Main news of December 24

RUSSIA

 * President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with leading Russian television channels:

- Ukraine must pay its natural gas debt to Russia in full or otherwise Kiev could face disruptions in supplies

- relations between Russia and Ukraine had plunged to their lowest level in recent years

* Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz are unlikely to agree a new gas contract before January 1, but Russian gas supplies to Europe will be unaffected, a spokesman for the Russian gas giant 

* A complex of Topol-M (SS-27 Stalin) ICBMs entered service with another missile regiment in central Russia, a Strategic Missile Forces spokesman said 

* A court has upheld a parole request from a former Russian military officer, Yury Budanov, sentenced to 10 years in jail for the murder of a young Chechen woman, a prosecutor's office spokesman said

* The bodies of five homeless people who were apparently hacked to death with a sharp instrument have been found in the town of Zvenigorod near Moscow, a police official said 

WORLD

* Azerbaijan's Constitutional Court has approved amendments to the Constitution which will allow the president to be elected an infinite number of times, the court chairman said

* Russia and Serbia signed an oil and gas agreement during an official visit by Serbian President Boris Tadic to Moscow

* Russia's Air Force has completed the deployment of personnel and hardware of a Russian helicopter group to Chad, an Air Force spokesman said

* A gas leak in a blast furnace at a steel plant in northern China has left at least 17 workers dead and 27 injured, the Xinhua news agency said

* Kyrgyzstan's main opposition parties signed an agreement to form an alliance and demanded the resignation of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev

* Former U.S. world champion Evander Holyfield filed an appeal with the World Boxing Association protesting his points defeat to Russia's WBA Heavyweight World Champion Nikolai Valuev

* International forces in Afghanistan have killed six Taliban militants in Kabul province in an operation against the radical Islamist movement's terrorist network, the U.S. military said in a statement

* Israeli armed forces killed three Palestinian militants in a border shootout in northern Gaza, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces said 

BUSINESS

* Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) imposed a $53 million fine on state-run oil giant Rosneft and a $51 million fine on Russia's largest independent crude producer LUKoil 

* A Ford factory near Russia's second city of St. Petersburg said it had shut down its assembly lines until January 21