* Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller called for a new gas pipeline to be built across the Black Sea running parallel with the Blue Stream pipeline and said Ukraine had siphoned 550 million cu m of Russian natural gas bound for Europe in January
* The Iranian president accused the West of "apartheid in science" Friday and reiterated Tehran's determination to pursue its nuclear ambitions
* Javad Vaeedi, deputy head of the Iranian delegation to the IAEA emergency session in Vienna, said Tehran would reject Russia's proposal to set up a joint venture on its territory to enrich uranium for Iran if the board of governors of the UN's nuclear watchdog adopted a draft resolution to refer Iran's nuclear file to the UN Security Council
* President Vladimir Putin said prosecutors should react vigorously to all cases of hazing in the army and that the rise in crimes linked with ethnic and racial intolerance was shameful
* A Moscow court refused to combine petitions filed by the lawyers of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, who protested a ruling sending their clients to prison camps in Siberia
* President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev accused the republic's legislature of seeking a confrontation with the executive branch of government
* A man convicted of violating traffic rules in an accident that led to the death of a regional Siberian governor last summer was sentenced to four years in a penal colony
* A computer virus was to blame for trade being suspended on the Russian Trading System (RTS) stock exchange February 2, the RTS said
* A senior official from Russia's main defense industry exporter said Russia had proposed establishing a joint venture with India to carry out aircraft repairs
