Lithuanian Foreign Minister Vyagaudas Usackas is starting a Middle East tour on Wednesday.

The United States and Russia have made progress in their talks on strategic arms reductions, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.

The leaders of the Baltic states will meet on Wednesday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the Lithuanian presidential press service said.

The State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, will consider an agreement with Belarus on the establishment of a common air defense.

One woman died in a fire in a wooden house belonging to a Russian convent in Barvikha a few miles west of Moscow late Tuesday, church and emergencies officials said Wednesday.

Russia's Father Frost and his Norwegian colleague Julenisse met in the Moscow residence of the winter wizard for the first time on December 8.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the NATO chief will on Wednesday meet in Moscow to discuss the situations in Afghanistan and Iran, a European security treaty and other issues, a Kremlin source said.

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

At least 33 people were killed on Tuesday in a suicide car bomb attack in the central Pakistani town of Dera Ghazi Khan, officials said.

A British epidemiologist said on Tuesday he was worried by close links between World Health Organization (WHO) officials and pharmaceutical companies over swine flu.

Chechnya's parliament has voted to establish an Akhmad Kadyrov International Peace Award to commemorate the first Chechen president's peace efforts, the parliamentary press service said on Tuesday.

The head of Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Tuesday that Russia expects no problems with Ukraine's payment for Russian natural gas in December.

Polish police have forced 230 asylum seekers from Georgia and Chechnya to leave a train they had boarded in an attempt to illegally reach Strasbourg in a human rights protest.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin) - Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 12th Secretary General, is to pay his first official visit to Moscow on December 15.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Dmitry Babich) - The inauguration of a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China was held on Monday.

Vietnam has signed a deal with Russia to buy submarines, aircraft and other military hardware, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said on Tuesday.

A new natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China was launched this week. This is another step in the global diversification of energy flows - the topic of conversation between Chief Editor of RussiaProfile.org Andrei Zolotov, Jr. and Director of

A powerful winter storm swept in off the Black Sea and severely damaged a port under construction in Russia's Olympic city Sochi

UEFA head Michel Platini will inspect once more the four Ukrainian cities due to host Euro 2012 matches, the mayor of Donetsk said on Tuesday.

The recognition of Abkhazia's independence by Nauru, the world's smallest island state, is utterly irrelevant, the Georgian minister for reintegration said on Tuesday.