TODAY: G8 concludes with pledge for aid, call for fighting should end, call for transitional government; Harper applauds Putin ‘shift’; all of Navalny’s defense witnesses to be barred from trial; Medvedev pledges to shut down Baikal Paper Mill; Gazprom skyscraper plans scuppered; same-sex couples adoption ban moves through parliament; Olympic theft; new telecoms giant; Aeroflot exec detained; 6,000 evacuated in military depot fire. 

 The G8 summit meeting’s conclusions on Syria are to pledge $1.5 billion in humanitarian aid and support for further talks ‘as soon as possible’.  President Vladimir Putin’s stance prevented any further consensus, says The Guardian, but Putin denied reports that he was the ‘odd man out’ at the conference – ‘Russia was never left to defend its approach to the Syrian problem on its own.’  Bloomberg says Putin’s agreement on a statement calling for the establishment of a ‘transitional government’ puts more pressure on Bashar al-Assad.  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Russia is ‘categorically against’ any peace conference involving ‘a public act of capitulation by the [Syrian] government delegation’, and Putin did not rule out the possibility of new arms contracts with Assad.  But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the final result represented ‘a real shift’ by Putin in calling for an end to the fighting.  Police in Moscow raided the home of Oleg Navalny, the brother of Alexei Navalny, in connection with charges of corruption and money laundering: ‘all the documents which contained figures were seized’.  All 13 defense witnesses at Alexei Navalny’s KirovLev trial have been barred from testifying.