Main news of July 31

WORLD

* Moldova's dominant Communist Party said on Friday it may go into opposition if liberal parties form a coalition in the new parliament after this week's general election

* A Norwegian-registered cargo ship with six Russian and Ukrainian crew sank in a heavy storm in the North Sea off Sweden

* The space shuttle Endeavour touched down at 10:48 a.m. EDT (14:48 GMT) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said

* Moldova's dominant Communist Party won this week's general election, but opposition parties will have a majority of seats in the new parliament, according to the latest results

* At least 46 people were injured on Friday in an explosion at a bell factory in northern France, France Info radio reported

* The leader of South Ossetia has demanded Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili be tried in court as a war criminal for giving orders to attack the republic's capital, Tskhinval

* One of the Ukrainian diplomats to be expelled by Russia as part of the tit-for-tat row has been named as Igor Berezkin, a source in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was cited by the UNIAN news agency as saying

RUSSIA

* Police in central Moscow detained almost 50 protesters, including Eduard Limonov, a leader of the Other Russia opposition coalition, over an attempt to hold an unauthorized march

* The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who is in Ukraine on a 10-day visit, has arrived in the Crimean city of Simferopol

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived on Friday in Kyrgyzstan for an informal regional security treaty organization summit

* A Moscow Region court sanctioned the arrest of a man accused of attempting to murder Isa Yamadayev, whose two brothers were gunned down in Moscow and Dubai over a seven-month period, a court spokeswoman said

* Moscow police are conducting a manhunt for the killer of a top manager at one of Russia's largest defense firms, Almaz-Antei, a law enforcement source told RIA Novosti

* Russia's Nerpa nuclear attack submarine, damaged in a fatal accident during tests in November last year, started on Friday the second stage of new sea trials, a source involved in the tests said