Main news of December 3

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* At least 19 people including three Cabinet ministers were killed in suicide bombing in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported

* Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Thursday he thinks "highly" of the Russian president's European security proposal

* Osama bin Laden is not in hiding in Pakistan, the country's prime minster said

* At least 15 militants were killed and more than 150 captured in a military operation in northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley, the Aaj TV channel said

* Congress in Honduras has voted against the reinstatement of ousted President Manuel Zelaya for the remainder of his term which ends in January, Honduran media reported

* The radical Islamic Taliban group has threatened to step up resistance in response to a U.S. decision to send additional troops to the war-torn Central Asian country

RUSSIA

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday signed a decree to establish diplomatic relations with Vatican City, and met with Pope Benedict XVI

* Prime Minister Vladimir Putin fielded a wide range of questions from the Russian public during his live TV and radio phone-in on Thursday afternoon

* Russia's envoy to NATO has said a new resolution to be considered by the Russia-NATO Council on assessing joint threats to the Euro-Atlantic space could prove to be a breakthrough

* Russian police have released identikit images of three men and one woman thought to have been involved in last Friday's deadly attack on a high-speed Moscow-St. Petersburg train

* The work of the NATO-Russia Council has been put back on a constructive track, Russia's envoy to the 28-member military alliance said

* A Russian government commission has approved the basic and back-up crews for a new expedition to the International Space Station (ISS)

* Some 200 tons (1,460 barrels) of oil have spilled from a pipeline in central Russia's Lipetsk Region, the Emergencies Ministry said

BUSINESS

* Russian gas monopoly Gazprom and Italy's energy giant Eni signed on Thursday a memo of understanding to include France's EDF into the South Stream gas pipeline project

SCIENCE

* Scientists continue efforts to resume the regular operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) following a recent power failure which shut down the device, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on its website