Main news of October 27

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Iran has not dismissed the UN nuclear watchdog's uranium enrichment proposal and is expected to respond to it soon, the Russian foreign minister said

* The United States will formally reply to Russia's strategic arms reduction proposals in the next few days, the Russian foreign minister said

* Russia, India and China have proposed to develop a collective strategy to stabilize Afghanistan and expect a positive answer from the United States, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* The Czech Constitutional Court on Tuesday ruled it would return to making a decision in early November on ratifying the Lisbon Treaty

* A Paris court has sentenced in absentia Arkady Gaidamak, an Israeli businessman of Soviet origin, to six years in prison for illegal arms deliveries to Angola, tax evasion and corruption

* NASA said Tuesday the launch of its new Ares I-X rocket, scheduled for 8:00 a.m. EDT (12.00 GMT) in Florida, had been delayed due to bad weather and rescheduled for Wednesday

* A total of eight US soldiers and one Afghan interpreter were killed on Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokeswoman said

* Latvian police decided not to initiate a criminal investigation over the hoax meteorite strike staged in the Baltic state by a Latvian mobile operator, the Delfi web portal said

* Former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic was released from a Swedish prison and flown to Belgrade Tuesday after serving two-thirds of her 11-year term for war crimes in the 1990s

* FBI officials in the U.S. rescued 52 children and arrested about 700 people, including 60 suspected pimps, in a three-day nationwide crackdown on child prostitution, American media said

* President Viktor Yushchenko filed on Tuesday the documents to register as a candidate in Ukraine's upcoming presidential election

* European Union foreign ministers agreed on Tuesday to lift an embargo on arms supplies to Uzbekistan, a spokesman said

* No survivors were found at the crash site of a Russian business jet near the Minsk airport, an emergency services official in Belarus said

RUSSIA

* One police officer was killed and another injured while attempting to detain an armed militant who blew himself up Tuesday on one of Grozny's main squares

* A 53-year-old woman has died of swine flu in a Moscow hospital, bringing Russia's fatalities from the new A/H1N1 virus to four people, the Health Ministry said

SPORT

* The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is satisfied with the quality and pace of Sochi's preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, the IOC president said

SCIENCE

* The first of a series of lectures to be delivered by the world's topmost scientists, a new Internet project of Dmitry Zimin's Dynasty Foundation and RIA Novosti, was shown on Tuesday