* Russia will deploy the first air defense battalion equipped with new S-400 missile systems around Moscow on August 6, an Air Force spokesman said
* Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov is set to become board chairman at the United Shipbuilding Corporation being established in Russia, the business daily Kommersant said
* Police in Russia said they had intercepted and arrested a group that illegally produced aircraft parts and sold them in and outside the country
* Russia sent an Il-76 tanker plane and a Mi-26 firefighting helicopter to help Serbia and Greece tackle devastating forest fires, an emergencies ministry's spokesman said
WORLD
* The U.S. House of Representatives passed a draft law prohibiting the creation of long-term or permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq
* The British Embassy in Moscow said Wednesday Russian officials would be subject to visa restrictions announced earlier in July amid a row over the Alexander Litvinenko murder case
* Russia's Foreign Ministry said that Britain has not so far changed visa-issuing procedures for Russian officials despite earlier reports, and that Russia would follow suit
* The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has not yet received a single document in the Alexander Litvinenko murder case from Britain, a senior investigator said
* Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran was ready to consider discussing Iraqi security with the United States at a deputy foreign ministerial level following the current expert negotiations in Baghdad
* Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev said his country might write off the $54 million debt Libya owes it
* The Lebanese military is planning to eliminate all remaining militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country by August 1, a high-ranking military source said
* Ukraine could sign a contract with a French firm in September to build a giant protective shield over a damaged reactor in Chernobyl, the scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster, the emergencies minister said
* Sergei Stepashin, the head of the Audit Chamber, said worsening Russia-U.K. relations could be partly due to energy giant Gazprom's new role in the Sakhalin II project in Russia's Far East
* Washington and Tehran agreed to set up a trilateral subcommittee on Iraqi security on the first day of negotiations and will continue discussions at the expert level Wednesday, an Iraqi official told ISNA news agency
* Early parliamentary elections will be held in Poland September 30 following a government crisis triggered by the dismissal of a deputy premier earlier this month, the Nasz Dziennik daily said
* Kazakhstan's pro-presidential political party Nur Otan hopes to gain an overwhelming victory of up to 90% of votes at parliamentary elections scheduled for August 18, a deputy head of the party said
* Russian coast guards detained two North Korean commercial vessels for violating Russian territorial waters and poaching in the Sea of Japan, a spokesperson for the border service said
BUSINESS
* The Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran cannot be completed by September-October 2007 as suggested by Iranian authorities, and will only be commissioned a year later, Ivan Istomin, the head of the subcontractor Energoprogress said
* Russia's share in the global economy will increase from 2.6% in 2006 to 3% in 2015, and 3.4% in 2020, the economics ministry said in a forecast
* The Indian government approved a deal on technical details of a widely publicized civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, the foreign minister said
* Gazprom Neft, the oil producing arm of Russian energy giant Gazprom [RTS: GAZP], said it expected to boost annual crude output by 6% to more than 35 million metric tons (257 million bbls) by 2010
* Leasing company Uralsib, part of Uralsib financial corporation, said it had signed an agreement on a $200 million loan to be syndicated by foreign banks led by Credit Suisse
