Main news of October 8

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* At least 17 people were killed on Thursday by a suicide car bomb attack outside the Indian embassy in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, local officials said

* A Ukrainian vice premier confirmed on Thursday that the Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers could meet in November on the sidelines of an intergovernmental economic session

* Ukraine may use its right under the current contract with Russian energy giant Gazprom to cut natural gas imports in 2010, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said

* Twenty-six workers were killed in a tin ore mine in south China on Thursday when the brakes on the elevator taking them down a shaft failed, Xinhua news agency reported

* A powerful earthquake hit the southwest of the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, U.S. media said, citing the U.S. Geological Survey

* Cairo is against the postponement of the signing of a reconciliation pact between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, the Egyptian foreign minister said

* Ukraine continues shipping arms and military equipment to Georgia, a member of the Ukrainian parliament said

* The next Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit will take place in Moscow in December 2010, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said

* German writer Herta Mueller has won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced

* Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned a suicide bombing in the capital Kabul that killed 12 people and wounded at least 84 others early on Thursday

* A large-scale immunization campaign against swine flu has started in the United Stats with the vaccination of 68,000 New Yorkers

* U.S. President Barack Obama has received a formal request by a U.S. top military commander to send additional troops to Afghanistan, a White House spokesman has said

RUSSIA

* A Moscow court began hearings on Thursday on a libel suit filed by Joseph Stalin's grandson against a newspaper over an article claiming the Soviet dictator ordered the killings of thousands of people

* Russia's Strategic Missile Forces will conduct a series of exercises on October 9-17 in the Ivanovo Region, the forces' press service said

* The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Thursday that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Moscow on October 12-14

* Russia believes direct contacts between North Korea and the United States could provide a breakthrough in multilateral negotiations on ending the North's nuclear program, the Foreign Ministry said

* Russian prosecutors confirmed on Thursday that the Arctic Sea cargo vessel, at the centre of a mysterious hijacking case in July, is currently anchored off Gibraltar

* Russia's new military doctrine will contain some changes to the situations that could trigger the use of nuclear weapons or preventive strikes against potential foes, the secretary of Russia's Security Council said

SOCIETY

* Nearly one in four people worldwide are Muslim, a U.S. think-tank has said in a report

BUSINESS

* Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed on Thursday an order allocating 24.45 billion rubles ($820 million) from the federal budget to the anti-crisis fund of the post-Soviet economic bloc EurAsEC