WORLD
* French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Kazakhstan on Tuesday for a state visit to discuss energy cooperation, military transit and strengthening democracy in the former Soviet state
* The U.S. will go ahead with the deployment of a Patriot missile battery in Poland, a Polish radio station said
* A reconciliation pact between the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas will be signed on October 26 in Cairo, the Egyptian foreign minister said
* North Korea's leader said his country is willing to return to six-nation talks on ending its nuclear weapons program
* The presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia will meet on October 8 in the Moldovan capital Chisinau to discuss the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, a Russian mediator said
* Moscow possesses no information to suggest that Russian scientists are secretly involved in the development of Iran's nuclear program, national security chief Nikolai Patrushev said
* The Indonesian Navy is planning to arm its new patrol boats with Russian and Chinese missiles, the Antara national news agency reported
* The Opel plant in the Belgian city of Antwerp is likely to be closed by the carmaker's new owners and production could be moved to Russia, the Belgian economic magazine Trends said
* Three scientists shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for helping develop fiber optic cables and digital photography technology
RUSSIA
* A Moscow court upheld on a refusal by city authorities to allow a lesbian couple to marry
* Russia's largest carmaker, AvtoVAZ, urgently needs 70 billion rubles ($2.33 bln) to stay afloat, the Kommersant business daily said
* The Russian crew of a commercial vessel impounded for debts in Bulgaria's Burghas sea port has asked a trade union federation to step in, a federation official said
* Russian officials have held "secret meetings" with Arab states, as well as China and France on ending the use of the U.S. dollar in international oil trading, Britain's Independent newspaper reported
* Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he was satisfied with a Moscow court decision ordering the Memorial rights group and its head Oleg Orlov to pay him 70,000 rubles ($2,350) in libel damages
* The Russian government expects privatization of state property in 2010 to yield 70 billion rubles ($2.3 bln), 10 times more than previously expected, the economic development minister said
* Warships and aircraft from the Russian Black Sea Fleet are carrying out a series of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) exercises involving live-firing drills, a fleet spokesman said
* New suspects have surfaced in the murder case of Anna Politkovskaya, the chief editor of the newspaper where the investigative journalist worked said
* Russia's international reserves comprising gold, foreign currencies and a range of other assets declined 3.2% in January-September 2009 to $413.45 billion, the Central Bank said
* Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has filed another libel suit against the chief editor and several reporters of Novaya Gazeta daily, his lawyer said
* Russia has begun mass production of two vaccines for the swine flu virus, a deputy health minister said
* A Rokot carrier rocket with two European satellites is being prepared for a November 2 launch from the Plesetsk space center in northwest Russia, a spokesman for the Khrunichev center said
* Russia will channel 318 billion rubles ($10.6 billion) into development of nanotechnology by 2015, President Dmitry Medvedev said
