* A court in Voronezh sentenced Igor Pavlyuk to 16 years in prison for killing a Peruvian student in the southern Russian city last October, saying the murder was ethnically motivated
* Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said:
- Israel has not provided Russia with evidence that Hizbollah militants used Russian-made anti-tank missiles in Lebanon
- Russia scaled down its forces in Chechnya to fewer than 20,000 in the past six years as the situation in the southern Russian republic returned to normal
* Russia's second largest tanker company Novoship said its net operating profit in the first half of the year calculated to International Financial Reporting Standards almost doubled year-on-year to $95.5 million
* The Moscow District Federal Arbitration Court approved an out-of-court settlement between Russia's Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and Eurocement, the country's largest cement producer
* International rating agency Standard & Poor's said it had withdrawn its 'B-' long-term corporate credit rating of Russian oil company Tatneft because of a lack of consistent information on the company's financial position
* Georgia's press and information committee said a steering group had been created in the republic's breakaway province of South Ossetia to organize a referendum on its independence
* A Defense Ministry official said Russia could unilaterally withdraw from the Treaty on Intermediate and Shorter Range Missiles
* A Russian local environmental watchdog said two Chinese workers were to blame for a spillage of toxic waste into a tributary of the Songhua River, which flows into the Amur in Russia's Far East
* Russia's Central Bank said:
- Deflation in August will be 0.1%
- It will maintain its inflation forecast for 2006 at 8.5%, with ruble appreciation at 9%
* Japan reiterated its demand that Russia release the crew of a fishing vessel detained in a poaching incident
* Authorities in Moscow refused to allow a Madonna concert to be held on a hill in front of Moscow State University overlooking the capital
