Main News of August 9

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

RUSSIA

*  Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed “philosophical” matters, not an arms deal, with Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief during a recent meeting in Moscow, a presidential aide said

* Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold his first meeting with recently elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on September 13, as part of a Eurasian summit in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, a Russian presidential aide said

* The number of Russians who are disappointed in President Vladimir Putin has more than doubled since his first year in power, according to the latest in a series of nationwide polls that started in 2000

* A Russian health watchdog said Friday it had found minor violations of the hygiene and sanitation regulations at a detention camp set up in Moscow to house recently detained illegal immigrants

* Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is legally free to travel around Russia and occupy any non-state job in the country, a senior migration official said

* Police in Russia’s far eastern Sakhalin Island have seized about three tons of red salmon caviar in a protected wildlife reserve, officials said

WORLD

* US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday downplayed strained bilateral ties over a range of issues, which include Russia’s decision to grant asylum to accused US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, as the two sides met here for talks

* American rock band Bloodhound Gang, whose bassist apparently urinated on a Ukrainian flag at a show in Kiev last month, should be permanently banned from entering Ukraine, the country’s prime minister said

* A Ukrainian man labeled by US authorities as “one of the premier vendors of stolen credit card data in the world” has been sentenced to a maximum of 40 years in prison, the New York County District Attorney’s Office announced in a statement this week

* A Japanese cargo freighter docked with the International Space Station on Friday, NASA said

* Twenty-six Russian tourists were injured, three of them seriously, when a bus went out of control and overturned in western Thailand, local media reported

* An encrypted email service provider reportedly used by accused US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has announced it is closing and issued a warning about the trustworthiness of US-linked companies that collect individuals’ private data

* A former KGB officer who worked for two decades in Estonia’s Internal Security Service has been arrested on suspicion of collecting classified information and passing it on to the Russian government, the chief of the Estonian security service said Friday.