Main news of June 9

WORLD

* The United States will maintain close relations with Israel despite current differences over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the president's special envoy to the region said

* Russia has expanded its list of banned food products from Belarus to include most dairy products, the head of Russia's consumer rights regulator said

* A delegation of 41 European Parliament members arrived in Gaza on Tuesday to study the situation in the war-torn Palestinian enclave

* Air France has said it will replace all of its airspeed monitors on its A330s and A340s in the next few days over concerns that faulty instruments may have caused last week's crash in the Atlantic

* A domestic company's purchase of the GM's gas-guzzling Hummer brand goes against China's environmental policies, Xinhua agency said on Tuesday citing an official with the cabinet's Development Research Center

* At least three people were killed and another 39, most of them civilians, wounded in an explosion in east Afghanistan early on Tuesday, a local police chief said

* The main challenger in the Iranian presidential elections has promised to uncover what the current president's administration did with some $1 billion reportedly missing from state funds

* Over 20,000 members of the Georgian opposition marched from the country's parliament to the interior ministry building in the capital Tbilisi on Tuesday to mark two months of protests in the country

* A team of Swedish and Finnish divers have located the wreckage of a Soviet WWII S-type diesel submarine near the Aland islands in the Baltic Sea, a Swedish news agency said

* China has called on the U.S. and South Korea to use a diplomatic approach to resolve disputes with North Korea, a senior Chinese diplomat said

* The death toll in Monday's attack at a mosque in southern Thailand has reached 12 as two people died in hospitals overnight, the Bangkok Post reported

* The Brazilian Navy has recovered a large section of the tail fin of an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic last week, and a total of 24 bodies have also been found

RUSSIA

* Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko has been chosen as a candidate for the post of UNESCO director general, the organization said in a press release

* Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan intend to join the WTO as a single customs union, not individually, the Russian prime minister said

* The situation in the North Caucasus remains complicated, with 308 terrorism-related crimes committed since the start of the year, the Russian president said

* A Russian lawmaker who is blacklisted from entering Ukraine has returned from the country after a failed attempt to attend a Russian language festival, Russia’s consulate in Simferopol said

* Russia's Pacific Fleet task force led by the Admiral Panteleyev destroyer is heading back to its base in Vladivostok after an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden, a Fleet statement said

* Russia's consumer rights regulator Rospotrebnadzor has banned the imports of another 800 dairy products from Belarus, the watchdog's head told RIA Novosti

* The prosecution is demanding that fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky be given a 15-year prison term in absentia for his part in embezzling 140 million rubles ($4.5 mln), a court-appointed lawyer said

* Russia's foreign minister denied on Tuesday that practical cooperation with Belarus, including granting a loan, was linked to the country's recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence

BUSINESS

* Russia's federal budget deficit increased in May by 140.9 billion rubles ($4.5 billion), to reach 511 billion rubles ($16.3 billion) for the first five months of the year, the Finance Ministry said

* Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin suggested on Tuesday that Eurasec's anti-crisis fund could be used to grant Belarus a $500 million loan