Boxer’s Sentence Overturned

A Primorye region court on Tuesday overturned the sentence handed down to a boxing champion convicted of killing a man in self-defense and ordered a retrial, RIA-Novosti reported.

Roman Romanchuk, a silver medalist at the 2006 European Boxing Championships, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for killing a man in Vladivostok in a street fight last July as he was traveling to the Beijing Olympics.

The regional court was considering appeals filed by the state prosecutor and by Romanchuk’s defense attorney, who argued that the sentence was too soft and too severe, respectively. (MT)

Grozny Bomber Identified

Chechen police have identified the bomber who killed six people in a suicide attack Sunday, Interfax reported Tuesday.

Police said it was rebel Rustam Mukhadiyev who detonated a bomb near a concert hall in Grozny, killing six people, including four policemen. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov was supposed to be at the performance, but a late arrival saved his life, Chechen officials said. (MT)

‘No U.S. Border Monitors’

Inclusion of U.S. monitors in the European Union mission to Georgia will not in any way improve the situation in the region and would leave a dent in U.S.-Russian relations, an unidentified senior Foreign Ministry diplomat told Interfax on Tuesday.

Georgia has called for the inclusion of U.S. officials in the EU mission that monitors the cease-fire between Russia and Georgia after a brief military conflict there last August. Earlier this week, the EU voted to extend its mission by a year. (MT)

Putin Clears Tax-Free Grants

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday approved a list of 14 Russian charity organizations whose grants to support science, culture, education and arts in the country will not be taxed, RIA-Novosti reported.

 The list includes foundations established by the prominent businessmen Vladimir Potanin, Mikhail Prokhorov and Dmitry Zimin. The State Nanotechnology Corporation, or Rusnano, is also on the list. (MT)

8 Rebels Killed in Dagestan

ROSTOV-ON-DON — Police in Dagestan said Tuesday that they killed eight suspected insurgents in an overnight forest ambush.

Police said they engaged in an hourlong gunbattle with the suspected militants after a refusal to surrender. Police had surrounded them in woodland near the regional capital, Makhachkala. (AP)

Tajiks Told to Stockpile

Tajik families should stockpile two-year supplies of food to help them survive the  country’s grain shortage and the economic crisis, President Emomali Rakhmon said Tuesday, RIA-Novosti reported.

The citizens need to “rely primarily on their own strengths” in building reserves of food, especially wheat, Rakhmon was quoted as saying in a televised address.

Tajikistan expects to harvest 950,000 tons of grain this year, while it needs 1.4 million tons to meet the population’s needs, the agency said. (Bloomberg)

Moscow Banker Arrested

The chairman of Commercial Bank of Development has been arrested on charges of attempting to smuggle the equivalent of 1.5 billion rubles ($48.8 million).

Andrei Kagramanov was arrested on Thursday, and the Tverskoi District Court sanctioned the arrest on Monday. Kagramanov was arrested along with three other employees in the offices of Capital Investment Group, which he owns. The employees were later released under a pledge not to leave town.

Kagramanov, 43, was elected chairman of the board of directors at the beginning of 2009, said Maria Mikolae, the bank’s vice president, adding that Capital Investment Group had no connection with the bank.  (MT)