* Russia's upper house of parliament gave its final approval to a federal law giving the country's president the right to use the Armed Forces and secret services abroad to fight international terrorism
* President Vladimir Putin said:
- Rich nations should open their markets to products from developing countries
- All sides involved in the Middle East conflict must stop military operations and bloodshed
- There will be no alternative to hydrocarbons in the world within the next half-century
- The G8 would work to help the developing world tackle educational problems
* Russia's Foreign Ministry urged Israel to lift its blockade on Lebanon and called on Hizbollah militants to end rocket strikes against Israeli targets
* State-run oil company Rosneft said:
- Its capitalization will stand at $79.8 billion after its initial public offering
- Its board of directors has set an IPO offer price of $7.55 per share or General Depository Receipt
* A Russian diplomatic delegation detained by Georgia's military police near Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, returned to Tbilisi
* Alexander Torshin, deputy speaker of the Federation Council, said a parliamentary commission would issue a report on the 2004 Beslan school siege in early September
* The Ukrainian parliament announced a recess until July 18 to coordinate several procedural issues to form parliamentary committees
* Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, tipped to become a successor to President Vladimir Putin, has been placed in charge of hefty social spending projects, the Kremlin press office said
* Seven people were injured when a Russian Mi-8 military transport helicopter made an emergency landing near St. Petersburg Friday, the Defense Ministry said
* Georgia's Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said his country had denounced a bilateral protocol on Russia's accession to the globe's biggest trade body in the wake of an escalating border conflict with its northern neighbor
* Kyrgyz security forces have smashed a terrorist ring that sought to destabilize the situation in the Fergana Valley, a senior national security official said
* Presidential Aide Sergei Prikhodko said:
- President Vladimir Putin as chairman of the G8 summit did not intend to avoid discussing the problem of corruption, but there were no plans to adopt a formal document on the issue
- Russia was not intending to put forward a motion to discuss "frozen" conflicts in the former Soviet Union during the G8 summit
- The G8 was united on how to approach the Iranian nuclear problem
- Russia was not intending to propose initiatives on resolving the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, but would use its authority in the Arab world to stop the violence
- Georgia's possible revocation of signature under a protocol on Russia's WTO accession was inconsistent
