RUSSIA
* Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has urged Turkey to sustain the high volume of mutual trade achieved in recent years
* Russia's Federal Security Service will send a plane to the former Georgian republic of Abkhazia carrying 15 metric tons of humanitarian aid and school supplies, a spokesman said
* Around 3,000 schoolchildren from Moscow and surrounding regions gathered on Red Square to enroll in the communist Pioneer Movement, and paid their respects at Lenin's mausoleum
* Three police officers and one civilian have died in militant attacks in separate incidents in Russia's North Caucasus over the past 24 hours, local police said
WORLD
* Sri Lanka's military said that the tens of thousands of civilians who had been held hostage by Tamil Tiger separatists in the country's northern war zone have escaped, and that the rebels are now trapped
* Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington for talks with the United States president on a new Mideast peace road map
* The global caseload of human swine flu cases has reached 8,480 in 39 countries, the World Trade Organization said
* Two astronauts have made a third spacewalk to complete repairs of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA reported
* The first human case of A/H1N1 influenza has been confirmed in China's capital, bringing the number of human swine flu cases in mainland China to three, the news agency Xinhua reported
* Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called for communist statues to be removed and Soviet street names to be changed, in a speech on the country's Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
* Uzbek security officers have seized a large batch of drugs from
Afghanistan, a spokesman for the National Security Service said
SPORT
* World No. 1 Dinara Safina beat Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark to win the Madrid Open women's singles title
* Russia's Yevgeniya Kanayeva took gold medals in all four individual events at the Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championship in Azerbaijan
