* President Vladimir Putin said Russia would give its backing to Mahmoud Abbas as the sole legitimate Palestinian leader
* First Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov said:
- Russia has no plans to meet with the leadership of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas any time soon
- Russia will provide Palestinians with 50 armored personnel carriers to help maintain law and order in the West Bank
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in the Philippine capital, Manila, for international talks focused on Southeast Asian nations, and bilateral talks with the host country
* Russia is against setting artificial timeframes to decide Kosovo's status and attempts to predetermine the outcome, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman said
* Russia has appointed the Foreign Minister's special representative for the Balkans Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko as special envoy to a troika as part of the Kosovo Contact Group, the Foreign Ministry said
* Three people died and 135 are in a hospital near Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, diagnosed with a virus possibly contracted from the hot water supply following maintenance work, local health officials said
* The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations warned of a danger of bird flu outbreaks in August in the Chelyabinsk Region, in southern Urals
* Russia is set to conduct command and staff exercises throughout the North Caucasus from July 31 through August 9, a regional military spokesman said
* Six Il-76 transport aircraft landed in Russia with 287 servicemen from the Chinese People's Liberation Army and military hardware to participate in a regional antiterrorism exercise, Peace Mission 2007
* A Soviet-era top secret ship producer, Volga, confirmed it would deliver an innovative surface-effect landing craft to the Russian Navy this year, probably to the Black Sea Fleet stationed in Ukraine
* One police officer was killed and three were wounded in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia when unidentified assailants opened fire on a bus they were traveling in, local police said
* Police in Siberia detained another three suspects in an attack on an anti-nuclear protest camp that left one person dead and 21 injured July 21, the first assistant prosecutor in Irkutsk said
* A jury in Russia found all seven defendants guilty of hooliganism and inciting racial hatred in the violent murder of an antifascist activist in the northern city of St. Petersburg
* Russian strategic aviation will fly over the North Pole and conduct test launches of cruise missiles during a series of exercises in August, the Defense Ministry said on its Web site
* Russia's food safety watchdog said it had started inspecting U.S. pork producers intending to export their produce to Russia
* The Bolshoi Ballet, on a three-week tour at the London Coliseum, has opened to rave reviews following its first performance of Le Corsaire
WORLD
* The head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) inaugurated a new facility at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the agency said in a press release
* Some 10,000 people have been evacuated from two major islands on Spain's Canaries swept by forest fires, a local government spokesman said
* Medical staff who re-used disposable medical equipment during blood transfusions led to the infection of 11 people with HIV in southern Kyrgyzstan, the Central Asian state's health minister said
* Ethnic Russian activists will stage rallies in Estonia's capital calling for the release of two group members arrested in April for protesting against the removal of a Soviet war memorial
* The great Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni has died aged 94 in his native city of Ferrara late Monday, Italian media reported
* A Taiwanese national was sentenced by a Ho Chi Minh court in Vietnam to 10 years in prison for smuggling 15,000 diamonds worth more than $1.3 million
ECONOMY
* Russian wholesale power generating company OGK-4 will launch the construction of a new power unit at a plant in the Moscow Region, the company's press service said
* Vitaly Lopota, formerly first vice president of the Energia space corporation and its chief designer, was appointed the company's new president
* Itera, a leading independent Russian natural gas producer, said its net profit calculated to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) increased 68.5% year-on-year in the first half of 2007 to 1.61 billion rubles (about $63.5 million)
* Russia's Power Machines said its net loss calculated to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) increased 330% in January-June 2007 year-on-year to 590.9 million rubles (about $23 million)
* The Russian IT company Armada plans to hold an initial pubic offering (IPO) on Russia's two leading stock exchanges, the company said in a statement
* Gold production by Polyus Gold declined 6.4%, year-on-year, to 470,000 ounces in the first half of 2007, the leading Russian gold producer said
* UAZ, a leading Russian jeep and minivan maker, said its net income, calculated to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS), declined 14%, year-on-year, in the first half of 2007, to 469.2 million rubles (about $18 million)
* Armenia's economy grew 11.2%, year-on-year, in the first six months of 2007, compared to 11.8% in the same period last year, the South Caucasus republic's national statistics office said
