* President Vladimir Putin, on a working visit to Finland, said:
- Energy cooperation between the two countries will be maintained at an intergovernmental level
- Bilateral trade is expected to increase by 15-17% in 2006.
- Border and customs procedures on the Russian-Finnish border should be de-bureaucratized
- Moscow has no claims against the quality of Polish meat, but objects to products of third countries imported to Russia via Poland
* Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned a series of terrorist strikes in the Iraqi capital, which left more than 150 people dead and some 300 wounded
* Russia expects that a meeting between the Iraqi and Iranian presidents in Tehran November 25 will expedite Iraq's stabilization, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said
* Russia has delivered the last two S-300 (SA-10 Grumble) anti-aircraft missile systems to Belarus, the Belarusian defense minister said
* Belarusian companies should be able to buy Russian natural gas at prices similar to Russia's domestic level, the president of Belarus said
* Nine alleged members of a gang run by a Georgian national have been arrested in Spain in a major ongoing crackdown on Georgian and Russian mafia, Spanish police said
* The Energy Charter is in need of reform and Russia is ready to discuss the issue at all levels, a Russian deputy industry and energy minister said
* The process of synchronizing the national energy systems of Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Baltic countries and the European Union is proceeding in fits and starts, a Russian energy official said
* Up to 35 Russian companies will float their shares at initial public offerings in 2007, Andrei Demchenko, general director of the Institute for Stock Market and Management, said
* The head of Russia's Central Bank said he is skeptical about the idea of replacing the value added tax (VAT) with a sales tax
* The crew of the International Space Station has completed a spacewalk to install a telescope, dismantle an antenna and reinstall it on the service module, Mission Control near Moscow reported
* A militant leader, Bogdan Suleimanov, has been killed in a special army operation in the Republic of Chechnya in Russia's North Caucasus, the republic's interior ministry said
* Prosecutors in Tatarstan, a Russian republic on the Volga River, have concluded an investigation into alleged murders and other crimes committed by 17 members of an extremist Islamist group, Russia's Prosecutor General's office said
* Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is receiving post-surgery treatment at a Munich clinic where an artery operation was performed on him Wednesday to prevent a stroke
* Russia's suicide rate is the second worst in the world after Lithuania, the director of a leading Russian social and psychiatric research center said
* Russia's Army museum said Soviet medals withdrawn from a Sotheby's auction in London might have been stolen
