Main news of November 3

RUSSIA

* Four Russians tennis players are among the eight competitors in Doha this week ahead of Tuesday's opening matches in the WTA's $4.55 million end-of-season tournament

* A Russian Baltic Fleet tanker is to join a naval frigate involved in protecting merchant ships from pirates in African waters, a naval source said

* The Russian president's wife Svetlana Medvedeva visited an orphanage in St. Petersburg on Monday, and handed over a donation of $19,000 raised at fundraising events

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will speak about the situation in the Caucasus in his state of the nation address Wednesday

* Around 10,000 people stood outside the U.S. embassy in the pouring Moscow rain as part of a Halloween-themed protest organized by the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth group against U.S. foreign policy

* Joseph Alliluyev, the son of Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana, died in Moscow on Sunday

* A teenager was killed and another seriously injured when the scooter they were riding on crashed into two cars in the Novgorod Region, a traffic police source said

* Police recovered explosives and a home-made bomb from an arms cache in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, a law enforcement source said

* During his weekend visit to Moscow, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi accepted an invitation from the Chechen president to visit the North Caucasus republic in 2010, a spokesman for the president said

WORLD

* Georgia is ready to take a constructive part in discussions in Geneva on security and stability in the Caucasus region scheduled for November 18, the Foreign Ministry said

* The official mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Holy Land is seeking the retraction of a tax claim on a plot of Russian land near Tel Aviv, the mission's lawyer said Monday

* A Hamas delegation arrived in Egypt on Monday for discussions on an Egyptian plan to resolve the Palestinian political crisis, the MENA news agency reported

* Lack of trust in Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko means snap parliamentary elections are the only way out of Ukraine's political crisis, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said

* Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi met with Alexander Lukashenko on Monday and invited the invited Belarusian president to visit his country

* The Czech opposition Social Democratic Party demanded on Monday that the Constitutional Court examine the legality of agreements signed with the United States on deploying an anti-missile radar in the country

* All the news may be about Barack Obama and John McCain, but there are 255 other candidates running to be president of the United States in Tuesday's election

* Ukraine's Communist Party accused the government on Monday of burdening the nation with debt and filling the pockets of oligarchs by obtaining a $16.5 billion IMF loan, and announced plans for mass protests

* The South Korean government said on Monday that the latest photos released by North Korea of leader Kim Jong-il do not prove he is in good health

* Russian long-distance runner Ludmila Petrova said she was happy with her second place in New York's prestigious marathon

* At least 22 people have died and 45 others are missing after landslides hit a number of villages in southwest China, Xinhua reported