Main news of October 31

RUSSIA

* Eight people died and over 50 were injured in a suspected terrorist blast on a bus in central Togliatti, a city on Russia's Volga River

* President Vladimir Putin said Russia will not allow other countries to put restrictions on its arms exports

* Western states have only provided 25% of $2 billion promised to help Russia destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons by 2012, a deputy head of the federal industry agency said

* Russia expects the United States to present its missile defense proposals in writing in the near future, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said

* President Putin has signed into law a bill on the establishment of a state corporation to manage the construction of facilities for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Kremlin said

* Russia's Foreign Ministry called on Russian peacekeepers stationed in the conflict zones of two of Georgia's breakaway republics to show restraint, despite provocation by Tbilisi

* The Moscow City Court upheld the arrest of General Alexander Bulbov, a senior drugs official suspected of abuse of office

* The Zheleznyakov minesweeper has joined a Turkey-led international operation to deter illegal trading and smuggling on the Black Sea, the Russian Navy's spokesman said

WORLD

* A court in Amsterdam ruled that the sale of Netherlands-based Yukos Finance, an overseas subsidiary of bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos, was illegal

* The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday approved by a 17-4 vote the ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and submitted it to the Senate for final consideration

* The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it had received an official invitation to monitor the December 2 Russian State Duma elections, but criticized the limit on the number of observers 

* The Turkish Army has killed 15 Kurdish insurgents in an ongoing operation in the southeast of the country near the Iraqi border, the military General Staff said

* Tehran is ready to propose new measures to settle the situation in Iraq at an upcoming international conference on Iraq due 2-3 November, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said

* Russian humanitarian aid has been delivered to the Palestinian territories' West Bank as part of Russia's effort to improve the worsening situation in the region, a diplomatic source said

* Tropical storm Noel killed around 30 people during torrential rains and mudslides in the Dominican Republic, before moving onto Cuba and the Bahamas and is due to hit Florida next

* The crew of a U.S. destroyer provided medical assistance to North Korean sailors injured whilst regaining control of their ship from Somali attackers, Korean news agencies reported

* The American Embassy in Azerbaijan will resume work, after being closed for two days due to reports of a planned terrorist attack, embassy spokesman Jonathan Henick said

* At least 14 people have died and more than 30 have been injured following floods caused by heavy rain in central Vietnam, the national flood and storm control committee said

BUSINESS

* Russian energy giant Gazprom and a private Turkish company signed a contract to supply annually 500 million cubic meters of Russian natural gas to Turkey until 2021

* RussNeft net profit decreased in January-September by some 50% to 4.5 billion rubles ($182 million), year-on-year, a company statement has reported

* Ukraine's prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, told the fuel and energy minister to complete talks with Russia on 2008 gas supplies by the end of next week

* Ukraine has paid for Russian natural gas supplies in 2007 in full, RosUkrEnergo, the sole gas supplier to the former Soviet republic, said in a statement