News of the Day, 15:00 Moscow time

* The UN Security Council must outline measures to stop violations of the non-proliferation regime while addressing North Korea's nuclear test and missile launches earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* Russia plans to spend $10 billion from its international reserves to buy IMF bonds to support countries hit hardest by the global economic crisis, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said

* New units will be amalgamated into the Russian airborne troops in the future, the chief of General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, announced

* Russia, which has the world's second-largest uranium reserves and ranks fifth for output, is seeking to improve its position in this area, the executive director of nuclear power company Atomenergoprom, Kirill Komarov, said

* The Soyuz TMA-15 launch vehicle is set to take off on a mission to deliver three astronauts to the International Space Center (ISS), increasing the total number to six for the first time

* Bolivian Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana denied reports that his country has been supplying uranium to Iran, regional media said

* Opposition activists in Georgia who blocked a rail line in Tbilisi last night demanding the president's resignation ended their picket

* Irina Belenkaya, the Russian woman involved in a custody battle with her estranged French husband over their daughter, was handed over to French police in Hungary and put on a plane to France, her lawyer said

* At least 20 people have been killed and 230 injured in a car bomb explosion in the east Pakistani city of Lahore, the local police chief said