Main news of July 16

RUSSIA

* The Russian Orthodox Church is holding services and processions across the country on Wednesday and Thursday to commemorate the killing of the last Russian tsar and his family 90 years ago

* Paratroopers from Russia's 76th Airborne Division arrived in North Ossetia to participate in the active stage of large-scale military exercises in the North Caucasus

* The Primorye Territory in Russia's Far East is lagging behind in preparations for the 2012 APEC summit to be held near Vladivostok, a senior government official said

* Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of bankrupt oil company Yukos, filed an application with a Siberian court requesting his early release

* Police have arrested a man on charges of throwing a home-made explosive device at a group of women believed to be prostitutes on a highway near Moscow during the night, local police said

* Russia's richest woman, the wife of the Moscow mayor, has bought the second largest house in London after Buckingham Palace for $100 million, British media reported

* UEFA Cup holders Zenit St. Petersburg were held to a 0-0 draw by Luch Energiya in Vladivostok, Far East, in a match that the side's Dutch trainer Dick Advocaat had said was vital to the team's chances of retaining its Premier League title

* Russia's Supreme Court ruled to reject an appeal filed by the Communist Party to annul the results of the December 2 parliamentary polls

WORLD

* Iran will not give in to the West's threats and will continue work on its nuclear program, the Islamic Republic's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said

* About 40 people were killed and several dozen injured when a train collided with a bus and several cars at a railway crossing in northern Egypt, MENA news agency reported

* Five Lebanese militants, freed from Israeli prisons after the Shiite group Hezbollah handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, arrived in Lebanon

* Russia's large-scale military exercises in the North Caucasus is another manifestation of aggression against Tbilisi, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reiterated a proposal to hold a pan-European summit to draw up a common security treaty 

* The Sea Launch consortium has successfully launched the EchoStar XI broadcast satellite from its ocean-based platform in the Pacific Ocean

* Two Russian astronauts on the International Space Station successfully completed a six-hour spacewalk, Russia's mission control said  

* Russia has refused to extradite a former Ukrainian security service deputy head suspected of involvement in the poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office

BUSINESS

* Russian energy giant Gazprom reserves the right to take Belarus to court if the country fails to pay in full for Russian natural gas supplies, the company said

* Tatneft, one of Russia's top 10 oil producers, announced Wednesday plans to drill exploratory oil wells in Libya and Syria

* The Russian oil pipeline operator Transneft, the Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP, and Russia's largest crude producer Rosneft have signed a swap agreement on oil supplies to cut their costs, Transneft said

* Russian state nuclear fuel producer Tvel has won a tender to supply enriched uranium to power plants in Slovakia up to 2015, Slovak power utility Slovenske elektrarne said

* Superjet International said it had secured orders for the sale of 25 Superjet 100 medium-haul passenger airliners with the Swiss leasing company AMO and an undisclosed European client worth $750 million

*  Russia's United Aircraft Building Corporation (UABC) and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) signed a contract to convert Airbus A320 passenger planes into freighters

* Russia's industrial output grew 5.8%, year-on-year, in the first six months of 2008, the country's top statistics body said