Main news of July 27

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* A Russian helicopter allegedly hijacked by militants in Sudan has returned unscathed to its home base in the province of Darfur, a Russian aviation company said in a statement

* Iran's Air Force will stage massive week-long drills to start Saturday, a national news agency quoted a senior commander as saying

* Moscow has welcomed Iran's readiness to hold technical discussions on the supplying of 20%-enriched fuel for use in its Tehran scientific research reactor, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement

* International financial institutions will allocate $1.1 billion towards the recovery of Kyrgyzstan's economy, the government press service said

* Georgia welcomes a decision reached on Monday to extend the EU monitoring mission in the country by a year, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said in a statement

* Two Russian cosmonauts completed a six-hour spacewalk to fix a video camera and cable connections to an ISS module

* Preparations for the launch of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran will be finished by the end of August, the head of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) said

* The latest unilateral U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran disregard the joint efforts of the Iran Six and the UN Security Council, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said

* Russian scientists from a research institute in the West Siberian town of Tyumen will help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico under a contract signed with U.S. Global Remediation Group, the institute's marketing specialist said

* Russian-Japanese one-day drills to practice helping vessels in distress kicked off in the Sea of Japan near Russia's Vladivostok, a Russian Pacific Fleet spokesperson said

* The Russian research vessel Akademik Fedorov will leave Arkhangelsk for a three-month expedition to the Arctic on Wednesday to ascertain the borders of Russia's continental shelf, the expedition's chief said

* The United States and Canada will conduct a joint Arctic mission this summer to prove their right for the extended continental shelf and Arctic seafloor

RUSSIA

* The Russian government has approved a 332-billion-ruble ($10.1 billion) program aimed at developing the country's tourism sector until 2016, the Novye Izvestia daily said

BUSINESS

* Shareholders of Kazakh gold miner KazakhGold Group Ltd have approved a merger with parent company Polyus Gold, Russia's top gold producer, KazakhGold said

* Russian companies should invest more in the creation of venture funds, President Dmitry Medvedev said

* Russian shareholders of Russian-British oil company TNK-BP welcome the appointment of Robert Dudley as BP head and the possible appointment of current BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward as a TNK-BP director, TNK-BP Executive Director and co-owner German Khan said