Unidentified people painted the walls of a synagogue in the city of Paderborn, West Germany, with swastikas and nationalist slogans made using chocolate, writes The International Herald Tribune. In particular, “Germany for the Germans” was written on the wall. According to police, the graffiti appeared on the wall on Wednesday night or Wednesday morning. Note that Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins on Wednesday evening. Painting Nazi symbols is a criminal offense in Germany.

Russia's largest private oil company, Lukoil, has agreed to exchange assets with the Chinese CNPC. Lukoil is ready to cede the pre-emptive right to buy out half of Kazakhstan's Turgai Petroleum. In exchange, the Russian company wants to receive a part of another mining asset in any country. This was stated by the head of Lukoil Vagit Alekperov, Vremya Novostey reports . Thus, CNPC and Lukoil resolved the conflict, which lasted about two years, Kommersant notes .

From September 13, the Central Bank of Russia set the official dollar exchange rate at 25.4046 rubles per dollar, which is 10.98 kopecks less than the previous value. The euro in Russia rose in price by 3.66 kopecks to 35.2223 rubles. On the international market on the morning of September 13, the European currency updated its historical high and was trading around the $1.3889 mark. During the session, the euro soared to $1.3914.

Sony has announced four new Blu-ray recorders, Reuters reports. The new products are capable of recording dual-layer Blu-ray discs. For one of these 50 gigabyte drive holds up to 16 hours of high-quality video data clarity. Let us recall that the first model of Blu-ray recorder from Sony, released in 2006, only supported single-layer discs. The most expensive recorder from the new series will be equipped with a 500-gigabyte hard drive. The cost of this model will be approximately $1,750 USA.

Japanese tycoon Minoru Mori announced the completion of construction of China's tallest skyscraper on September 14 this year, reports the Associated Press. The height of the Shanghai World Financial Center building is 492 meters. The developer's investment in the 101-story tower project amounted to more than a billion dollars. 10 percent of the building has already been sold to Morgan Stanley, Reuters reports. The transaction amount has not yet been announced.

During the Photon flight, an experiment developed by European and Russian students will be carried out. Shortly before the satellite landing, the returning Fotino microcapsule will be sent to Earth using a thirty-kilometer cable with a diameter of half a millimeter, reports the Roscosmos news service. The Foton-M spacecraft will launch on Friday, September 14, at 15:00 Moscow time on a Soyuz-U launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The court of the Volyn region of Ukraine sentenced a citizen of the Russian Federation to capital punishment - life imprisonment - for the murder of four people committed in 2005, Ukrainian News reports . According to the agency, the court also decided to completely confiscate the Russian’s property. According to the investigation, citizen Miskovets (name not reported) owed his godfather several thousand dollars, but could not pay them back, so he decided to kill his creditor.

Three former members of gangs have been detained in Chechnya, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic Ruslan Alkhanov . In the city of Shali, law enforcement officers detained Umalt Boltiev, born in 1983, who from 1997 to 2006 was an accomplice and member of the bandit group of the Arab mercenary Abu Haws, who was killed on November 26, 2006. The detainee lived on Mayskaya Street and is currently being investigated.

The inheritance left by Luciano Pavarotti, estimated at $500 million, will be divided between his relatives and employees. According to the Italian agency AGI, 25 percent of this amount will go to the singer's widow Nicoletta Mantovani, 50 percent will be divided between the four daughters of the deceased, Lorenza, Cristina, Giuliana and Alice. The remaining 25 percent will go to his sister, friends and people who worked with him.

The Russian cities of Dzerzhinsk and Norilsk are included in the list of the ten most polluted cities in the world, compiled annually by the Blacksmith Institute in New York. Dzerzhinsk is a major center of the chemical industry in the Nizhny Novgorod region, and Norilsk is home to the main factories of the Norilsk Nickel company, owned by Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin.

In Iraq, on September 13, Sunni Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who headed the Salvation Council of Anbar Province, an association of Sunni tribes advocating cooperation with the Iraqi authorities and US troops, was killed, the Associated Press reports. Abu Risha and his two bodyguards were blown up by an explosive device planted on the road near the sheikh's house in the capital of Anbar province, Ramadi. The murder occurred ten days after Abu Risha met with US President George W.

In Primorye, two juvenile convicts were detained who escaped from the pre-trial detention center in the city of Artyom on September 3. According to RIA Novosti , on Wednesday police found 16-year-old Vitaly Farkov and 17-year-old Mikhail Ambarnikov near the village of Novaya Moskva, Shkotovsky district. They were hiding in an abandoned trailer in the forest. During the arrest, the teenagers did not offer active resistance; they were taken to the police station.

The main prize of the III International Muslim Film Festival "Golden Minbar", which ended on Wednesday in Kazan, went to the film "Baba Aziz" directed by Nasser Hamir, Interfax reports . Filmmakers from Switzerland, Germany, France, Hungary, Iran and Great Britain took part in the work on this film. "Baba Aziz" also won in the "best cinematography" category. The film tells the story of a little girl and her grandfather, a blind dervish, who travel through the desert meeting different people.

On September 12, the governor of the Georgian region of Shida Kartli, Mikhail Kareli, was fired, reports Novosti-Georgia news agency . This was preceded by the detention of officials in the city of Gori (Gori district of Shida Kartli) and a clash between deputies and police near the city parliament.

TV channels that will participate in covering the Duma election campaign have made a proposal that parties, before starting free campaigning on television, make a cash deposit, the Kommersant newspaper writes . If a party receives less than three percent of the vote, it must, by law, reimburse the costs of free broadcasting. In this case, the deposit will remain with the television company. And if the party overcomes the established threshold, the deposit will be returned to it.