Main news of October 2

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours.

WORLD

* Police arrested more than 700 anti-Wall Street demonstrators who tried to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and attempted an unauthorized march across the roadway on Saturday afternoon

* Israel accepted a call by the Quartet of international Middle East mediators to resume direct negotiations with Palestinians without preconditions

* Turkey decided to terminate its 25-year old deal with Moscow on natural gas supplies

* A candidate in last year's presidential elections in Belarus, sentenced to five years and six months in jail for taking part in post-election protests, was released

* A U.S. missile strike has killed an al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani militant commander near the Afghan border, Pakistani TV channels reported on Sunday referring to intelligence officials

* Egypt's ruling military council has unveiled a schedule of power transfer to a civilian government

* Afghanistan asked Pakistan to extradite people involved in murder of Afghan former president Burhanuddin Rabbani

* Greek authorities will increase the budget deficit target for 2011 to 8.5 percent from 7.6 percent of gross domestic product, earlier agreed with international lenders, Greek TV channels quoted a governmental source as saying on Sunday amid talks that the move could prevent the country from obtaining the next tranche needed to save its economy

RUSSIA

* A new Russian manned drifting weather station started operating in the Arctic Ocean

* Russia's Interior Ministry employed 26,000 people, who had not passed recertification as part of President Dmitry Medvedev's reform aimed at improving the performance of the country's law-enforcement authorities, the Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said