Main News of April 30

POLITICS

* US Secretary of State John Kerry will pay a working visit to Moscow on May 7-8, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported

WORLD

* The United States on Tuesday called on Ukraine to release Yulia Tymoshenko, the jailed former prime minister and a leader of the ex-Soviet republic’s 2004 “Orange Revolution” who became a strident opponent of the current government

* NASA will pay an additional $424 million to extend its contract with Russia’s Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to transport US astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA said Tuesday, a move that America’s space chief said underscores how diminished funding is hampering the US space program

* US President Barack Obama vowed Tuesday to make a new push to close the American military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the US military sent extra medical personnel there to deal with prisoners on a hunger strike, protesting conditions and their long detentions

* Russia has been “very cooperative” in helping the United States investigate the Boston Marathon bombings and lingering suspicions between Washington and Moscow dating back to the Cold War are improving, US President Barack Obama said

* US President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the circumstances surrounding an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria remain murky and that Washington is working with the Syrian opposition to determine the nature of the purported incident

* A Belarusian court has handed down the country’s first death penalty this year, the Mogilyov Prosecutor's Office said

* The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that the 2011 arrest of Ukraine’s ex-Prime Minister and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was unlawful

* At least 10 people have been killed in an explosion in the center of the Syrian capital of Damascus, reports said

* A small object, possibly a meteoroid, has flown through a solar panel on the International Space Station, leaving a “bullet hole,” Canadian astronaut and Expedition 35 commander Chris Hadfield has said

RUSSIA

* The Skolkovo Foundation is suing opposition lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, the foundation’s president Viktor Vekselberg said

* South Ossetian diplomats should work hard for the republic’s independence to be internationally recognized, the breakaway region’s president, Leonid Tibilov, said

* Russia’s aviation authority issued a decree on Tuesday banning all Russian airlines from flying over Syrian territory following an incident on Monday in which a passenger plane reportedly had to make a detour to avoid military action in the war-torn country

* A Russian naval ship will visit Israel for the first time in the country’s history, the Defense Ministry said

* Prosecutors in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan have ordered the Agora human rights group, which has provided legal assistance to people detained at anti-Kremlin protests, to register as a “foreign agent,” a demand it has dismissed as “unlawful”

* A court in Sacramento, California, ruled on Monday that a baby boy who had been seized by authorities in the United States should be returned to his Russian parents, a Russian diplomat said

CRIME

* Law enforcement officers have killed a suspected criminal in a shootout in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, investigators reported

* A court in the Urals city of Perm on Tuesday handed sentences to defendants in the case of a deadly fire that occurred in a local nightclub several years ago, a RAPSI legal news agency correspondent reported from the courtroom

* Prosecutors on Tuesday asked for a 16-year prison term for the man found guilty of killing convicted murderer and war criminal Yury Budanov

* Police have detained four suspects accused of embezzling 31 million rubles ($1 million) of budget funds allocated for the maintenance of the Caspian Highway, the Interior Ministry said

* The jury at the Moscow City Court on Monday handed down a guilty verdict to a Chechen man accused of murdering former Col. Yury Budanov, who had served jail time for war crimes in Chechnya