Main News of July 2

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

RUSSIA

* A Russian Proton-M rocket carrying three Glonass satellites veered off course seconds after its launch from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur space center early Tuesday, crashing in a large fireball

* Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence contractor wanted by the United States for leaking state secrets, asked for asylum in Russia but withdrew his request after hearing Russia’s conditions for granting it, a Kremlin spokesman said

* Venezuela’s national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) and Russia’s state-owned oil-and-gas giant Rosneft on Tuesday signed an agreement to jointly develop extensive offshore deposits in South America

* At least 19 people, including children, were killed when a helicopter crashed in northeastern Russia on Tuesday, officials said

* The lower house of Russia’s parliament on Tuesday declared an amnesty for people convicted of white-collar crime for which about 100,000 people are expected to be eligible

* A street in northern Moscow was named after late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday, the same day that Russian majors Rosneft and Gazprombank inked significant deals with national oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela

* A Moscow court sentenced former billionaire Alexander Lebedev to 150 hours of compulsory community service on Tuesday over a televised minor brawl with a Russian businessman two years ago

* Billionaire Roman Abramovich has resigned from his only government post – chairmanship of the Chukotka regional assembly – to avoid falling foul of a new law banning officials from holding assets abroad, in a development that some analysts said threatened to cut off funding to a remote area of Russia

WORLD

* Iran’s president said Tuesday that preliminary talks for Russia to help build a new Iranian nuclear power plant had been completed, and the project just needed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval to go ahead

* The top US emergency response agency moved to quell a flurry of Internet-driven speculation this week that Russian security teams could be deployed at large public events in the United States, saying the two countries will not swap security guards or soldiers under a long-running partnership agreement

* India has refused to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence contractor wanted by the United States for leaking state secrets, a spokesman for India’s External Affairs Ministry confirmed on Tuesday

* State-run media and bloggers in authoritarian Belarus want several winners of a recent beauty pageant stripped of their titles for stripping and posing topless

* A German court has delivered its verdict in an international espionage case, finding a couple guilty of spying for Russia and sentencing them to over five years behind bars