 

* Russia’s global arms exports reached $15.2 billion in 2012, a 12 percent increase against the previous year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said

 

* The Central Bank is seriously concerned by a notable slowdown in Russia’s economic growth, the bank's head Sergei Ignatyev said