Main News of June 20

WORLD

* The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the Mubadala Development Company from the United Arab Emirates will join efforts for the first time to invest in the Russian infrastructure, President Vladimir Putin said

* The parliament of the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a bill ordering the closure of a US airbase that serves as the main transit hub for NATO forces in Afghanistan

* Russia-US strategic nuclear arms cuts cannot be pursued without also addressing missile defense systems, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

RUSSIA

* A US federal judge on Thursday accused Russia of being contemptuous of the law for refusing to hand over a disputed collection of Jewish religious texts to a New York-based Orthodox Jewish group despite a US court order to do so

* A Moscow court on Thursday upheld a three-year prison sentence handed down to a young woman who had fired a rubber-bullet handgun at two men she claimed attacked her and her friends with a knife, the RAPSI legal news service reported from the courtroom

* Moscow has received no explanation from the United States over plans to establish a no-fly zone over Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* Moscow is outraged by the possibility of US sanctions over its human trafficking record and warns of strong countermeasures, a high-ranking Russian official said

* The hunt is on to find those behind hoax claims that the CEO of Russia’s railroad monopoly had been dismissed, which caused a flurry of confusion in the Russian media

* In a move that opens the door to sanctions, the US Department of State named Russia and China among the world's worst countries in terms of forced labor and sex trafficking in its 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report

* Russian prosecutors have charged opposition activists Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev with plotting mass riots during a demonstration in Moscow last May, their lawyers said

BUSINESS

* Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday admitted that offshore zones are used excessively by Russian companies

* Russian oil giant Rosneft’s agreements to supply several hundred million tons of oil to China are worth a total of more than $60 billion, President Vladimir Putin said

* Russia’s shadow economy accounts for some 15-20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, the finance minister said

* The Russian government’s plans to weaken the ruble in a bid to stimulate faltering economic growth is unlikely to yield results, Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said

DEFENSE

* Ammunition blasts continued Thursday at a central Russian military facility where a large fire erupted days earlier amid multiple explosions that tore through the site and sent shrapnel flying over a kilometer