Main news of October 18

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* The death toll in a suicide bomber attack in southeastern Iran has risen to 49, local news agencies reported

* Slovakia could follow the Czech Republic's example and voice its objections to the Lisbon Treaty over potential post-World War II property claims, the country's prime minister said on Czech television

* Pakistani soldiers have killed 60 militants since the start of a large-scale ground operation against the Taliban in South Waziristan, the country's armed forces said

* The Islamist movement Hamas has indefinitely postponed a visit of its delegation to Cairo designed to submit its final response on the Egypt-brokered Palestinian national reconciliation pact

* A suicide bomber killed at least five senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and 29 other people in one of the deadliest attacks on Iran's elite military institution, local media reported

* The Moldovan presidential election scheduled for October 23 in Moldova's parliament will not take place, the chairman of the parliamentary commission on the presidential election said

* Ukraine's newly appointed foreign minister, Petro Poroshenko will pay a visit to Russia on October 23, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry confirmed

* Moldovan police have detained the first suspect in a recent terrorist attack in the center of Moldova's capital, Interior Minister Viktor Katan said

* An international environmental forum bringing together the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries opened on Sunday in London in an effort to bridge divides over tackling climate change, the BBC reported

* New sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear problem would be ineffective and the problem can be solved only by direct negotiations without preconditions, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog said

* One of America's wealthiest men charged as part of an insider-trading case surfaced in a separate probe into allegedly raising funds for a Sri Lankan terrorist group, The Wall Street Journal reported

* A U.S. pilot, who went missing when two fighter jets collided over the Atlantic, is believed to be killed instantly on impact with water, local media said

* An Iranian court has released on a $300,000 bail a Newsweek journalist with dual Iranian-Canadian citizenship, arrested in the wake of the disputed presidential elections in June, Iranian media said

* Chinese authorities have started resettling 330,000 people in central China in a project to divert water from its major rivers in the south to the country's north, official news agency Xinhua reported

RUSSIA

* The top police official in the Russian republic of Buryatia in east Siberia has been detained in a smuggling case. The Russian Interior Ministry confirmed the detention but provided no further details

* Russia and Syria believe that more active efforts are needed to achieve peace in the Middle East, Russia's special envoy to the Middle East said

SCIENCE

* The Progress-M03M space freighter docked with the International Space Station in an automatic mode on Sunday, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the Mission Control