Main news of October 28

RUSSIA

* A jury took more than five hours to find former banker Alexei Frenkel guilty on Tuesday of organizing the murder of the first deputy head of Russia's Central Bank, a spokeswoman for the Moscow City Court said

* Ukraine is using the issue of the 1932-33 famine to divert the nation's attention from the ongoing political and economic crisis, Russia's envoy to the UN said

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday he expected to meet with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao at a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization in Peru on November 22-23

* The board of directors of Russian flagship air carrier Aeroflot has elected Transportation Minister Igor Levitin as its chairman, Aeroflot said

* Russia's foreign minister warned Georgia on Tuesday that its refusal to attend Geneva talks along with South Ossetian and Abkhazian representatives would threaten regional security

* Claims submitted by creditors in the third U.S.S.R. debt swap total around $675 million, with about $100 million in claims already admitted for exchange, a source in the Russian Finance Ministry said

* Russia and the European Union have agreed to continue unofficial talks on a pan-European security treaty, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* Russia is planning to expand military-technical cooperation with members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and build a CSTO integrated air defense network, the president said

* Russia and China signed on Tuesday an agreement for the construction of a pipeline branch to China as part of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline

* Russia's Admiralty Shipyard will move a new enhanced ice-class tanker, the Mikhail Ulyanov, from a dry dock to a wet dock on Friday for the final stages of construction work, its press service said

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Russia's state-run arms exporter are shortsighted, and will not have any negative impact on Russia

* Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed on Tuesday that Russia and China gradually switch over to national currency payments in bilateral trade, expected to total $50 billion in 2008

* Police have detained the leader of Ashram Shambala, one of Russia's largest sects, near the West Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a deputy police chief said

* During his upcoming visit to the Netherlands on October 30, Russia's foreign minister will give priority to trade and economic ties between the two countries, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said

* The Russian Central Election Commission is not sending any observers to monitor the U.S. presidential election scheduled for November 4, the top election official said

* Russian Fashion Week opened in Moscow on Tuesday, with organizers promising the spring-summer 2009 collections would shine through the "gloomy" outlook of the global financial crisis

* A Chita district court in East Siberia rejected on Tuesday an appeal by lawyers of jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev against investigators

* Three militants including a ring leader have been killed in a special police operation in the Chechen capital, a local police source said

* A missile frigate from Russia's Baltic Fleet has started patrolling waters in the Gulf of Aden to protect Russian ships and crews from pirate attacks, a Navy spokesman said

WORLD

* Syria has appealed to the UN after a U.S. attack over the weekend left eight civilians dead and 14 others injured, national media reported

* An Egyptian doctor, who prescribed strong painkillers to a Saudi Arabian princess, has been sentenced to a jail term and 1,500 lashes, the Middle East Times newspaper reported

* Egypt's health ministry has set up a special commission to find out how a 13-year-old girl from the country's Sharqia province could have survived without food and water for more than a year, the MENA news agency said

* North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is quickly recovering from an apparent stroke and is well enough to run the country, Seoul's Yonhap news agency quoted South Korea's intelligence chief as saying

* A statement issued by Israel's parliament on Tuesday said that elections would be held in mid-February

* Iraq has already lost $20 - $30 billion over the current global financial crisis, a government daily quoted the deputy chairman of the Iraq's oil and gas committee as saying

* The first Russian-made freight plane built for China by the Aviastar-SP aircraft maker has landed at Tianjin Airport, a spokesman for a Russian air company said

* EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the European Union justice mission to Kosovo (EULEX), which has been opposed by Serbia, could be fully deployed in December, Belgian media reported

* A Georgian general who announced Georgia's 'counterattack' against South Ossetia before an official decision had been made by the leadership faced a grilling by a parliamentary commission in Tbilisi

* Italy will extradite to Russia its national Oleg Akimenko charged with fraud, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office said

* More than 11,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and move to higher ground in the northern part of Sulawesi, Indonesian media reported

* The son of Georgia's first post-Soviet president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia in September, has been released on bail, Georgia's Imedi television company said

* The 4th Iran Kish Air Show-2008 opened on Tuesday in the Persian Gulf, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported

* Iran's envoy to the UN told its General Assembly on Tuesday that his country would not give in to UN Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment

* Kazakhstan has postponed the start of production at a major Caspian Sea oil field from 2011 to 2013, the country's energy and mineral resources minister said

* North Korea warned on Tuesday that it would carry out military strikes against the South if activists continue to send propaganda leaflets criticizing the regime and "slandering" leader Kim Jong-il

* Ukraine's Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc has withdrawn its lawsuit against a presidential decree dissolving parliament and calling early parliamentary elections, a spokesman for the bloc said

* The European Union could resume in November talks on a new cooperation pact with Russia, temporarily put on hold last month over Russia's military operation in Georgia, the French foreign minister said

* Sudan will deploy security officers to protect foreign oil workers following the killing of five Chinese nationals on Monday, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said

* An independent international investigation into the August conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia will be led by an expert from Switzerland, the French foreign minister said

BUSINESS

* Russian state-controlled crude producer Rosneft said on Tuesday its net profit under Russian Accounting Standards increased 130%, year-on-year, in January-September to 206.36 billion rubles ($7.6 billion)

* Altimo, which holds 44% of voting stock in Russia's second largest mobile operator, VimpelCom, has filed a petition with an Omsk arbitration court asking it to unfreeze its arrested shares

* The presidium of Russia's Supreme Arbitration Court on Tuesday reduced back tax claims to oil company RussNeft by 11.7 billion rubles ($427 million) to 8.1 billion rubles ($296 million)

* The rail monopoly, Russian Railways (RZD), warned that its net profits for 2008 are expected to be 50% less than predicted due to the ongoing global financial crisis, RZD CEO Vladimir Yakunin said

* Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of energy giant Gazprom, posted on Tuesday a 51% year-on-year increase in net profit calculated to Russian Accounting Standards in January-September to 83.4 billion rubles ($3 billion)