Main news of October 10

RUSSIA

* Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy held on Wednesday a detailed discussion over bilateral cooperation, the Russian leader told a joint news conference

* French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Russian and French positions had become closer with regard to Iran's nuclear program

* Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled a memorial to French WWII pilots in a Moscow park

* Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Latvia and Estonia of being lenient towards attempts to glorify the Nazis, and the European Union of remaining indifferent to the process

* Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, told a popular weekly that the FSB had identified over 300 foreign spies over the past four years

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:

- The international community should wait for the UN watchdog to provide its report on Iran's controversial nuclear program before taking any action

- Payment for natural gas supplies from Russia to Ukraine is not a political issue

* Moscow has called on Ankara to exercise restraint and desist from the use of force against Kurdish militants based in Iraq, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said

* The coach of the Russian national soccer team, Guus Hiddink, agreed to extend his contract with the Russian Football Union, the union president said

* The removal of Lenin's body from his tomb on Red Square should be decided by a referendum, a senior Kremlin official said

* At least 717 people, including 654 children under 17, have fallen victim to a mass food poisoning outbreak in southern Russia believed to be caused by local dairy products, local prosecutors said

* One serviceman and two gunmen have been killed and five other people injured in separate clashes in Russia's southern republic of Chechnya, a local police source said

WORLD

* A Palestinian gunman linked to the pro-presidential Fatah movement was shot dead in a clash with Israeli troops in the town of Nablus in the West Bank, local radio reported

* Islamist group Hamas called on Wednesday on all Arabic countries to boycott the international Middle East peace conference scheduled for November in the U.S.

* Gerhard Ertl of Germany won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces, a key to understanding the effects of pollution on the ozone layer

* A Russian Soyuz TMA-11 spaceship carrying members of the 16th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), including Malaysia's first astronaut, was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan

* The 15-nation UN Security Council once again failed to agree on a possible plan of action if negotiations between Serbia and its breakaway province of Kosovo produce no result by December 10

* The Iraqi Interior Ministry launched an investigation into the murder of two local women by employees of a foreign security firm in Baghdad, ministry spokesman, Abdel Karim Khalaf, said

* Over 4,000 members of a pro-Pyongyang group gathered in Tokyo to demand that the Japanese government lift all sanctions against North Korea, Kyodo News said

* A high-ranking Islamist terrorist, Hareg Zoheir, also known as Sofiane Abu Fasila, has been killed in a clash with Algerian troops, local media said

* Thailand will send 800 peacekeepers to Sudan's western province of Darfur where they will join United Nations and African Union peacekeeping units at the end of the year, Thai media said

* Arizona authorities may demand the extradition of a tuberculosis patient who fled to Russia, if he is found to have broken U.S. laws, a local official said

* Spanish police broke up an organized crime group which brought young women from Russia to Spain and forced them to work as prostitutes, a police official said

BUSINESS

* Inflation will exceed 9% in 2007 in Russia, Economic Development and Trade Minister Elvira Nabiullina said

* The Russian budget saw a surplus of 1.6 trillion rubles ($64 billion) in the first nine months of 2007, the Finance Ministry said