Main News of October 1

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Russia announced it will carry out its own investigation into chemical weapons attacks in Syria as an international disarmament inspection team, reportedly comprising one Russian, arrived in the Middle Eastern nation

* The lower house of Tajikistan’s parliament ratified a long-stalled deal to extend the lease of Russia’s military base in the Central Asian nation until 2042

* Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz Ukrainy said that it had negotiated a new deadline for its repayment of a $2 billion loan to neighboring Russia’s state-controlled Gazprombank

* Russia has donated $10 million for Syrian refugees and is ready to provide more, a Russian envoy said

* Dozens of state lawmakers in Maine have appealed to the Russian government to free the crew of a Greenpeace ship and its captain, who has ties to the state, currently facing piracy charges following a protest near a Gazprom oil rig in Arctic waters, local media reported

* Fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has been included in a short list for the prestigious Sakharov Prize celebrating freedom of thought, the European Parliament announced

 

RUSSIA

* Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered significant salary raises for the heads of the country’s law enforcement agencies and Prosecutor General, as well as for federal ministers, despite the government’s current drive to curb salary increases for civil servants

* Russian activists and lawmakers announced that they plan to nominate Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize

* The administrative head of a city in Russia’s Ural Mountains was charged with banditry and being an accomplice to murder after he allegedly ordered a reputed criminal gang to kill two business rivals, the RAPSI legal news agency reported from a Moscow courtroom

* A jailed member of feminist punk band Pussy Riot ended her nine-day-long hunger strike, a Russian opposition lawmaker and prison authorities said in separate statements

* A former Kremlin advisor and influential media official during the turbulent 1990s who is also credited with setting up Moscow’s international broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today) was appointed to head state-controlled media giant Gazprom-Media

* Russian police are hunting for a former senior executive at a subsidiary of Russian oil giant Rosneft, suspected of being involved in embezzling a resort facility and four luxury vehicles in Russia’s North Caucasus, police officials said

* Russia earns low marks on a global index that rates countries by the quality of life and wellbeing of their old folk, ranking 78th out of 91 countries in the first-ever Global AgeWatch Index