* Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini denied media reports saying Iran had asked Saudi Arabia to mediate its relations with the United States
* Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia has completed deliveries of Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran under a $700 million contract signed at the end of 2005
* Russia's anti-terrorism committee said it has obtained a foreign report of a possible terrorist plot to attack ground transport and the metro system
* Russia hails Latvia's intention not to attach an extra declaration to a long-awaited border treaty and deems it as a new way for resumption of talks, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said
* Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said:
- Russian investigators intend to question fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky, wanted in Russia on fraud charges, exclusively on the case of Alexander Litvinenko's polonium poisoning
- The Prosecutor General's Office has received a request from British investigators asking for permission to visit Russia again to investigate the murder of Litvinenko
- Former executives of bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos will face new embezzlement and money laundering charges
- Russian prosecutors want Israel to rescind the citizenship of Leonid Nevzlin, a former Yukos co-chairman
- Russia's top prosecutors will ask British authorities to investigate the death of Yury Golubev, one of the founders of the oil company Yukos, who died in London last week
* Surgutneftegaz purchased a 20% stake in St. Petersburg's Channel 5, the Siberia-based oil producer said
* German carmaker Volkswagen started building an auto plant in the Kaluga Region southwest of Moscow, the regional governor's press service said
* Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said authorities must work to avert possible price hikes for staple goods after a ban on foreign labor in the retail trade sector enters into force this spring
* Gazprombank, a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, set up a joint venture with Germany's Dresdner Bank to invest in the market for trading greenhouse gas emissions quotas, the Russian bank said
* The Gazprom board said:
- It has approved an increase in the company's 2006 investment program from 373.14 billion rubles ($14 billion) to 458.6 billion rubles ($17.3 billion)
- The company's revised 2007 investment program will total 529.38 billion rubles ($19.93 billion at the current foreign currency exchange rate), against the initial total of 531.78 billion rubles ($20.02 billion)
* The Russian Interior Ministry said six former militants surrendered in Russia's troubled North Caucasus republic of Chechnya in the past 24 hours despite the expiry of an amnesty
* The Finance Ministry said Russia's consumer prices increased 1% during the first nine days of 2007
* The Finance Ministry said Russia's money supply increased 49% in 2006
