NEWS TICKER

RUSSIA ASSAILS AMERICANS FOR MEETING WITH CHECHENS

Russia lashed out at the United States, calling its meeting with a Chechen representative "immoral."

U.S. officials had previously announced they planned to meet with Ilyas Akhmadov, an envoy for the Chechen rebels, in Washington.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry harshly criticized the United States for going ahead with the meeting in the wake of a series of car bombings that killed at least 23 people in southern Russia on Saturday. Russian officials blamed the bombings on the rebels.

POLICE DECRY LACK OF LAWS AGAINST CHILD PORNOGRAPHERS

Despite a successful Russian-U.S. operation to shut down a Website that sold child pornography, police decried legal chaos that leaves them virtually powerless against Russian child pornographers who peddle their production around the world.

Operation Blue Orchid, a joint effort by the U.S. Customs Service and the Moscow city police, has led to criminal investigations in 24 countries against people who ordered child-pornography videotapes from the Russian Website.

Operation Blue Orchid was named after the Website, which was shut down in December. Many of the tapes were bought by people in the United States.

But Russian investigators on the case said that the operation nabbed only a handful of the legions of child-pornography producers who run international distribution networks from Russia with near-immunity.

Under Russian law, possession of pornography is not a crime. Production and trafficking are illegal, but the law also makes no distinction between child pornography and pornography involving adults – treating both as lesser crimes punishable by a maximum of two years in prison, the same punishment as for petty theft or shoplifting.

RUSSIAN, KAZAK OFFICIALS TURN PUMP ON NEW PIPELINE

ATYRAU, Kazakstan – With a ceremonial twist of a valve, Russian and Kazak officials began pumping crude oil down the first major pipeline to be built in the resource-rich Caspian Sea region in a decade. The opening of the pipe, which runs from Kazakstan's Tengiz field to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, was a victory for Russia. It will bring Moscow welcome new transport tariffs for years to come – and added political clout in the strategic region.

PUTIN CALLS AGAIN FOR LIFTING OF SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ

Russian President Vladimir Putin used an Arab League summit to make another call for lifting sanctions against Iraq and reassert Moscow's mediation role in the Mideast peace process.

"Russia has proposed a 'package' solution that would include suspending the sanctions and the subsequent lifting of them in combination with the revival of international monitoring of the non-restoration of Iraq's banned military programs," Putin said in a letter to participants at the summit in Amman, Jordan.

NATIONAL

SHAIMIYEV WINS THIRD TERM IN TATARSTAN ELECTION

The influential president of Russia's Tatarstan region won election to a third term in his independent-minded, mostly Muslim province. Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev won 79.8 percent of the vote in last Sunday's election, local electoral officials were quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS.

ONE KILLED IN MOSCOW SHOOTING

Gunmen opened fire on a car parked across from the lower house of Russia's parliament, killing one man and wounding another, police said. The victims were sitting in a Mercedes sedan owned by a Moscow businesswoman in front of the Moskva Hotel, which is between Red Square and the State Duma, when they were attacked Tuesday night, Moscow police said. The slain man, 20, was from Dagestan.

GLITCH FOUND AT RUSSIA'S NEWEST NUCLEAR GENERATOR

Operators discovered a minor glitch at Russia's newest nuclear power plant during start-up tests, Russia's state-owned nuclear-power company said. No radiation leaked during the test, which pushed non-radioactive steam through the generating turbines at the Rostov nuclear power plant near the southern city of Volgodonsk, the company Rosenergoatom said in a statement.