* Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said the government forecast investment in the country's power industry at $80 billion in the near term as a result of ongoing reform in the sector
* Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said:
- Gazprom is considering building a second branch of its Blue Stream natural gas pipeline southward
- Gazprom has pumped 62.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas into its depositories in preparation for the coming winter
* Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit France September 22-23 and meet with the French and German leaders, the Kremlin press-service said
* Rosneft has no plans to float additional shares, Vice President Peter O'Brian said
* LUKoil said it intends to increase its annual output of refined oil by 50% to 560 million barrels soon, and to bring it to about 750 million in the long term
* Boris Alyoshin, the head of the Federal Agency for Industry, said Russia's largest auto-making companies, AvtoVAZ, GAZ and Kamaz could merge
* Deputy Russian Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said:
- inflation in Russia would not exceed 9% in 2006 and 8% next year
- Russia would maintain current economic policy after 2008
- the country's gold and international reserves would hit $300 billion in 2007-2009
* Russia's Foreign Ministry said it forwarded a protest to the U.S. embassy in Moscow against the participation of a former emissary of a Chechen separatist leader at a conference on the North Caucasus in Washington
* Leonid Slutsky, the first deputy chairman of the International Affairs Committee of Russia's lower house of parliament, said Russia could join economic sanctions against Tehran if Iran fails to reach a compromise with the international community on its nuclear program
* Spokesman for Russia's Space Forces Alexei Kuznetsov said a medium-class Soyuz-U carrier rocket with a Cosmos satellite was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan
* A Russian military official said it would take Russian military specialists in Lebanon a month to restore five bridges destroyed in the Israeli-Lebanese armed conflict
* The issue of Ukraine's accession to NATO will be resolved by a referendum, which will be held when the time is right, Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said
* The pro-presidential Our Ukraine bloc said it gave the Party of Regions 10 days to decide on forming a new coalition in parliament
* The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis has completed the installation of new solar arrays at the International Space Station, a NASA spokesman said
