WORLD
* Egypt has set the signing of a reconciliation pact between the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas for October 22
* The Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station
* Belarus has completed the procedures necessary to sign documents on joining a post-Soviet regional security bloc's rapid reaction force, President Alexander Lukashenko said
* Israel began releasing the first of 20 Palestinian female prisoners it has agreed to exchange for a video of an Israeli soldier abducted three years ago by Hamas
* The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog is due in Tehran on Saturday for talks on the inspection of Iran's second uranium enrichment site.
* At least 138 people have been killed in three Indian states as a result of heavy rains and flash floods, the IANS news agency
* U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make her first trip to Russia during a European tour on October 9-15, the U.S. State Department said
* A delegation from Bosnia-Herzegovina handed in on Friday an official application for a NATO Membership Action Plan
* Rio de Janeiro was named the host city for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games after a International Olympic Committee vote in Copenhagen
RUSSIA
* Seven militants were killed in the mountains of Chechnya during a special operation led by President Ramzan Kadyrov, the republic's interior minister said
* The wife of Moscow's mayor, the richest woman in Russia, is suing a former Russian deputy prime minister for defamation, her construction company said
* Russia has decided to extend a moratorium on human cloning that expired two years ago by five years, the health and social development minister said
* Russia could monitor and escort ships in neutral waters heading to Abkhazia to protect them from possible Georgian provocations, the Russian foreign minister said
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Georgia must sign a deal with its former republic of Abkhazia on the non-use of force
