* Iran is prepared for talks on its nuclear program without preconditions, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in the wake of the UN Security Council's new resolution imposing harsher sanctions on Tehran for its refusal to give up nuclear activities
* Armenia's Prime Minister and Chairman of the Republican Party Andranik Markaryan died Sunday of heart attack, the party's press office said
* President of Russia Vladimir Putin has conveyed his condolences over the death of Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Markaryan, the Kremlin press office said
* The third power unit of the Kursk nuclear power plant in central Russia was shut down by an automated protection system due to a fault in electric equipment, the press office of the Russian nuclear power generating monopoly said
* Two Georgian special troops were shot dead in a shootout in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia, the interior minister of the unrecognized republic said
* A Georgian official confirmed the death of two Georgian policemen who were killed from an ambush by South Ossetia forces during a patrol of a Georgia-controlled area but rejected South Ossetia's reports that Georgian special troops had allegedly planned subversive activity near a South Ossetian village and were attacked by the unrecognized republic's police
* Ten persons have died after a fire broke out in a night club in central Moscow, the emergencies ministry said
* Rescuers have found one of the flight recorders from a Mi-8 helicopter that crashed Wednesday in the northwestern Urals, killing six persons, the regional prosecutor's office said
