Main news of November 8

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

*Iran continued carrying out nuclear weapons research after 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report.

*Beleaguered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will step down once economic stabilization measures have been approved, the Italian presidential office said.

*A 400-meter-wide asteroid will fly past Earth on Tuesday, closer to it than the moon’s orbit.

*Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he hoped the visa regime between Russia and the European Union will not only be simplified but completely lifted.

*What would it be like to spend some 18 months confined in a spaceship as you hurtle through the blackness of space towards Mars? No one knows for sure, but the Moscow-based Mars 500 experiment attempted to recreate at least some of the conditions by locking six men away in a mock spacecraft.

*Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said increasing anti-Iranian rhetoric could lead to a catastrophe in the Middle East.

*A court in Tajikistan has sentenced Russian pilot Vladimir Sadovnichy and Estonian Alexei Rudenko to eight and a half years in prison each for smuggling and border violations.

 

RUSSIA

*Russia, the world's sixth largest economy, will inevitably join the World Trade Organization (WTO), President Dmitry Medvedev said.

*With less than four weeks left before Russia’s parliamentary elections, the approval ratings of the country’s leadership "tandem" and the ruling United Russia party have dropped sharply.

*Jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said he will never admit he is guilty of the crimes he was convicted of, even if offered early parole.

*The Russian government will channel at least 400 billion rubles ($13 billion) into the development of shipping, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said.

*Russia expects to sell up to 90 warplanes in the Middle East by 2025, the United Aircraft Corporation said.