Main news of July 17

RUSSIA

* Russian Orthodox Church officials dismissed as nonsense reports that a bishop defrocked for attempting to provoke a schism had "excommunicated" church leaders

* The Moscow City Court has refused to dismiss the jury in the trial of suspects in the 2006 murder of banking regulator Andrei Kozlov, a defense lawyer said

* Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said a review of the ruling United Russia party's membership list should avoid "excesses"

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for the country's law enforcement agencies to step up their work in the sphere of IT security

* A Russian ASW ship, the Severomorsk, arrived on Thursday in Norway's main naval base of Haakonsvern on its way to participate in a joint U.S.-Russian naval exercise in the Barents Sea, a Navy spokesman said

* A 13-year-old Siberian boy has been hospitalized after catching a plague-infected ground squirrel and bringing it home, Russia's top sanitary official said

* A newborn baby suffered eyesight damage after a nurse in the southwest Siberian city of Omsk accidentally poured glue into her eyes instead of eye drops, prosecutors announced

* Zenit St. Petersburg forward Andrei Arshavin wants his club to lower his 30-million-euro price tag so he can fulfill a childhood dream to play for Spanish giants Barcelona, the Sporting Life website said

* A decision on granting conditional release for imprisoned Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky could be reached within a month, a judge at a court in Chita, East Siberia, said

* Six people, including a four-month-old baby, died in a road accident in the Samara Region, in Russia's Volga area, on Thursday, a spokesman for a local emergency medical center said

* Russia's foreign minister said on Thursday that Western nations are blocking Moscow's plans for a non-violence pact between Georgia and its rebel region of Abkhazia by insisting on the return of Georgian refugees

* Moscow still believes in the necessity of direct negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday, five months after Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia

* Customs officers have seized over 900 ecstasy pills at Vladivostok airport in Russia's Far East and arrested three Russians suspected of drug-trafficking, a local customs spokesman said

* An East Siberian court ruled on Thursday to extend pre-trial custody until November 2 for Platon Lebedev, a business associate of jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky

* Three people, including two teenagers, were killed and five injured, when they were struck by lightning in the Russian Volga Republic of Bashkortostan, a local emergencies spokesman said

WORLD

* Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili reiterated on Thursday Tbilisi's commitment to resolving the "frozen conflict" with its breakaway republic of Abkhazia by peaceful means

* The Serbian parliament failed to vote on the ratification of a number of important international agreements, including an energy agreement with Russia

* Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Thursday that there was no need for Georgia and its breakaway republic of Abkhazia to sign a non-aggression pact proposed by Russia as the Caucasus state had no plans for an invasion of the region

* Black and white twins have been born to a mixed-race couple in Germany, the Die Welt newspaper reported

* German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he hoped the plan proposed by his country on the resolution of the Georgian- Abkhazian conflict would find wide support

* Georgia's self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia opened a mission in the capital of Transdnestr, Moldova's separatist republic

* The Seoul subway has taken down advertisements for Japanese condoms amid outrage in South Korea over Japan's renewed claim to a disputed group of islands

* British oil major BP criticized on Thursday Russian migration officials' statements that a new visa for Robert Dudley, CEO of joint venture TNK-BP, may not be renewed

* Thieves have stolen 100 kg of drugs from a Spanish police department, the El Pais newspaper said on its website

* A court in the Astrakhan Region, south Russia, will consider a criminal case against an Uzbek man accused of trying to smuggle items into Iran used in the production of weapons of mass destruction, Russian prosecutors said

* The son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has been detained by police in Geneva for attacking two hotel workers, the La Tribune de Geneve newspaper said

* A top U.S. Coast Guard official has told lawmakers that Russia is getting ahead of the United States in the "Arctic race" and the current U.S. administration must urgently revise its approach to Arctic exploration

* Thousands of mourners gathered at a military cemetery in the north Israeli town of Nahariya on Thursday for the first of two funerals for Israeli soldiers returned by Lebanese militants, Haaretz daily reported

BUSINESS

* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that the global economy will grow 4.1% in 2008, up from an initial forecast of 3.7% in April

* Techsnabexport, a Russian company that exports goods and services produced by the nuclear power sector, said on Thursday its uranium exports grew 30%, year-on-year, in 2007

* Stroytransgaz, one of Russia's largest engineering and construction companies, said on Thursday it had completed the construction of the first and second sections of a gas pipeline in India