Main news of April 15

RUSSIA

* Outgoing president Vladimir Putin agreed to become chairman of the country's largest party, United Russia, a post allowing him to retain key powers when he becomes premier next month

* Russia has prepared arms contracts worth $3 billion for outgoing president Vladimir Putin's visit to Libya this week, Vedomosti business daily said citing defense and aircraft industry officials

* Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Silvio Berlusconi, newly re-elected as Italian premier, in Sardinia on April 17 and 18, a Kremlin spokesman said

* Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin denied allegations that Russia had threatened to block a second term for UN chief Ban Ki-moon over his position on Kosovo

* Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave assurances that in a recent speech to NATO leaders, President Vladimir Putin did not seek to undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine

* Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak accused of attempting to embezzle state funds has sent his own testimony to investigators due to their failure to question him, business daily Kommersant said

* Laboratory tests confirmed the presence of a deadly strain of bird flu in a village in the Primorye Territory, in Russia's Far East, where ten birds suddenly died last week, local officials said

* Four volunteers will spend ten days in a decompression chamber with a reduced oxygen level as preparation for Mars-500, a Russian ground-based experiment to simulate a flight to Mars

* A pair of 1892 paintings by Russian artist Ivan Aivazovsky, known for his seascapes, were sold for $2.393 million on Tuesday at a Sotheby's auction in New York

WORLD

* Billionaire and twice former premier Silvio Berlusconi has won his third general election in Italy, but faces major challenges turning around the country's economic slowdown

* Pope Benedict XVI left Rome for a six-day tour of the United States, the Italian news agency Apcom reported

* Iranian Deputy Commander-in-Chief Mohammad Reza Ashtiani warned that his military will wipe Israel off the world map if the Zionists attack the Islamic Republic

* The radical Islamic group Hamas is planning to launch an offensive to break through Gaza's border with Egypt for the second time, Egyptian state daily Al-Ahram reported

* Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter angered Israel on Tuesday by meeting a former Hamas minister in the West Bank

* Joint Georgian-U.S. military exercises Immediate Response 2008 will be held near Georgia's capital Tbilisi in July, the Georgian Defense Ministry said

* Hundreds of Tibetan exiles and Buddhist monks held a rally in front of the United Nations building in New York demanding an independent investigation into the March protests in Tibet

* South Ossetia, a breakaway Georgian republic, opened an embassy on Tuesday in the capital of the other unrecognized Georgian republic, Abkhazia

* The crew of over 30 people on board a luxury French yacht, which Somali pirates held captive for almost a week, has arrived at Orly Airport in Paris, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said

* Israel's military performed the first successful test of an imitation Iranian missile, a national radio station said

BUSINESS

* Russian companies raised a record $31 billion from initial and secondary public offerings (IPOs/SPOs) in 2007, the Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange (MICEX) said

* Russia's largest independent crude producer LUKoil has qualified to bid at tenders for Iraqi oil and gas licenses, the company's overseas subsidiary said