Main news of October 14

 

RUSSIA

* Russia transferred the Yinlong (Tarabarov) Island, half of the Heixiazi (Bolshoi Ussuriysky) Island and the Bolshoi Island on the Argun River in the Chita Region, East Siberia to China as part of an addendum to an agreement on the Russian-Chinese border

* The Moscow district military court ruled as lawful the closure of a case concerning the execution of Polish prisoners of war in western Russia's Katyn forest in 1940, a court spokesman said

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he was promoting Regional Development Minister Dmitry Kozak to deputy prime minister in charge of preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi

* Russian strategic bombers successfully completed a series of large-scale, week-long exercises, the Long-Range Aviation commander said

* A Russian space tourist hopeful is to miss out on a trip to the stars in the autumn of 2009, with a Kazakh astronaut likely to take his place, a Russian space agency official said

* Russia will downsize its Armed Forces to 1 million servicemen, including 150,000 officers, by 2012, the defense minister said

* The world of Russian ice hockey was in mourning on Tuesday after the death of one of its brightest young talents

WORLD

* Ukraine's government again refused to allocate election campaign funds and urged President Viktor Yushchenko to reverse a decision calling for early parliamentary polls, the UNIAN agency said

* Russia started talks with Iceland on granting a 4 billion euro ($5.4 billion) loan to help the Nordic country through its financial woes, the Russian Finance Ministry said

* Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree on the establishment of diplomatic relations with Lebanon and the opening of an embassy in Beirut, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported

* Tehran is ready to resume talks with Washington on security problems in Iraq, a spokesman for the Iranian embassy in Baghdad said

* French police opened a criminal case into an attempted poisoning of Russia's leading human rights lawyer, the representative of murdered investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya said

* A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a U.S. space tourist has docked with the International Space Station (ISS), Russia's Mission Control official said

BUSINESS

* The U.S. government will buy shares of U.S. banks and financial institutions to help stabilize the economy amid the ongoing global financial crisis, President George W. Bush said

* Russia's leading stock exchange finished trading with its index showing large gains on positive news from U.S. and European stock markets

* The Russian government vowed to provide $9 billion to the four largest oil and gas companies to refinance their foreign debt, a Russian business daily reported