Main News of August 6

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

RUSSIA

* Russia’s Supreme Court ruled to reduce jail terms for the jailed former head of oil giant Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner to 10 years and 10 months at their appeal. The decision means that they will be released two months early

* The Russian Air Force will take delivery of its first fifth-generation T-50 fighter jet "in the third quarter of this year" for final state test flights starting in the fourth quarter, the service's commander Lt. Gen. Viktor Bondarev said

* A Moscow court closed a fraud case against a Russian businesswoman who died in a Moscow jail three years ago, media reports said

* Pavel Adelgeim, the priest apparently killed in the western Russian city of Pskov on Monday evening, was a veteran of the religious struggle against the Soviet regime, and known as one of a few members of the Orthodox clergy willing to speak out against the Church hierarchy

* Russian lawmakers led a rally outside the American Embassy in Moscow on Tuesday, with a parliamentarian who hopes to become the capital’s next mayor calling for the ambassador to pass on a pair of American flag underwear for a controversial musician to “wipe himself”

* A nationalist candidate in the Moscow mayoral race said that hundreds of labor migrants placed in a tent camp in eastern Moscow ahead of possible deportation should get less food and be forced to work

* Air pollution in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia’s two most populous cities, is rated the second and third worst in the country, respectively. The absolute worst, with air-pollutant emissions rated more than twice as high, is in the far-northern Siberian city of Norilsk, home to the world’s largest nickel producer

* Local authorities in southern Russia’s North Caucasus region have issued an emergency notice after two people were diagnosed with the largely animal-borne infectious disease anthrax, the regional emergencies ministry has said

* Football’s world governing body FIFA has allowed Moscow to reduce the seating capacity of Luzhniki Stadium to 81,000 for the 2018 World Cup games to be held in the Russian capital, a City Hall official said

* Russia’s foreign trade surplus fell 10.5 percent year-on-year in January-June 2013, the Federal Customs Service said in a statement

* Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova has topped the Forbes list of highest-earning female athletes for the ninth-straight year, raking in $29 million over the last 12 months

WORLD

* Iran is committed to resolving conflicts over its nuclear program and is waiting for a response from opponents, the country’s new president said

* At least five people were killed and 20 injured when billows of ammonia gas erupted from a fertilizer factory in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Region, local authorities said

* The Latvian government said it will extradite a man wanted in the United States on charges of creating a computer virus that US authorities say helped steal tens of millions of dollars, RAPSI legal news agency reported