Main News of June 4

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

 

* A US Islamic rights group has filed a formal complaint with the US Department of Justice over shooting death a 27-year-old Chechen man while he was being questioned by federal authorities about his ties to a suspect in the Boston Marathon bomb attack.

* More than 150 members of the US Congress have urged President Barack Obama to prioritize resolving several hundred pending US adoptions of Russian children when he meets President Vladimir Putin later this month.

* At least 120 people were killed and 70 injured after a fire broke out at a poultry factory in China’s northeastern province Jilin, Xinhua news agency reported.

 

RUSSIA

 

* Moscow considers the US move to send Patriot missiles and fighter jets to Jordan as an attempt to pump foreign weaponry into a highly volatile region, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his country's sale of S-300 air defense systems to war-torn Syria, but said the contracts for the missiles have not yet been fulfilled.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin said he will sign a law banning adoption of Russian children by foreign same-sex couples if parliament passes such legislation.

* Russia has serious doubts about the willingness of US authorities to protect the legitimate rights and interests of Russian children adopted by US families, Russian Foreign Ministry’s special representative for human rights, Konstantin Dolgov, said.

* The mayor of Russia’s capital announced that he will resign, perhaps as early as this week, triggering a snap election that would be Moscow’s first popular vote for the position in a decade.

* The Russian government’s legislative commission has endorsed a bill setting out rules for random checks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) by the country’s Justice Ministry, the government’s press service said.

* A regional office of Russia's Golos Association, an independent election monitoring NGO, was fined 300,000 rubles (about $10,000) on Tuesday for failing to register as a “foreign agent,” the RAPSI legal news agency reported.

* The mayor of the capital of Russia’s restive Dagestan region has been formally charged in the murder of a local investigator, the Chief Investigative Directorate of Russia’s Investigative Committee said.

* A military robots development laboratory will be set up at the Degtyarev arms factory in the central Russian city of Kovrov, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.

* Russia is considering offering Hollywood star Steven Seagal a job as promoter of its small arms manufacturers abroad, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.

* A Russian Proton-M launch vehicle, which blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Monday, put a SES-6 telecommunications satellite into orbit, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) said.