MOSCOW, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Russia has delivered to Syria S-300 air defense systems to improve safety of its military personnel deployed in the country, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.

"We have completed the delivery of S-300 systems. This includes 49 pieces of equipment: lighting locators, basic detection systems, control vehicles and four launchers," Shoigu said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of the Russian Security Council, according to a Kremlin transcript.

ROME, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The mayor of an Italian town which has been known for integrating refugees was put under house arrest on Tuesday for allegedly favoring illegal migration.

Domenico Lucano, the mayor of southern Italian town Riace, was also accused of organizing "marriages of convenience" between local men and foreign women and setting up systems aimed at bypassing rules for migrants to be allowed to live in Italy. His partner Tesfahun Lemlem faces the same accusations.

MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. US foreign policy during Donald Trump’s presidency has lost an ideological footing and has turned into an instrument for attaining economic objectives, including the ones in the energy sector, Frants Klintsevich, a member of the defense and security committee in the upper house of Russian parliament told TASS on Tuesday.

He said it in a comment on the findings by US public opinion researchers, who have registered a slide of popularity rankings of the US and its President across the world.

NEW YORK, October 2. /TASS/. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia has paid little attention to remarks of other states' permanent representatives at various international organizations, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The statement came in response to remarks by US Permanent Representative to NATO, Amb. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who said her country was ready to "take out" Russian missiles, perceived to be in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

DUBAI, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Dubai International Airport has hosted over 8 million passengers in August, the second consecutive month that saw the number of passengers exceed 8 million, said the Dubai government's media office Wednesday.

On average, the busy civil aviation hub recorded an average monthly traffic of 7.5 million passengers. "That's 1.2 million more than its closest rival London Heathrow of 6.29 million," said the report.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- The newly-elected Iraqi President Barham Salih on Tuesday named the Shiite independent politician Adel Abdul-Mahdi as prime minister-designate and tasked him with forming the next government, Iraq official television reported.

The state-run Iraqiya channel aired a footage showing that Salih received Mahdi with the presence of the parliament speaker, head of the judicial council and many officials and politicians and officially tasked Mahdi as the prime minister-designate to form the new government.

TOKYO; 3 Oct 2018; (AP) — A German-French observation device safely landed on an asteroid on Wednesday after a Japanese spacecraft released it as part of a research effort that could find clues about the origin of the solar system, Japanese space officials said.

The Japan Space Exploration Agency said the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout, or MASCOT, was released from the unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa2 and successfully landed on the asteroid Ryugu.

3 Oct 2018; AFP: The New York state tax department said Tuesday it is investigating reports that President Donald Trump helped his parents dodge millions of dollars in taxes and received far more money from his father's real estate empire than he has claimed in the past.

Earlier, The New York Times said its own exhaustive probe of a vast trove of tax returns and confidential records showed Trump had engaged in suspect tax tactics, including "outright fraud" that greatly inflated the funds he received from his parents.

Turkish police has surrounded the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul following disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, prominent Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, inside. Khashogg is thought to be in the building, Turkish sources have told Middle East Eye.

“Turkish authorities contacted their Saudi counterparts at around 9pm local time (7pm BST) on Tuesday evening, informing them that security forces had surrounded the consulate.”, said a source quoted by the Middle East Eye.

STOCKHOLM; 3 Oct 2018; DW: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was on Wednesday awarded to two Americans and a British man.

Frances H. Arnold (US), George P. Smith (US) and Sir Gregory P. Winter (Britain) will share the award.

The three scientists helped develop proteins that  "solve humankind's chemical problems," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said, adding that they "have taken control of evolution and used it for purposes that bring the greatest benefit to humankind."

New Delhi, Oct 3 (PTI) Justice Ranjan Gogoi was Wednesday sworn in as the 46th Chief Justice of India

He succeeds Justice Dipak Misra

President Ram Nath Kovind administered the oath to the 63-year-old Justice Gogoi at a brief ceremony in Rashtrapati Bhavan's Darbar Hall

Justice Gogoi will have a tenure of a little over 13 months and would retire on November 17, 2019.

Ghaziabad, Oct 2 (PTI) As thousands of farmers tried to enter the national capital in a massive protest march, the government Tuesday announced that a committee of chief ministers will look into their demands, even as the protesters stayed put saying they were not "satisfied" with the assurance.

After meeting the protesting farmers at the Delhi-UP border here, Union Minister of State for Agriculture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said the government was assuring the farmers to take forward their cause.