* The Russian Space Agency said a Kosmos-3M carrier rocket had successfully put a Gonets-D1M communications satellite into orbit
* President Vladimir Putin said Russia might supply natural gas to the Asia-Pacific region, in addition to oil
* Leonid Osavolyuk, Ukraine's acting charge d'affaires in Russia, said his country had claimed that Russia's Black Sea Fleet was unlawfully holding some of its facilities
* The Emergency Situations Ministry said the massive toxic slick in the Amur River containing potentially lethal benzene reached the suburbs of the city of Khabarovsk at 1:00p.m. Moscow time (10:00a.m. GMT)
* Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the government's economic policy should prioritize measures to fight inflation and the excessive appreciation of the ruble
* Russian Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said there were currently no known bird flu cases at Russian agricultural enterprises or private farms
* A Moscow court extended until April 12, 2006 the arrest in absentia of Yevgeny Adamov, Russia's ex-nuclear power minister, who is currently in a Swiss jail waiting for the decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne on his extradition, Adamov's lawyer said
* Russian energy giant Gazprom has signed a contract for the construction of an underground natural gas storage facility in China, the company said
* Another 38 people suspected of involvement in the Andijan uprising in Uzbekistan were sentenced to 10-18 years in jail, and one other was confined to a psychiatric ward
* The central blood bank in Central Russia's Voronezh region was temporarily closed after an 11-year-old boy and a 21-year-old woman tested positive for HIV following blood transfusions, a health watchdog official said
* Russia's largest state-owned oil company Rosneft plans to increase production by 7% in 2006, company CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov said
* Latvian Defense Minister Einars Repse submitted his resignation following an investigation into his real estate deal, an official said.
