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Main news of April 22

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RUSSIA * Russia wants new international agreements on security and disarmament to be developed, President Vladimir Putin said * A new Tu-160 Blackjack... 22.04.2008, Sputnik International

2008-04-22T18:06+0000

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Main news of April 22

18:06 GMT 22.04.2008

RUSSIA

* Russia wants new international agreements on security and disarmament to be developed, President Vladimir Putin said

* A new Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bomber will enter service with Russia' Air Force by the end of this month, the Air Force chief said

* Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, is unlikely to recognize independence for Georgia's breakaway republics, a senior parliamentarian said

* There can be no question of foreign troops being withdrawn from Iraq at present, Russia's foreign minister said

* Russia's Foreign Ministry accused Georgia of breaching a UN resolution and Moscow ceasefire after a Georgian unmanned reconnaissance aircraft was downed over the breakaway republic of Abkhazia

* Russia demanded a joint probe into the shooting of a Russian airbase officer in Kyrgyzstan, the Embassy in the Central Asian state said

* Jean-Claude Killy, the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission for the 2014 Winter Olympic games in Russia's resort city of Sochi, on the Black Sea, said he was satisfied with the preparations

* NATO reconnaissance ships are monitoring large-scale exercises conducted by Russia's Baltic Fleet, a spokesman for the Russian Navy said

* Planned facilities for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics including a bobsleigh track through a nature reserve will not be relocated despite protests from environmental groups, Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev said

* The United States Embassy has urged a Moscow court to reconsider a jail term of more than three years handed down to an American pastor convicted of smuggling rifle cartridges into the country

* Over 40 people have been killed or injured since last December as a result of 'criminal flash mobs' in Moscow and the Moscow Region, an official with the Interior Ministry said

* Co-rapporteurs from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have proposed abolishing Russia's prosecutors' service, Mikhail Yemelyanov, a member of the State Duma's committee for constitutional law and state building, said

WORLD

* Egyptian mediators have brokered a preliminary agreement with radical Palestinian movement Hamas on conditions for a ceasefire with Israel in the Gaza Strip, the Al-Ahram newspaper said

* The first trucks carrying Russian humanitarian aid to Serbs in Kosovo have been delivered to the north of the province by the Red Cross, local officials said

* At least 22 people have died from severe heat in east India's state of Orissa as temperatures touched 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in some areas, local TV said

* Sergei Bagapsh, the president of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, accused Tbilisi during an annual parliamentary address of trying to avoid resuming peace talks

BUSINESS

* Tehran expects to sign an oil and gas cooperation agreement with Russian energy giant Gazprom in the near future, the republic's oil minister, Gholam-Hossein Nozari, said

* Atomstroyexport, a Russian company building a nuclear power plant in Iran, said it had not received any official request for information from Azerbaijan about a shipment seized on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border

* Russia's Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard based in Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River said it plans to build three tankers for a Panama shipping company with a deadweight of 5,600 metric tons each

* Gazprom is planning to launch operations in Libya with Italy's oil and gas giant Eni, Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of Gazprom's board of directors, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper

* South Africa's Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corporation, owned by Russian steelmaker Evraz, said it had signed a $160 million deal to sell some of its vanadium assets to a Swiss company

* A joint venture established between Russia and Armenia plans to start uranium prospecting in the south of Armenia by late 2008, the venture's Russian participant said