Business Watch
David Cameron, the British Prime minister will visit Russia on Friday and meet President Vladimir Putin according to a terse announcement on the Kremlin’s web site.
An Irish parliamentary committee avoided pushing for a blacklist on Russian officials implicated in rights abuse following a warning that it could jeopardize a bilateral adoption agreement.
Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, passed on Tuesday in the first reading a bill that would significantly alter the current parliamentary electoral procedures. The bill, submitted to the State Duma by President Vladimir Putin, was backed by 296 lawmakers and opposed by 148, with a minimum of 226 votes necessary for approval.
G8 foreign ministers synchronized their watches ahead of the leaders’ summit to be held in Northern Ireland in June.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the government on Tuesday to devise a new investment program with funding of no less than 100 billion rubles (around $3.22 billion) a year to develop the country’s depressed eastern Siberia and Far East regions by 2018, the government said on its website.
Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the information about the foreign funding of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Russia recently disclosed by President Vladimir Putin is reliable.