Main news of April 2

RUSSIA

* The U.S. president will meet briefly with Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev after talks with outgoing leader Vladimir Putin in southern Russia on April 6, a Kremlin official said

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:

- Russia will offer a pragmatic response to NATO's possible eastward expansion

- Kosovo can never be a UN member, and that Moscow will work with like-minded states to ensure the issue of the province's status is reconsidered

- The government would study closely a proposal by the Russian parliament to recognize the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia

* A member of the Russian doomsday sect that has been holed up in an underground shelter in central Russia for five months came to the surface, bringing with her two young children

* Russia's largest home electronics retailer Eldorado's central office has been searched over charges of tax evasion, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said

* Inmates at central Moscow's Butyrka detention center staged a riot against alleged beatings by prison staff, but the Federal Penitentiary Service denied the allegations

* A road-side explosion killed a passer by on a highway in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian southern republic of Daghestan, a local police spokesman said

WORLD

* No tangible progress has been made during ongoing Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said

* Seoul has urged North Korea to put an end to its increasingly aggressive verbal attacks, the Yonhap news agency reported

* Poland will not agree to the permanent presence of Russian military observers at a proposed U.S. missile base on its territory, the foreign minister said

* Venezuela and Uruguay plan to have their own communications satellite in space by the end of 2008, Mexican media reported

* An IL-76 cargo plane of the Russian Emergencies Ministry carrying 40 tons of humanitarian aid to ethnic Serbs in Kosovo landed at a Belgrade airport

* Belarus has cut its diplomatic staff in its embassy in the U.S. to seven and is advising the U.S. to follow suit, a deputy Belarusian foreign minister said

BUSINESS

* Russian President Vladimir Putin said:

- Russian authorities will continue to create favorable conditions for foreign investors

- Russia's trade with Italy grew to a record high of $36 billion last year

* Russia's lower house of parliament approved a bill restricting foreign investors' access to key sectors of the Russian economy

* Cuba's Minister of Government Ricardo Cabrisas said Havana and Russia need to overcome past differences in their relationship and boost trade links, a Cuban news agency reported

* Inflation in Russia stood at 1.2% and 4.8% in March and in the first three months of 2008, respectively, the Statistics Service said

* Russian energy giant Gazprom plans to produce 561 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2008, a company official said

* The average price of Russia's benchmark Urals crude blend was $93.36 per barrel in the first quarter of 2008, up $39.12 year-on-year, a senior Finance Ministry official said

* Italian power company Enel plans to invest around 9 billion euros ($14 bln) in the Russian economy over the next five years, a Russian presidential aide said