News of the Day, 18:00 Moscow time

* Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed that Russia pay Ukraine five years in advance for natural gas transit, to help Kiev buy gas to fill its underground storage facilities and ensure uninterrupted supplies to Europe

* Ukraine's first deputy prime minister said a new gas crisis between Ukraine and Russia was unlikely due to the stable financial state of the country's Naftogaz gas monopoly

* Members of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) plan to speed up the setting up of a customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, a Russian deputy economics minister said

* Russia and Jordan signed a nuclear cooperation agreement, under which power plants, desalination stations, research facilities and personnel training centers will be built in the Mideast country

* Ukraine's former parliamentary speaker, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, confirmed in an interview published that he would run in presidential elections due later this year or early in 2010

* New figures showed Russian unemployment continued to rise in April, increasing by 200,000 to 7.7 million, with 2.3 million officially registered as out of work, the Federal Statistics Service said

* A total of 11,168 people in 42 countries worldwide have been officially diagnosed with the A/H1N1 virus as of 06:00 GMT, with 86 deaths, the World Health Organization said in its daily report

* Gazprom and Slovenia have agreed on a deal extending Russian natural gas supplies for another 15 years, the Russian communications and media minister, Igor Shchyogolev, said