WORLD
* Three people have been arrested in Belarus following a blast that tore through a crowded subway station in the capital Minsk, security officials said
* The consequences of the accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant may ultimately exceed the level of Chernobyl, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the Fukushima Daiichi operator said
* The Polish authorities are carrying out a test flight of a Tu-154 airliner as part of their probe into the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people last year
* The situation in Libya is out of control, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Chinese state television channel CCTV
* The world community should cooperate to send the first manned space flight to Mars, Russian ex-cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin said at an event in the Mexican capital celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first man in space
* A Russian cargo pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, whom the United States accuse of drug trafficking, was offered to testify against alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for a milder penalty
RUSSIA
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says he and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will decide within a “fairly short time” which of them will run for president next year
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hailed Yury Gagarin’s flight into space 50 years as a symbolic, revolutionary event, adding that his country still dreams about “conquering” other planets and flying to distant stars
* Ukraine should participate in the construction of the Vostochny Space Center in Russia’s Far East, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in Kiev
* Russia’s media is no longer the force it was in the 1990s and has transformed into an instrument of state control, the editor of a leading daily newspaper said
* A Moscow court has suspended Bank of Moscow President Andrei Borodin and his first deputy Dmitry Akulinin from the bank’s management for the duration of a criminal probe into a 12.76 billion ruble loan ($455 million) granted by the bank to an obscure real estate company, court spokeswoman Yekaterina Ilyina said