Main news of August 29

RUSSIA

* Andrei Lugovoi, the U.K.'s key suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, said:

- He had not traveled to Britain for questioning because the country's authorities never invited him

- The Crown Prosecution Service has no evidence to prove his guilt

- Businessman Boris Berevovsky was involved in the Litvinenko murder, as well as in a number of high-profile murders

- He will not go to Britain as the situation has become too politicized

* A Russian military expert said Georgia falsified facts in accusing Russia of firing a missile on its territory earlier this month

* Russian prosecutors said they were studying Colombia's request to extradite an Israeli citizen convicted in absentia of training paramilitaries in Colombia and captured at a Moscow airport

* Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said that officials whose behavior led to the death of a conscript at the Plesetsk space center August 15 should be severely punished

* The legislature of the Samara Region on Russia's Volga approved Vladimir Artyakov, the head of local automaker AvtoVAZ, as governor, following the president's nomination

WORLD

* Representatives of the Crown Prosecution Service in Britain admitted that they had sent Russia just a summary of the main evidence against Andrei Lugovoi, suspected of Alexander Litvinenko's murder, but called it standard practice

* South Korea's government confirmed that Taliban insurgents had released twelve of 19 Korean Christian volunteers being held hostage in central Afghanistan, Seoul's Yonhap agency said

* The Iranian ambassador to Iraq confirmed that a group of Iranian energy officials arrested by U.S. troops on Tuesday night had been released, Tehran's official news agency IRNA reported

* Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has agreed to let Oscar-winning U.S. film director Oliver Stone make a documentary film about his life

* The situation in Greece, which has been devastated by forest fires and left 63 dead, is steadily improving with only 23 fires still burning in two regions, a Greek fire service source said

* Capturing Israeli soldiers is the only way to free jailed Palestinians, a Gaza-based leader of the Islamist group Hamas said

* Russia's Baltic Fleet vessels will join the Open Spirit 2007 international exercise in the Baltic Sea, which begins August 31, a spokesman for the Russian Navy said

* Tajikistan's government made the decision to revoke a cooperation agreement, signed in October 2004, with Russia's aluminum giant RusAl to construct the Rogun hydropower station