* Russia and Argentina signed a memorandum completing bilateral talks on the former's accession to WTO

* Vasily Aleksanyan, the executive vice president of embattled oil company Yukos, said he was going on hunger strike after a Moscow court remanded him in custody

* St. Petersburg police said a student from Senegal had been shot to death in an apparently racially motivated killing in Russia's second largest city

* The Russian Foreign Ministry welcomed the release of Andrei Zamyatnin, a Russian scientist accused of spying in Sweden, after all the charges against him had been dropped

* Russian state-owned foreign trade bank Vneshtorgbank said it had made its debut issue of ruble-denominated Eurobonds on the international market

* Russian Air Force Commander Vladimir Mikhailov said Russia was withdrawing from a joint program with Ukraine to produce An-70 heavy-lifting aircraft

* Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Iran had no intercontinental ballistic missiles

* Russia's industry and energy minister said the Baltic Pipeline System had been launched to its full design capacity of 1.3 million barrels a day

* Russia's industry and energy minister said all the project studies of a controversial $11.5-billion oil pipeline to Asian markets had been completed

* Svyazinvest General Director Valery Yashin said the telecoms holding had increased its net profits in 2005 by 58% year on year to 27.6 billion rubles ($1 billion)

* President Viktor Yushchenko welcomes a European Parliament decision to start talks on Ukraine's becoming an associated member of the EU, his press office said Friday

* Russia's foreign ministry said a UN commission had failed to prove that Russian companies were involved in the Iraq oil-for-food corruption scandal