Main News of July 30

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Israel and Palestinians launched a fresh effort to hammer out a long-elusive peace deal that would result in the creation of a Palestinian state as the United States set an ambitious timetable of nine months for achieving such an agreement

* A US military judge found former Army intelligence officer Private Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, but guilty of lesser charges for leaking 700,000 classified US military documents to WikiLeaks

* China’s authorities have ordered large-scale auditing procedures for the government’s debt, media reported

RUSSIA

* Russia’s health and finance ministries are to mull the option of using tobacco taxes to help fund spending on healthcare, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated at a meeting

* Moscow police had rounded up over five hundred people in the city’s marketplaces by Tuesday morning following an attack over the weekend on a police officer trying to detain a suspected sex offender at a food market

* Russia has banned imports from major Ukrainian candy maker Roshen after the carcinogen benzopyrene, which can naturally occur in roasted coffee and cocoa beans, was found in analyzed product samples

* A Russian-built aircraft carrier due to be delivered to the Indian Navy following a much-delayed refit has successfully passed engine tests during the first stage of final sea trials in the White Sea, shipbuilder Sevmash said

* The Russian Navy will not be nixing the 200-year-old tradition of featuring the Roman god of the sea in its festivities, despite complaints about his “pagan” nature, a Navy spokesman said

* Ukraine’s migration authorities have refused to grant political asylum to a Russian opposition activist who fears persecution in Russia over his alleged involvement in instigating mass riots last year at a rally against President Vladimir Putin