* President of Russia Vladimir Putin decreed to allocate 15.8 million rubles (about $602,000) from the presidential reserve fund for the social protection of children in the first quarter of 2007, the Kremlin press office said
* Three alpinists went missing in the mountains on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East, the regional emergencies center said
* Russia will have time to prepare for its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it moves gradually to join the world trade club and realistically assesses its prospects, head of the presidential expert department Arkady Dvorkovich said
* The U.S. plans to place a missile shield in Eastern Europe are not quite understandable to Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said
* Iran will continue its civilian nuclear program despite the international community's demand that it halt uranium enrichment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said
* Heat supply in the east of the Moscow Region, which was interrupted after an accident on a heat pipeline, has been fully restored, the emergency situations ministry said
