troops were allowed to use another Uzbek airbase

The two pipelines are not mutually exclusive, and Uzbekistanlast year started work on another route to China. Gazprom (GAZP.MM), Russia's state-controlled gas exportmonopoly, buys Central Asian gas and sells it on to Europe.Moscow wants to protect its control over these flows and relieson a steady supply of Uzbek, Turkmen and Kazakh natural gas. Karimov said actual sales of Uzbek gas to Russia this yearwould be lower than the 16 billion cubic metres offered due totechnical limitations. But he said Uzbekistan could export twice as much in future,once Russia's second-largest oil firm, LUKOIL (LKOH.MM), startsproducing 16 billion cubic metres of gas per year there by 2015.

Karimov, who withdrew Uzbekistan from a Moscow-led regionaleconomic cooperation group, assured Medvedev he saw the Kremlinas the key player in Central Asia. "Russia is a country which has always been present in thisregion and a country which has defined politics and the balanceof forces here," he said. Uzbekistan became Moscow's closest ally in the region afterthe West imposed sanctions in 2005 in response to a securitycrackdown in the Uzbek town of Andizhan. Tashkent, which denied civilian deaths, evicted a U.S.military airbase. But after some sanctions were lifted, U.S.troops were allowed to use another Uzbek airbase. (Writing by Olzhas Auyezov and Amie Ferris-Rotman; editing byElizabeth Piper) Stocks China Russia.

The UFL's Commissioner Michael Huyghue announced the league will be moving the third home game for the Las Vegas Locomotives to Las Vegas. It was originally scheduled to be played in Los Angeles.This is an excellent and clear headed move by the commissioner and the owners. Over the first three games of the UFL season the league has averaged an announced attendance of 12,524.Two of those games were in Vegas and were to be the only games for Vegas this season, leaving the Vegas franchise with a really, really bad looking season attendance number of 13,185 and facing very dim prospects of that city having a UFL team next season.When you add in the published impression that the numbers in Las Vegas were inflated, it was the kind of situation that would look horrible to potential fans this year and to potential owners in the offseason.The early attendance numbers could have translated into a lower than expected turnout in Los Angeles. (One suspects the league may have already seen sluggish Los Angeles ticket sales and that might have been part of this decision making process.) Having Las Vegas showing an unwillingness to support a UFL team and then drawing poorly in LA, say 18,000 or less, could have turned off potential owners in both markets.(Remember the LA game was supposed to be Las Vegas vs.