Main news of February 20

RUSSIA

* The Moscow Military District Court acquitted on Friday three men of involvement in the 2006 murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed on Friday a claim by Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci that Moscow was getting ready to recognize the province as an independent state

* Russian rescuers have called a halt to the search for eight crewmembers from a Chinese cargo ship which sank off Russia's Pacific Coast, a spokesman for the Vladivostok rescue center said

* Russia's consul in North Korea has been denied permission to board a Russian vessel earlier seized by border guards off the coast of the secretive communist state, the ship's owner said

* Two Chechens were killed and five police officers injured when an Ural truck crashed into an armored personnel carrier, a police spokesman in the Russian North Caucasus republic said

* Russian aluminum giant RusAl has confirmed that two of its Russian employees, abducted in December in southern Nigeria, have been released

WORLD

* NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer reiterated on Friday that the alliance would keep its doors open to Georgia and Ukraine, but both countries still had much work ahead of them

* Laboratory tests have confirmed that a dead bird discovered on the island of Tung Ping Chau, in Hong Kong, last week is infected with H5N1 bird flu virus, Xinhua reported

* Latvian President Valdis Zatlers said on Friday he had accepted the resignation of the country's prime minister, Ivars Godmanis, amid the ongoing economic crisis in the Baltic state

* Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev signed on Friday a decree to close a U.S. airbase used since 2001 to support NATO operations in nearby Afghanistan, his press service said

* A Ukrainian An-12 cargo plane burst into flames on Friday as it tried to take off in south Egypt killing five crew members, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority head was quoted as saying by the MENA news agency

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Serbian counterpart Vuk Jeremic signed in Moscow on Friday a deal on mutual visa-free travel for citizens of the two countries

* Russia supports the current format of having five veto-holding permanent members on the UN Security Council, Russia's envoy to the UN said

* The Russian ambassador to Latvia has denied rumors that Russia was involved in violent unrest last month in the Latvian capital, when some 50 people were injured, a Latvian news website said

BUSINESS