WORLD
* Afghanistan’s government is unprepared for a pullout of the foreign contingent starting from late June, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Russian Security Council, said
* Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is facing charges of sexual assault, pled not guilty at pre-trial hearings in New York
* Bean sprouts grown on a farm in Germany’s Lower Saxony could be the source a deadly E. coli outbreak that has killed 22 people, the DPA news agency reported
RUSSIA
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree establishing June 6 as the Day of the Russian Language
* A Moscow court sentenced Russian businessman Viktor Baturin, the brother-in-law of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, to a suspended three-year jail term for fraud
BUSINESS
* Koks, Russia’s largest exporter of pig iron, said that it would launch a road show to sell $350 million of Eurobonds in Europe and the United States on June 8, a banking source said
* Ukraine may have to pay $500 per 1,000 cubic meters of Russian gas in the fourth quarter compared to $264.30 in the first quarter, head of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom Alexei Miller said
* Russia’s state-run gas export monopoly Gazprom will stick to the market price formula for natural gas supplies to Ukraine, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said
* Russia’s ban on vegetable imports from the European Union will temporarily speed up inflation, which in April reached 9.6 percent year-on-year, Central Bank Deputy Chairman Sergei Shvetsov said
* Global Ports Investments, Russia’s leading container terminal operator, plans to raise up to $100 million from the sale of about a quarter of its capital in an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in London, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) said on its website