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widely considered to be Putin's retribution for Khodorkovsky's political ambitions.
• Putin first spoke about pardon after a news conference on Thursday, saying that Khodorkovsky has applied for the pardon because his mother's health is deteriorating. The Kremlin's website published a decree Friday morning saying that Putin was "guided by the principles of humanity" when he decided to pardon Khodorkovsky.
• The development -- along with an amnesty for two jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band and the 30-member crew of a Greenpeace protest ship -- appears aimed at easing international criticism of Russia's human rights record ahead of February's Winter Olympics in Sochi, Putin's pet project.
• Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, would not say when or where his client would be released, but he said this may happen any moment.
• ___

• TOKYO (AP) -- The first humanoid robot in space made small talk with a Japanese astronaut and said it had no problem with zero gravity on the International Space Station.
• Footage released by the robot's developers on Friday showed Kirobo performing its first mission on the station, talking in Japanese with astronaut Koichi Wakata to test its autonomous conversation functions.
• Wakata says he's glad to meet Kirobo, and asks the robotic companion how it feels about being in a zero-gravity environment.
• "I'm used to it now, no problem at all," Kirobo quips.
• Kirobo is programmed to process questions and select words from its vocabulary to construct an answer, instead of giving pre-programmed responses to specific questions.
• ___

• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When the A&E network suspended "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson for disparaging gay people, it may have followed a time-honored TV tradition of quickly silencing a star who, for better or worse, speaks his mind. But in doing so it also ruffled the feathers of possibly millions of fans of its most popular show.

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