Main News of October 21

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

RUSSIA

* At least six people were killed after a suspected female suicide bomber detonated an explosive device on a bus in the southern city of Volgograd.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on the introduction of stiffer penalties for smoking in public as the government continues in its battle to improve health standards in the country.

* A Russian court denied bail to three more Greenpeace activists detained on piracy charges, including a vegan who, her lawyer claims, is “starving” in custody.

* Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who is serving a two-year jail sentence for an anti-Kremlin stunt in a Moscow cathedral, has been moved to another prison, and the defense has no information on her current whereabouts, her lawyer Irina Khrunova said.

* Russia’s ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the country’s budget income is likely to be short of three trillion rubles ($94 billion) in the next three years due to the slowdown in the economy’s growth.

* A Moscow court rejected an appeal to reopen the controversial posthumous case against whistle-blowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose 2009 death in custody has strained relations between Russia and the West.

* Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev is to carry out community service in a village 250 kilometers outside Moscow as punishment for brawling with a fellow tycoon on a television show in 2011.

 

WORLD

* Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh secured commitments from Russia that New Delhi will hope could go some way to providing for the country’s surging energy needs.

* The Netherlands filed a lawsuit in an international maritime court against Russia’s seizure of a Dutch-registered Greenpeace icebreaker.

* The European Court of Human Rights criticized Russia for keeping secret key documents about its inquiry into a World War II massacre of Poles, but ruled that the court wasn’t competent to assess the quality of Russia’s investigation into the killings.

* Turkmenistan’s authoritarian president has added to his already long list of achievements by turning to novel-writing.

 

SPACE

* The launch of a Russian Proton-M rocket carrying a US telecoms satellite has been postponed for a second time on the satellite operator’s request, the Russian space agency said.

 

DEFENSE

* Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that Austrian-manufactured Glock pistols ordered by the Defense Ministry were clearly overpriced and said that Russia should rely on domestically produced small arms.

 

SPORTS

* Former Charlotte Bobcats guard Cory Higgins has signed a one-year contract with Russian basketball club Triumph Lyubertsy, the club announced.