* Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and other senior officials attended a ceremony to mark the start of construction work on the North European Gas Pipeline that will revolutionize the delivery of the country's natural gas to Europe
* Russia's lower house of parliament approved a bill in the final reading, lifting the "ring fence" from around shares in energy giant Gazprom and enabling foreigners to buy stock
* Director General of the European Space Agency Jean-Jacques Dordain said the ESA would allocate 650 million euros in the next three years for the development of the International Space Station program
* The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said an emergency situation was unlikely to arise in the Far East city of Khabarovsk on the Amur River, following a petrochemical spill in the Songhua, the river's Chinese tributary
