* In Ukraine:
- Ukraine's political crisis acquired a new twist as the president, premier and opposition failed to attend a scheduled parliamentary session convened to discuss legal arrangements for snap elections
- President Viktor Yushchenko said that the transportation minister should resign after a train derailed in the east of the country and a gas pipeline going to Europe was damaged by a blast
- Ukraine's top prosecutor, Svyatoslav Piskun, said a blast that damaged a Russian gas pipeline bound for Europe Monday was caused by negligence rather than terrorism
* Russian Railways railroad monopoly said it cancelled the St. Petersburg-Tallinn train service as of May 26 for being unprofitable
* No nation has the right to tell Poland how to name streets or what monuments to unveil in Polish cities, the country's Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said
* Nicolas Sarkozy left France for a short break Monday after his victory in last weekend's polls, but violent protests against the hardline president-elect show no signs of abating
* Russia has called on the Palestinian government to take effective action to stop missile attacks on Israel and prevent reprisals, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said
* The foreign ministries of Russia and China denied a report by a human rights group that they supplied arms in breach of a UN embargo to the government-backed militia in Darfur in west Sudan
* A group of military observers and OSCE Mission officials came under attack in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict area, a spokesman for the joint peacekeeping forces said
* Russia and Bulgaria signed a number of intergovernmental agreements on cooperation as prime ministers of the two former Communist countries met Tuesday in Moscow
* Russia intends to ratify in the near future an agreement on the construction of the one billion-euro Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said
* The World Bank approved a $2.96 mln grant for Uzbekistan to help the Central Asian republic with bird flu prevention measures, the WB office in the Uzbek capital said
* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is prepared to increase its financial assistance to Moldova by $33 million, the head of the IMF mission in the impoverished ex-Soviet republic said
* Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus could establish a customs union as soon as Russia and Kazakhstan join the WTO, Russia's deputy economics minister said
* It will take Gulf nations 12-15 years to start developing civilian nuclear energy, the foreign minister of Kuwait, Sheikh Mohammad Al-Sabah, said
* An expert at Belarus' top security service spoke out against paying a ransom to militants who kidnapped a Belarusian woman in Nigeria, or her brother getting involved in the negotiations
* A team of Israeli archeologists found what they believe is the tomb of King Herod, who ruled the Roman province of Judea in the 1st century BC, Hebrew University said
