* President Putin nominated Yury Yevdokimov, the incumbent governor of the Murmansk Region in Russia's far northwest, for a fourth term, the Kremlin press service said
* Iran has successfully tested Tor-M1 air defense missile systems recently supplied by Russia, Iranian news agency ISNA said, citing an official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
* Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov will meet with a special envoy of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the Kremlin on February 8, the council's press service said
* The Foreign Ministry said Russia rejects any attempts to revise the results of World War II, but is ready for dialogue with Japan on the sovereignty of the southern Kuril Islands
* The number of plane crashes in Russia halved in 2006 compared to 2005, but the number of people who died in air crashes soared by almost seven times, a deputy head of the country's transport regulator said
* The lower house of Russia's parliament adopted in its third and final reading a bill banning government officials from being involved in scientific, teaching or cultural activities funded exclusively by foreigners
* Eight people have been killed and 21 injured in a fire that broke out at a factory in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, a local rescue service said
* Russia's state-controlled oil producer Rosneft [RTS: ROSN] and China's second-largest oil company Sinopec intend to continue talks with Russian, Chinese and Mongolian railway carriers on oil transportation tariffs to China via Mongolia, the Russian company said
* St. Petersburg police have confiscated human remains which were advertised for sale on the Internet as sacred relics earlier this week, a culture official said
* The telecommunications arm of Russian energy giant Gazprom [RTS: GAZP] intends to launch four low-orbit satellites for remote sensing of the Earth, Gascom's general director said
* Russia will start negotiations on its long-awaited accession to the global trade body with Cambodia in two weeks, Moscow's top negotiator said
