Main news of September 25

RUSSIA

* The Russian Federal Air Transportation Agency ordered on Thursday six air companies to impose a temporary ban on the flights of Boeing-737-500, modification VP-BKT, aircraft

* The Russian government should take concrete steps to reactivate the country's nuclear icebreaker fleet, the Russian prime minister said

* Russia may have to pay $1.5-2 billion a year to Ukraine for the lease of the Sevastopol naval base, if the Black Sea Fleet stays there after 2017, a Russian expert close to talks said

* Russia now has enough evidence to try in international courts those people guilty of war crimes during Georgia's assault on South Ossetia in August, the country's top investigation body said

* The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Russia to pay $206,000 in compensation to the relatives of two groups of Chechens killed or abducted in the republic in 1999 and 2002

* Russia's agriculture minister said on Thursday that Moscow's accession to the World Trade Organization would essentially mean the end of the global trade body

* Georgia plans to open a museum exposing what Tbilisi calls Russia's acts of aggression in the recent conflict over South Ossetia, the culture minister said

* Russia's Finance Ministry said on Thursday that the liquidity situation was stabilizing and would improve, and that more banks could bid for budget funds the government has made temporarily available to further boost liquidity

* Russia has put into orbit three Glonass navigation satellites after a successful launch from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, Russia's space agency said

* Russia plans to influence world oil prices, including by revising its output forecasts, the Russian energy minister said

* An inmate at a high-security prison in Russia's Volga city of Samara died in hospital from injuries suffered in Tuesday's riot and subsequent fire, bringing the death toll to two, investigators said

* Russia's president said on Thursday that the modernization of the Armed Forces needed to move faster, with priority being given to new, advanced weaponry and improving the conditions for service personnel

WORLD

* The Ukrainian prime minister's bloc hopes for a deal with pro-presidential political forces on a new "orange" coalition to prevent early parliamentary elections, a senior bloc member said

* Work on a monument to German soldiers who died in WWII is underway at the site of a former death camp in the small Latvian city of Salaspils, the Salaspils Vestis paper said

* China's Shenzhou-7 spacecraft, carrying three astronauts, lifted off on Thursday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country's northwestern Gansu Province

* Belgium should veto Georgia's bid to join NATO after its attack on breakaway South Ossetia last month, senior Belgian lawmakers said

* Border controls between Russia and South Ossetia could cease to exist under provisions included in a recently- signed bilateral friendship and cooperation agreement, the Russian premier said

* The group of 11 foreign tourists and eight Egyptians kidnapped in southwest Egypt last week has been taken to Libya, the Al Arabiya news channel reported Thursday, citing the Sudanese government

* A 13-year-old boy was killed on Thursday in an explosion on the outskirts of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, a spokesman for the disputed Georgian republic's information and press committee said

* Russia will provide Venezuela with a $1 billion loan to buy Russian weapons, a Kremlin source said

* Ukraine has reached a preliminary agreement with the United States on the extradition of former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who faces corruption and embezzlement charges at home, the presidential press service said

* India, Iran, France and South Korea are the latest countries to ban dairy products from China, where four children have died and thousands have been affected by melamine-tainted milk since early September

* Iran's president says his country will soon send up a rocket that will put the country's first domestically launched satellite into orbit, his press service said

* Russian striker Roman Pavlyuchenko opened his account in English soccer on Wednesday evening with a goal for Tottenham in their 2-1 win over Newcastle United in the Carling Cup

* Eight people, including six schoolgirls, were killed when the truck they were traveling in plunged into a canal in the northern Egyptian province of Sharqia, the MENA news agency said

* The Chinese government, which has come under strong international criticism for its role in Tibet, released a report on Thursday denying "cultural genocide" in the province and denouncing the Dalai Lama's "lies"

* The launch date for space shuttle Atlantis to service the Hubble Space Telescope has been postponed from October 10 to 14, NASA said in a statement

* Ukrainian and Russian delegations will hold a new round of discussions on Thursday in Kiev on the role of Russia's Crimean naval base in the Georgia conflict, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said

* The six negotiators on the Iranian nuclear issue will meet in the coming days at the level of foreign ministries' political directors due to the postponement of ministerial talks, France's Foreign Ministry said

* Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will arrive in Russia later on Thursday to meet with his Russian counterpart and sign new political and financial agreements

BUSINESS

* The International Monetary Fund is keeping its Russia 2008 inflation forecast at 13.8%, Paul Tomsen, the head of the IMF mission in Russia, said

* Russia's Central Bank made a profit from investing a part of the country's international reserves in U.S. mortgage bonds, despite the subprime mortgage crisis, the president's economic adviser said

* Sberbank and leading Russian brokerage Troika Dialog both rejected reports on Thursday that the state-run retail savings bank had purchased the investment company

* Russia's Finance Ministry will hold auctions on September 30 and October 1 offering banks up to 500 billion rubles ($20 billion) in temporarily available budget funds to boost liquidity, the ministry said