Main news of August 9

RUSSIA

* On the anniversary of the start of the Russia-Georgia war, President Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow would not revise its decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia

* A cargo ship with Russian crew went missing off Portugal's Atlantic coast, the Russian maritime journal Sovfrakht reported

WORLD

* The Basque separatist group ETA claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks in June and July that killed three people, CNN reported

* The number of people missing and feared drowned in the Tonga ferry disaster had risen to 93, local police said

* Nine people are feared dead after a small plane and a tourist helicopter collided Saturday near New York City and plunged into the Hudson River, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said

* China lifted a quarantine blockade on a remote northwestern town where pneumonic plague killed three and sickened twelve people, Chinese official news agency Xinhua reported

* Saudi Arabia closed the Jeddah office of a Lebanon-based TV station after it broadcast an interview with a Saudi man who boasted about his sexual conquests, a government official said