Main News of November 13

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

RUSSIA

 

* Russia’s GDP growth is likely to remain below this year’s goal of 1.8 percent, Russia’s Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin was awarded honorary taekwondo grandmaster status, making for an impressively immediate achievement in a sport he is not known to practice.

* Russia and South Korea are set to switch to a visa-free travel regime after an agreement signed between the two nations in the Korean capital, Seoul.

* Russian diplomats in Belarus said they will be allowed to meet on Friday afternoon with the detained head of Russian potash giant Uralkali, who is facing charges of fraud that Belarus estimates has cost it around $100 million.

* The Russian Navy has postponed any further trials of the troubled submarine-launched Bulava ballistic missile until 2014, Navy Commander Adm. Viktor Chirkov said.

* The construction of a fifth Borey-class nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine is expected to begin in late 2014, Russia’s navy chief Adm.Viktor Chirkov said.

* The mayor of the southern Russian city of Astrakhan was detained as part of a pending criminal case, police said.

* Disgraced tycoon Sergei Polonsky, who is wanted by Russian authorities, has been transferred to a Cambodian maximum-security prison pending expulsion from the country, his lawyer said, calling the move absolutely unprecedented for an extradition case.

 

WORLD

 

* Cultivation of opium poppy in Afghanistan has reached a record high this year as farmers seek to take advantage of increased prices to insure against growing instability as international troops withdraw next year, the UN said in a report.

* Russia and Serbia signed an agreement on military cooperation as part of further development of the strategic partnership between the two countries.

* Ukraine’s energy minister said that his country has enough natural gas to last until year’s end and has no need for immediate purchases of the fuel from Russia.

* Latvian lawmakers have decided not to consider granting Russian chess master-turned-political activist Garry Kasparov Latvian citizenship for the time being, citing procedural hurdles, the Mixnews agency reported.

* Ukraine’s consumer rights watchdog said it will conduct checks in December on factories of the country’s biggest candymaker, which has been hit by a Russian embargo of its products since summer.

* The president of Poland apologized to Russia for the attack by a nationalist mob on the Russian Embassy in Warsaw, calling the episode outrageous and unjustifiable.

* A leading lawmaker in Uzbekistan poured cold water on the prospect of the Central Asian nation joining a Moscow-led trade bloc, saying that relations with Russia would continue to be developed on a one-on-one basis.

* Lawmakers in Ukraine again delayed consideration of measures to enable jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to travel abroad for medical treatment, possibly dashing prospects for a historic trade deal with the European Union.

 

BUSINESS

 

* Russia’s budget will be boosted by additional revenue of up to $2.5 billion annually in export duties paid by state-run Rosneft for its oil supplies to China, the energy minister said..

 

SPORTS

 

* Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova will join the US television network NBC as a correspondent for its coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Black Sea resort town in southern Russia where she lived as a child, Sharapova and the network said Wednesday.

* Spartak Moscow football club have appealed to Russian police to prosecute those who brandished a Nazi flag during a Cup game last month, club owner Leonid Fedun told R-Sport on Wednesday.