Main news of November 9

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Thousands of people gathered on Monday evening in front of the Brandenburg Gate despite steady rain for a concert marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told thousands of people gathered on Monday to mark the 20h anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall about the importance of a multipolar world

* More than 2,000 inmates in Belarus have walked free under an amnesty dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the country's liberation from the Nazis, an Interior Ministry spokesman said

* Some 70% of Tajikistan was left without electricity on Monday as the country's Nurek-Regar hydropower plant shut down, a power holding spokesman said

* Authorities in El Salvador have introduced a state of emergency over Hurricane Ida, which has so far killed over 120 people, the country's president said

* Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez called on his country to prepare for a possible war, once again criticizing a military cooperation agreement between Colombia and the U.S., the country's VTV television channel reported

RUSSIA

* Russia's Constitutional Court held hearings Monday on whether the death penalty should be restored after a court-imposed moratorium expires on January 1

* Struggling Russian auto giant AvtoVAZ has set up two affiliated companies to give jobs to 15,000 redundant workers, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said

* A police officer in southern Russia who posted a video clip on the Internet alleging endemic corruption is facing libel charges, a local prosecutor's office said

* The number of confirmed swine flu cases in Russia has hit 4,560, Health Minister Tatyana Golikova said

* Russia's space corporation Energia is doubling production of manned spacecraft, Energia's president said

* The Russian president on Monday signed into law a bill expanding the use of the Russian Armed Forces abroad in certain situations

* Russian physicist and Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzburg has died in Moscow at the age of 94, a spokeswoman for the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences said

* A police officer from the southern Russian city of Novorossiisk has been fired after posting a video on the web asking Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to launch a nationwide corruption probe, an Interior Ministry spokesman said

SPORT

* Rubin Kazan took a massive step toward retaining their Russian Premier League title with a 2-0 win over CSKA Moscow on Sunday, a day after second-placed Spartak Moscow had lost 2-1 to Krilya Sovetov