Main news of September 29

RUSSIA

* A third high-ranking employee of the Euroset company, Russia's largest mobile handset retailer, has been detained in Moscow, a police source said

* The military and technical ties between Russia and Syria do not pose a threat to the balance of power in the Middle East, Russia's foreign minister said

* A pulp and paper mill in East Siberia started operating in a closed water cycle Monday, following probes over the plant's environmental impact on the world's largest freshwater lake, Baikal

* Russia will start deliveries of MiG-29K Fulcrum-D carrier fighters to India in the spring of 2009, the aircraft manufacturer's marketing director said

* Russia's United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) said Monday it had started talks with Indian firms on the delivery of SuperJet-100 passenger airliners and other civil aircraft to the country

* The Moscow City Court on Monday sentenced members of a gang accused of the high-profile early 1990s murder of sports official and reputed mafia boss Otari Kvantrishvili to prison terms ranging from 11 years to life

* Russia's warships currently on a long-range sortie to the Caribbean will conduct a number of exercises in the Atlantic Ocean, a Northern Fleet spokesman said

* Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights against the government's refusal to register his party, he said Monday in Strasbourg

* Russia's state-controlled Vnesheconombank has offered up to $50 billion to Russian banks and financial companies to help them meet their foreign liabilities, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said

* The presidents of Russia and South Korea agreed on Monday to work on a range of joint projects, including a pipeline to pump Russian gas via North Korea, and the linking of the Russian and Korean rail networks

* The head of the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom backed on Monday the IAEA's initiative to set up a nuclear fuel bank under the UN nuclear watchdog's supervision

* Russia has no plans to export nuclear submarines, the country's defense minister said on Monday during his visit to India

* Sulim Yamadayev, ex-commander of Russian Defense Ministry's Vostok battalion in Chechnya, said Monday his brother Ruslan had no blood feud enemies or business to be killed for

* A motion calling for Russia's participation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to be reduced over the country's war with Georgia was rejected by the PACE Bureau on Monday, a Russian lawmaker said

* Russia has started a tactical exercise in the country's Far East as part of the Stability-2008 strategic maneuvers, a military spokesman said

* Three residents of Abkhazia have been detained in Russia on suspicion of smuggling arms into the country, the Russian Interior Ministry said

* Kazan club Rubin lost 1-0 at home to FC Moskva on Sunday and saw their lead at the top of the Russian Premier League cut from nine points to seven as 2006 champions CSKA Moscow moved into second place

* Two Russian ships have arrived in South Korea to take part in joint anti-terror naval exercises, a Russian border guard spokesman said

* Six people including four policemen died on Monday morning when the van they were travelling in was hit from behind by a speeding truck on a highway leading into the Volga city of Ulyanovsk, a police source said

* Two 15 year-old boys from the northeastern Russian Republic of Yakutia are to face trial for the brutal murder of their classmate, a source in the local prosecutor's office said

* A car containing four dead bodies has been found in a reservoir near the village of Borodino in East Siberia's Krasnoyarsk Territory, a police source said

WORLD

* Europe's first automated cargo spacecraft, the Jules Verne, has been successfully "buried" in the Pacific after spending over five months docked with the ISS, the European Space Agency said

* Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko will pay a working visit to Moscow on Thursday at the invitation of her Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the Russian government said

* The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will visit Georgia on Tuesday to discuss an EU monitoring mission in the country's conflict zones, the Georgian parliament speaker said

* Russia will provide $17 million to help improve safety at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster, and fully decommission it, a top Russian nuclear official said

* The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Monday that Sunday's parliamentary elections in Belarus failed to fully meet OSCE standards, although there were some slight improvements

* The youth group of the People's Union opposition party in Estonia said Monday they plan to present a hearing aid to the country's prime minister, in the hope it will help him to listen to others

* The presidents of Russia and South Korea expressed concern Monday over North Korea's decision to suspend dismantling its nuclear facilities agreed on as part of a six-nation deal

* Kyrgyz prosecutors will send a repeat request to Russia for the extradition of ousted president Askar Akayev's son, who faces embezzlement charges, the Central Asian country's prosecutor general said

* Russia and India will jointly develop a new BrahMos-2 hypersonic cruise missile, the head of the BrahMos company said

* Israel will have to cede almost all territories occupied 41 years ago to achieve peace with the Palestinians, interim prime minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as telling a national daily

* The foreign tourists and their Egyptian guides who were kidnapped in southern Egypt over a week ago have been freed, the MENA news agency said

* The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will visit Georgia on Tuesday to discuss an EU monitoring mission in the country's conflict zones, the Georgian parliament speaker said

* Russia and India will jointly develop two versions of a new fifth-generation fighter, the head of an Indian defense company said

* Sales of bootleg spirits posing as Russian Stolichnaya vodka are on the rise in Afghanistan, the independent Afghan daily Arman-e Melli reported

* Over 900 troops from 21 countries have started NATO-led exercises in Armenia, the Armenian Defense Ministry said

* U.S. President George Bush will hold separate meetings in Washington on Monday with his Ukrainian and Lithuanian counterparts, the White House's press service said

* President George W. Bush has urged U.S. lawmakers to approve an amended $700 billion plan to buy up bad debt from banks to rescue the country's financial system

* Two people were killed when a powerful typhoon struck Taiwan over the weekend, national media reported

* Russia's defense minister is in New Delhi for talks with his Indian counterpart, a spokesman for the Russian minister said

* Mexico's government will pour billions of dollars into a resort to be built on the country's Pacific coast, set to be the largest sea resort in the world, President Felipe Calderon said

* At least five people were killed and 17 injured on Monday in an explosion that hit a bus carrying troops in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, al-Watania news agency said

* Six people were killed overnight in a landslide in Georgia's Black Sea autonomous republic of Adzharia, a government source said

* Discussions on issues related to the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia will be the focus of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) autumn session, which opens on Monday

* Two attacks by the radical Islamic Taliban movement have killed eight people in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, including a high-ranking female police officer

* Opposition candidates have so far failed to gain a single seat in parliamentary elections in Belarus, the head of the election committee said on Monday, citing preliminary results

BUSINESS

* The Russian Central Bank will grant state-controlled Vnesheconombank $50 billion from the country's international reserves to support the financial system, a deputy economic development minister said

* Capital inflow into Russia in 2008 will be less than $30 billion, a government official said

* Russian oil pipeline operator Transneft [RTS: TRNF] said on Monday its net profit calculated to International Financial Reporting Standards grew 40.4% year-on-year in January-March to 22.55 billion rubles ($902 million)

* Russia's leading gold miner Polyus Gold will discuss at its September 30 board meeting the prospect of buying 50.1% of shares in Kazakhstan's KazakhGold, a business daily reported

* The Russian government will lend $2.5 billion to Svyaz Bank to stabilize the struggling lender's work and enable it to meet its obligations, a government official said