Main News of May 7

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Two North Korean mid-range missiles reportedly prepared for launch in April were recently withdrawn from their coastal positions, South Korean news agency Yonhap said

* Iran accused Western powers of helping Syrian rebels gain access to chemical weapons

* Bank of China has closed the account of a major North Korean bank slapped with US sanctions in March over what Washington said was the bank’s assistance in financing Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program

* Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has ruled out the possibility of Tbilisi resuming natural gas purchases from Russia, saying that the move could threaten Georgia’s independence

* The parents of suspected Boston Marathon bombers want to bury their son killed in a shootout with police in Dagestan and are collecting funds to send his body to Russia, the Tsarnaev brothers’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said

RUSSIA

* US Secretary of State John Kerry assured Russian President Vladimir Putin that Washington shares Moscow’s approach to the resolution of the Syria conflict

* Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill that bans scores of Russian officials from keping their money in foreign banks, but allows them to own property abroad

* Russian President Vladimir Putin gave all Russian ministers one month to publish their action plans for implementing the decrees he signed on the first day of his presidency a year ago

* The materials that Russian investigators received from US authorities regarding the case of Russian adoptee Max Shatto in early April were “insufficient,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s point man for human rights, Konstantin Dolgov, said

* The Moscow City Court sentenced the man found guilty of killing convicted murderer and war criminal Yury Budanov to 15 years in prison

* As Moscow gets ready to start implementing a nationwide ban on smoking in public places, an international public health partnership between the US and Russia has produced a comprehensive set of smoking cessation principles to be introduced next week to health professionals and government officials across Russia