Main news of November 8

RUSSIA

* Gen. Yury Baluyevsky, Russia's chief of the general staff, said:

- Russia will no longer be bound by current weapons and equipment limitations after its moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty comes into force

- Any new Russia-U.S. agreement on strategic weapons reduction must eliminate the possibility that nuclear weapons could be stationed outside national borders

* Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, said Georgia's claim that the Kremlin orchestrated mass unrest in Tbilisi was prompted by the United States

* Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said:

- Russia considers events in Georgia, where a 15-day state of emergency was declared Wednesday night, a violation of human rights and democratic freedom

- The Russian Foreign Ministry has ordered three Georgian Embassy officials to leave the country in response to Georgian plans to expel Russian diplomats

* U.S. missile defense plans for Europe will be discussed with Russia at a high-level meeting in Washington in November, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said

* The Supreme Court upheld a ruling by top prosecutors refusing to exonerate Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family

* The release of a Russian national from a Swiss prison for killing an air traffic controller, was a positive step given the tragic circumstances of the murder, a senior Russian lawyer said

* Russia's intention to complete talks on its accession to the WTO by 2008 has the backing of the United States, said Igor Neverov, head of the Foreign Ministry's North America department

* Iran has no capability to build nuclear weapons that could reach U.S. territory within the next seven to 10 years, a Russian military expert said

* British consulates in Russia launched compulsory biometric data gathering for visa applicants, in line with the U.K.'s gradual introduction of the system for all nationals requiring visas

* The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) expects Russia's GDP to grow 7.2% this year and inflation to be 8.5%, the bank's transition report said

WORLD

* Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said, following a meeting of the National Security Council, that delays in parliamentary elections would be no more than a month, Pakistan state media reported

* Serb ultra-nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj, accused of crimes against humanity and six counts of war crimes, said the UN tribunal trying him was illegal

* Finland has held a day of mourning for the victims of Wednesday's school shooting, in which an 18-year-old student shot dead six pupils and two members of staff

* Poland's new coalition government is ready to meet all of Russia's demands for the resumption of Polish meat exports to the country, the Dziennik newspaper said

* A total of 34 miners were reported missing after a gas leak in a coal mine in the province of Guizhou in southwestern China, Xinhua news agency said

* Malaysia is in talks with Russia on sending a second cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2010-11, the Malaysian minister of science and technology said

* Four years after the 2003 "rose revolution" that propelled him to power, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is facing the same problems as his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze 

BUSINESS

* A massive oil and gas deposit has been discovered in Brazil, and could make the Latin American country one of the world's leading hydrocarbon producers, the government-controlled Petrobras energy holding said

* Itera might place 25% of its charter capital during an initial public offering planned for 2008, the head of the Russian natural gas producer said