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RUSSIA * Russia will formally establish diplomatic relations with South Ossetia and Abkhazia on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said * Russia... 08.09.2008, Sputnik International

2008-09-08T18:04+0000

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Main news of September 8

18:04 GMT 08.09.2008

RUSSIA

* Russia will formally establish diplomatic relations with South Ossetia and Abkhazia on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said

* Russia may sever all ties with NATO if the Western military alliance grants Georgia entry into the Membership Action Plan (MAP), Russia's NATO envoy said

* Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said that calls from the U.S. and other Western powers to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO are purely aimed at isolating Russia

* The upcoming joint Russian-Venezuelan naval exercise was agreed on long before the current Georgia crisis and is unrelated to the situation in the Caucasus, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said

* A Russian naval task force from the Northern Fleet will go on a tour of duty in the Atlantic Ocean and participate in joint naval drills with the Venezuelan navy in November, a Navy spokesman said

* Russia's chief sanitary doctor said that U.S. poultry manufacturers should alter their production technology if they want to export to Russia

* News Outdoor Russia, a billboard advertising company controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, confirmed that police have searched its office in central Moscow and two production facilities

* Researchers studying Siberia's Lake Baikal have discovered boxes containing ammunition dating back to 1920s, a spokesman for the Baikal preservation foundation said

* The North Pole-36 (SP-36), a manned floating weather station, has started operating in the Arctic Ocean, the hydrometeorology service's Arctic and Antarctic research institute said

* Russia's state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, said it had contracted a number of Russian companies to provide India's A-50 AEW aircraft with after sale services

* The Moscow Prosecutor General's Office believes the popular animated TV show South Park could incite religious hatred, its press service said

* The development of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, has involved over 700 Russian physicists from 12 research institutes, a project coordinator said

WORLD

* The French president said that Russia has promised to pull all troops out of Georgia, but not South Ossetia or Abkhazia, within one month

* Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that his country would consider the issue of the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states in the near future

* Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko pledged to prevent any conflict over Russia's Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula, despite pressure from the country's president

* The International Court of Justice in The Hague began hearings into Georgian claims of Russian human rights violations

* The speaker of Estonia's parliament urged lawmakers to back calls in the country for a nuclear power plant to be built, to reduce energy dependence on Russia

* The Our Ukraine party, headed by the country's president, is urging democratic factions to defend the country's interests against "Moscow's plotting," the UNIAN agency said

* Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko categorically denied all allegations of treason and corruption made against her by the country's president

* Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that Minsk and Moscow should respond to a "challenge" issued by NATO and the United States

* The U.S. government has taken control of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop their possible collapse causing major damage to the economy

* Russian and South Ossetian police have detained a Polish television crew together with a Georgian national near the capital Tskhinvali, a Polish television channel said