* The Russian Embassy in Thailand said it has received a police report confirming the arrest of a suspect in the murder of two Russian tourists at a popular Thai resort
* Russia has accepted an invitation from Iraq to take part in an international conference in Baghdad this March on the current situation in the Middle East country, the Russian Foreign Ministry said
* U.S. plans to place elements of its missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic could destroy the detente process and destabilize the situation in Europe, a senior Russian diplomat said Thursday
* Russia and the U.S. have begun dialogue on strategic security to find a replacement for the START II strategic arms reduction treaty, the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow said
* A Norwegian court seized a Russian fishing boat Skarus owned by a company based in the northern Russian city of Murmansk
* President Vladimir Putin said he had nominated former Chechen premier and acting president, Ramzan Kadyrov, to the Chechen presidency
* Ford Motor Co. finalized talks ending a labor dispute with union workers at its car assembly plant in the Leningrad Region in Russia's northwest, a company spokesperson said
* Prisoners are regularly tortured in Chechnya, a Council of Europe human rights commissioner said following his trip to a remand center in the troubled North Caucasus republic
* Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said the pro-western presidents of Georgia and Ukraine were considering the creation of a joint peacekeeping force
* Russia's lower house of parliament will consider a first reading of a bill in April proposing the election of upper house legislators by popular vote
* Russia's Finance Ministry proposed raising and differentiating the tax on natural gas production following price liberalization on the domestic market, a deputy minister said
* Russia's Finance Ministry proposed:
- a cut in profit tax from the current 24% to 20%
- raising and differentiating extraction tax on natural gas following price liberalization on the domestic market
* A Russian Finance Ministry official said Russia will cut oil export duty by $23.3, to $156.4 per metric ton, from April 1
* Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Federal Service for the Oversight of Natural Resources, said:
- Russia's environmental watchdog will begin inspecting the Sakhalin I oil and gas project in the Far East March 28
- Russia's environmental watchdog will start a repeat probe into the Kharyaga oil field in northern Russian March 12
* A tax amnesty for individuals, designed to streamline relations between taxpayers and tax authorities and to curb capital flight, enters into force in Russia March 1
* U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney and other senior officials will meet with Yulia Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian opposition leader, later this week, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported
* A Korean bank official said North Korea's account in a Macao bank could be unfrozen by early April
* A Moscow court found two former heads of branches of the bankrupt oil company Yukos guilty of embezzling $13 billion
