Main news of June 24

A roundup of what has happened in 24 hours

WORLD

*Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at a news conference in Washington:

- Russia is not planning to send peacekeepers to Kyrgyzstan, where deadly inter-ethnic clashes claimed hundreds of lives earlier this month

- He hopes that Moscow and Washington would ratify the new strategic arms reduction treaty in the near future

* U.S. President Barack Obama said at a news conference in Washington:

- The United States supports Russia's WTO bid

- He confirms U.S. intentions to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011

- Russia will purchase 50 Boeing 737 planes from the United States

*Russian President Dmitry Medvedev received more than 15,000 followers in less than 12 hours after officially opening up his Twitter account during his visit to the United States

*Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said  he might run in the 2012 presidential elections in Russia, if he manages to implement his projects and secure population support

*Iran will announce new conditions for international talks on its nuclear program to the Iran-6 group of international mediators next week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by Fars news agency as saying

*The death toll in the southern Kyrgyz ethnic clashes has risen to 261 people, Kyrgyzstan's health ministry said

*The launch of the Ariane 5 carrier rocket with two satellites from the Kourou space center in French Guiana was delayed during final countdown due to technical problems

RUSSIA

* A Moscow district court dismissed a criminal case against terminally ill former Yukos vice president Vasily Aleksanyan, accused of money-laundering

*The Russian Foreign Ministry welcomed the U.S. decision to include Chechen militant leader Doku Umarov on the terrorist list

* Russia may start receiving its first An-70 military transport planes as early as in 2012, the defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, said

*Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded a speedy completion of investigations into the blasts which killed at least 67 miners at the Raspadskaya coal mine in Western Siberia in May

*Russia's luxurious high-speed passenger train Sapsan running between Moscow and St. Petersburg hit and killed a retiree running across the tracks in the Moscow Region, a police source said

BUSINESS

*Gazprom announced the full restoration of Russian gas supplies to Belarus and gas transit to the EU amid warnings from Minsk that transit could still be frozen if debts are not paid in full

* Minsk acknowledged the receipt of Gazprom's $228 million transit fee payment after Russia resumed full gas supplies to Belarus early on Thursday