* Gazprom's spokesman said at 7 p.m. Moscow time (4 p.m. GMT) that gas negotiations with Belarusian authorities had so far brought no result
* Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he would not succumb to Gazprom's pressure at gas talks
* A source in Minsk said Belarus intended to impose a blockade on all Russian media beginning January 1
* Russia's oldest Soviet-era security agent, Boris Gudz, who helped eliminate the legendary MI-6 "Ace of Spies," Sydney Reilly, in a large-scale operation in 1921-26, died at the age of 104, the KGB's successor said
* An aide to a mosque imam was killed in the capital of Daghestan, the Russian North Caucasus republic's Interior Ministry said
* Gazprom was granted two licenses by the government of Tajikistan for the geological prospecting of natural gas and oil fields in the Central Asian republic, the energy giant said
* Russian senior lawmakers condemned the death sentence passed on Saddam Hussein and said the execution of the ousted Iraqi leader would spark a civil war in Iraq
* A spokesman for the Russian Space Agency said five volunteers have been selected for a simulated Mars mission expected to be launched in Russia late next year
* Inflation in Russia stood at 9% in 2006 and 0.8% in December, the country's statistics service said
* Russia will work to develop relations with North Korea despite the international crisis set off by Pyongyang's nuclear test in October, Russia's new ambassador to the secretive Communist regime said
* A Russian passenger jet, which had to land in Prague en route to Geneva Thursday after an apparent highjack attempt, returned to Moscow, an airport official said. Czech police said the suspected hijacker had been charged with threatening in-flight security
* The Russian Prosecutor General's Office rejected a move by Mikhail Khodorkovsky's lawyers to have a team of investigators working on his case dismissed, defense lawyers of the jailed Yukos founder said
* Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill on the ratification of the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport, the Kremlin press service said
* A Siberian court sentenced an under-aged Russian man, convicted of the murder of a local journalist and his family, to 10 years in prison, a court spokesman said
* An aircraft team joined a search-and-rescue operation in Russia's Far East for a helicopter with three people on board, which went missing Tuesday, a local emergencies official said
