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A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours 11.04.2012, Sputnik International

2012-04-11T19:59+0000

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Main News of April 11

19:59 GMT 11.04.2012

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin hit out at the NATO military alliance and said the organzation had outlived its purpose

* There is no question of setting up a NATO base in Russia, the director of the NATO information bureau in Moscow, Robert Pszel, said

* A unique six-month operation to raise a submersible laboratory from the bed of the Tsemes Bay in the Black Sea has been completed in the southern Russian city of Novorossiisk, the Rossiya 24 television network reported

* Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov wrote on his Twitter account that the Syrian government had declared a ceasefire with rebel forces starting from Thursday morning

* North Korea named Kim Jong-un as first secretary of the Workers' Party, a newly-created position that would seem to give him the authority to rule the isolated East Asian country

RUSSIA

* Prime Minister and president-elect Vladimir Putin tried to avoid politics in his final report to the State Duma on Wednesday, but his speech resulted in dozens of opposition lawmakers walking out

* The Prosecutor General’s Office canceled the Interior Ministry’s decision to close a criminal case against the former head of Moscow's subway, Dmitry Gayev

* The new Libyan authorities have signaled their readiness to continue economic cooperation with Russia, president-elect Vladimir Putin said

* President-elect Vladimir Putin, who in May will return to the presidency after serving four years as prime minister, said he is not against eliminating the clause in the Constitution that allowed him to run for a third, non-consecutive term as president

* Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) will not annul the results of the mayoral election in the southern city of Astrakhan, where an opposition candidate has been on a hunger strike almost a month demanding a re-run, CEC deputy head said

* Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin hailed the creation of a common economic space between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan as the biggest geopolitical event for the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union

BUSINESS

* Foreign investors will be eligible to bid for stakes in enterprises of Russia's defense industry but the process will be controlled by the government, president-elect Vladimir Putin said

* Russia’s state debt is the lowest among the G8 group of the world’s leading economies and is less than 10 percent of the country’s GDP, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said

* A Moscow vendor who used to deal in plastic windows defended in court his right to use the website Windows.ru, contested by software maker Miscrosoft

* Russia will join the group of the world’s five largest economies in the next three years, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said

DEFENSE

* Russian Prime Minister and president-elect Vladimir Putin supported the idea of private defense companies that would provide protection services and military training programs abroad without the participation of the Russian state