* Yevhen Kushnarev, a Ukrainian member of parliament, hospitalized Tuesday after being shot while hunting in eastern Ukraine, died in the hospital
* Russia's technological regulator said the land section of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, set to run directly from Russia to Germany across the Baltic seafloor, poses no environmental risks
* Alexander Losyukov, the new chief Russian delegate to the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, said financial sanctions imposed by the United States against Pyongyang must be lifted
* The Russian Prosecutor General's Office charged banker Alexei Frenkel with organizing the murder of a top Central Bank official
* Russia's Anti-Monopoly Service approved the merger of Russian aluminum companies RusAl and Sual, and alumina production assets of Switzerland-based Glencore
* Russia's three leading mobile phone operators MTS, VimpelCom and Megafon suspended services in the Moscow subway in light of a terrorist threat
* Russian energy giant Gazprom said:
- it had no plans to buy assets in the United States in the near future
- its export earnings reached $39 billion in 2006
* Ukraine's prime minister said the government was considering bidding for a contract for the construction of a trans-Caspian pipeline to pump Central Asian natural gas to Europe, bypassing Russia
* Russian Economic Development and Trade Minister, German Gref, said building a Russia-Belarus Union State was impossible without economic integration between the countries, which had now stalled
* A Progress M-57 launch vehicle carrying refuse from the International Space Station sank in the Pacific Ocean after being undocked from the orbital station early in the morning, a Russian Mission Control spokesman said
* The State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, passed in the second reading a presidential bill to reform the country's nuclear power sector and facilitate its development
* Ukraine's president said his country was ready to resolve the use of the Kerch Strait on the border with Russia if its neighbor recognized the Soviet-era administrative borderline as the state border
* Iraq's financial claims against a Russian national should be considered objectively, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said
* Russia and the European Union will sign Friday an additional document to a memorandum on the safety of meat products, to ensure continued meat exports from the EU, Russia's food safety watchdog said
