Main news of November 8

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan were held in accordance with international standards, the Azerbaijani news agency Trend cited the head of the PACE observation mission as saying

* The European Commission expressed on Monday “profound concern” over the number of attacks on journalists in Russia

* Tbilisi is ready for negotiations with Moscow on the repatriation of alleged Russian spies arrested in Georgia, the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze said

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan will discuss bilateral political cooperation and joint business projects during their meeting at the forthcoming APEC summit in Yokohama, Russian presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich said

* NATO has no plans to reduce its nuclear potential, Commander of NATO Allied Command Transformation Gen. Stephane Abrial said

* Talks with Russia over the four disputed islands to the northeast of Hokkaido will be difficult, but Japan is set to take all efforts to regain them, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said

* Azerbaijan's ruling party Yeni Azerbaijan won Sunday's parliamentary election, gaining 71 seats in the South Caucasus country's legislative assembly

RUSSIA

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the federal government to stagger working hours for state and government agencies to ease Moscow's traffic problems, the Kremlin said

* Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev - the owner of Britain's Independent and Evening Standard newspapers - has claimed a campaign has been launched in Russia to force him leave the country

BUSINESS

* Detsky Mir-Centre, a leading retailer of goods for children, will sell a 25 percent plus one share stake to the country's top bank Sberbank for 3.42 billion rubles ($114 million), the company said following its extraordinary shareholders' meeting

* Gazprom expects an average export price of $327 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas in the fourth quarter of 2010, up from $318 in the third quarter of the year, Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee Alexander Medvedev said

* Russia's foreign trade surplus increased by 37.2 percent year-on-year in the January-September 2010 period to $125.6 billion, the Federal Customs Service said

* Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project off Russia's Pacific coast, posted a net profit of 37.984 billion rubles ($1.266 bln) to IFRS in the first half of 2010

* Gazprom boosted its January-June net profit by 67 percent year-on-year to 480.079 billion rubles to IFRS, Gazprom said