Main News of June 26

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Fugitive former CIA employee Edward Snowden, who is wanted by the United States for leaking state secrets, is not collaborating with Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on its Twitter feed Wednesday

* Governments across the world face a new and rapidly growing threat from legal psychoactive drugs that can be openly sold on the Internet, according to a new UN report released on Wednesday

* Beijing is committed to boosting its defense collaboration with member states of a post-Soviet security group that includes Russia, China’s defense minister said Wednesday

* Russia’s defense minister has said Moscow would begin sending weapons and other military equipment to Kyrgyzstan this year, not in 2014, as previously announced

RUSSIA

* Russia is opening an airbase in northwestern Belarus, near the Polish and Lithuanian borders, within just a few months, a Russian Air Force general said Wednesday

* Russia’s upper house of parliament on Wednesday gave final approval to three controversial bills, laying out measures to shield children from the influence of homosexuals as well as safeguard the faith of religious believers

* Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has been in prison for almost a decade, marked his 50th birthday Wednesday with a visit from his family, as a new survey showed that one-third of Russians are in favor of his immediate release