(Reuters) – Diplomatic novice Dmitry Medvedev will take over next week as Russian president with a thick stack of foreign policy challenges in his in-tray.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Next week a lawyer with little foreign policy experience will become Russian president and lead a country with a nuclear arsenal, a UN veto and volatile relations with its neighbors and an energy-dependent West.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas underwent heart tests in a Jordanian hospital on Thursday, a spokesman said, describing his condition as good.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – An explosion near a U.S. patrol in Baghdad killed nine Iraqis and wounded 23 on Thursday, Iraqi police said.

TBILISI (Reuters) – Moscow’s sabre-rattling over two disputed regions of Georgia is driven by Kremlin hardliners who want to push Russia’s next president into an anti-Western stance, diplomats in both countries said.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Eight Afghan civilians, three of them children, were killed in two landmine explosions near the border with Pakistan, a senior provincial police official said on Thursday.

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Eight people were killed and 20 injured when a bus carrying Canadian, Italian, Russian and Ukrainian tourists overturned and caught fire in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula on Thursday, police sources said.

TEHRAN (FNA)- An earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale jolted three towns in Lorestan province, western Iran, injuring over 100 people.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran has presented representatives of natural gas-exporting countries with proposals aimed at turning an existing informal forum into an OPEC-like structure.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Iran’s president that there will be continuity in Russia’s relations with Tehran, a senior Russian official was quoted as saying.