* British prosecutors said they would seek the extradition of Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi to charge him with poisoning Kremlin critic and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko last November
* Andrei Lugovoi, accused by British prosecutors of poisoning Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko last November, said he was innocent and that the accusations were politically motivated
* Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow was waiting for details from the U.K. on charges it brought against Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi in the Alexander Litvinenko assassination case, while the Russian Prosecutor General's Office ruled out the possibility of extradition, saying Lugovoi could only be tried in his home country
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Washington's unilateral decision to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Central and Eastern European countries jeopardized security in Russia and Europe
* Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov said the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) would not be transformed into a military alliance
* The UN nuclear watchdog has stepped up inspections of nuclear sites in Iran, suspected of pursuing weapons under the guise of a civilian energy program, the Islamic Republic's Fars news agency reported
* Russian energy giant Gazprom said it had increased its natural gas output by 1 billion cubic meters, year-on-year, in 2006, to 556 billion cubic meters and raised gas exports to Europe by 5.4 billion cubic meters, to 161.5 billion
* Russian state-controlled crude producer Rosneft announced plans to boost its oil refining volume by 730% to 91 million metric tons (about 670 million barrels) per year by 2015
* Italy's Finance Ministry said it might sell not just a 39.9% stake in ailing carrier Alitalia but the entire 49.9% block owned by the government, at the buyer's request
* The Prosecutor General's Office has concluded its investigation into the murder of a Central Bank money-laundering regulator, Andrei Kozlov, a lawyer for the chief suspect in the case said
* Sergei Mavrodi, the founder of MMM, a notorious 1990s pyramid scheme that bilked more than a million Russians of their life savings, was freed from a Moscow detention center after serving out his four-and-a-half-year prison term
* Toyota's St. Petersburg plant, scheduled to open in December 2007, will assemble about 16,000 automobiles in 2008, the company's spokesman in Russia's second city said
* Yury Trutnev, Russia's natural resources minister, said the ministry would hold a repeat check into the Kovykta gas field in Eastern Siberia after Rusia Petroleum, a subsidiary of TNK-BP, failed to remedy license violations
* A Swiss public prosecutor recommended that eight air traffic controllers whose alleged negligence led to a Russian passenger plane crash over Germany five years ago be given suspended sentences of six to 15 months
* Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almaz Atambayev said somebody tried to kill him with poison two weeks ago in his office
* Two power-generating companies controlled by Russia's electricity monopoly Unified Energy System (UES) will offer newly issued shares to investors this summer, UES said
