Main News of April 5

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* North Korea has loaded two Musudan (No-dong B) intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) onto mobile launchers and deployed them to an undisclosed facility on its east coast, the Yonhap news agency cited South Korean military sources as saying on Friday, raising fears it could be about to carry out a test firing

* North Korea has asked foreign embassies based in its capital, Pyongyang, to consider evacuating staff, as tensions continue to rise on the Korean Peninsula, Russia’s foreign minister said

* Iran said it voiced on Friday new proposals concerning its nuclear program to the group of six international negotiators comprising five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany (P5+1)

* With its notorious traffic jams, Moscow has topped the 2012 Congestion Index released by TomTom, a Dutch company specializing in GPS navigation technology

* The United States and Russia have cooperated to remove enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to make two nuclear weapons from the Czech Republic, the White House said Friday, describing the effort as part of a larger initiative to prevent nuclear terrorism

* Tethys Petroleum Ltd will invest a total of $24.4 million in the development of oil fields in southern Uzbekistan by 2016, a source in the Central Asian country’s government told RIA Novosti

* Ukraine has turned down an extradition request from Tajikistan for its former Prime Minister Abdumalik Abdullojonov, and released him from detention, Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office told RIA Novosti

RUSSIA

* President Vladimir Putin insisted on Friday that the Kremlin was committed to the goal of democratic development, but said Russia needs more time to overcome the legacy of almost 70 years of Soviet rule

* Russia is not looking to oust Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and wants the conflicting parties to negotiate and stop the “massacre,” putting an end to the “catastrophe” in Syria, President Vladimir Putin said

* Russia has contributed $1 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to finance the ICRC humanitarian operation in Syria, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said

* Russia has begun setting up a naval task force in the Mediterranean, sending several warships from the Pacific Fleet to the region, the Defense Ministry said

* The last in a series of three frigates that Russia is building for India at the Yantar shipyard in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad has started final trials, a shipyard spokesman said

* The Russian-language division of Wikipedia, the world’s largest free online encyclopedia, has received notification from the state media and communications watchdog Roskomnadzor that part of its content has been included on an Internet blacklist