* Georgia's Giorgi Khaindrava, state minister for conflict resolution, was fired
* Georgia, Ukraine and Armenia said their leaders would not arrive in Moscow to attend a two-day informal CIS summit opening Friday
* Russia's Foreign Ministry said the packed timetable for an informal CIS summit this weekend meant there was no room for a separate substantial exchange of opinions between the Russian and Georgian leaders
* Russian Defense Minister, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said:
- there was no political or diplomatic resolution for the Middle East flare-up in sight yet;
- Russia had signed a contract on supplies of military planes and helicopters to Venezuela worth over $1 billion;
- the ministry planned to buy 58 Su-34 Fullback fighters equipped with latest AL-31 F-M1 engines;
- a request made by his Georgian counterpart asking the Georgian Foreign Ministry to deny visa to Deputy Commander of Russia's Land Forces Lt.-Gen. Valery Yevnevich was not a correct step
* Russia's Supreme Court upheld an appeal to release ex-Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov, charged with fraud and abuse of office, from custody while the Prosecutor General's Office said it had sent the criminal case into Adamov's alleged offenses to court
* Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov will meet with the Lebanese leadership to discuss solutions to the Middle East crisis, the Russian Embassy in Beirut said
* A total of 196 citizens of Russia and other ex-Soviet republics evacuated from Lebanon arrived in Syria to go Moscow by plane later in the day, the Russian Embassy said
* Moldova's president said at an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Moscow that his country had no intention of pulling out of the CIS
* Georgia's defense minister denied his government was planning a military operation in a conflict zone with the breakaway South Ossetia region
* A correspondent for Russian television's Channel One said a crew had been barred from entering Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia
* An Estonian government official said Alla Dudayeva, widow of Chechnya's first president and separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, had applied for Estonian citizenship
* Russia's prime minister urged ministries to take immediate measures to improve the situation on the nation's alcoholic-beverages market
* Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said Russia was not planning to revise contracts and agreements on natural gas supplies to Ukraine
* Russian export duties on oil and oil products will increase 8.3% to hit record high of $216.4 per metric ton ($29.5 per barrel) from August 1, the government press service said
* Russia's crude oil production increased by 2.4% in June and its natural gas output grew 3.3% year-on-year, the State Statistics Service said
* World No. 2 steelmaker Arcelor has paid Russia's largest steelmaker, Severstal, 140 million euros (about $180 mln) in compensation for a merger that fell through, the Russian company said
* A Cosmos-2422 military satellite launched on a Russian carrier rocket has been successfully put into orbit, a Space Forces spokesman said
