Moscow, Sep. 1 : Russia on Sunday laid out guiding principles of its foreign policy that included a claim to a “privileged” sphere of influence in the world.

In an address to Russian Television viewers, President Dmitri Medvedev said from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, that his government would adhere to five principles.

The New York Times quoted him as saying that Russia would observe international law and rejected the United States dominance of world affairs in a “unipolar” world.

London, September 1 : Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been hailed as a hero after preventing a TV crew from being killed by a tiger at the Ussuri reserve in Siberia.

The former President visited the reserve to observe researchers monitored the tigers in the wild.

When he saw a trapped beast escape and charge towards a nearby camera crew, Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquillizer gun.

Moscow - Just hours before a European Union emergency summit on the crisis in Georgia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy discussed the situation on the telephone, the agency Interfax reported late Sunday.

The two leaders focussed on the disputed buffer zones held by the Russian Army on Georgian territory along the two breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, according to the report from Interfax, which cited presidium officials in Moscow.

Vienna - Europe's declared goal to shift away from Russian oil and gas was always a challenge. It's even more difficult after Moscow's assault on Georgia, analysts say.

Georgia's strategic role as a pipeline transit country, run by a US-backed leadership that Moscow detests, formed the backdrop to the conflict that erupted in early August.

After Russian troops handed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili a humiliating battlefield defeat, the region's fragility and Moscow's clout are more obvious than ever. Monday's emergency EU summit on Georgia will not change that in the short term.

Tehran - Russia's nuclear power chief will visit Iran to prepare the nuclear fuel operation of the joint Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran, ISNA news agency reported Saturday.

ISNA said that Sergei Kiriyenko will arrive in Tehran on Sunday for talks with officials of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, ISNA said.

Kiriyenko is also scheduled to go to the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr and inspect the latest developments in the plant there.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization head Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh said the Russian side was committed to launching the Bushehr plant as scheduled.

Berlin  - Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg has warned in an interview with a German magazine against appeasing Russia, but also said he would not support sanctions against Moscow.

The news weekly Der Spiegel released the text Saturday. It quoted Schwarzenberg saying Prague supported a rapid admission of Georgia to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), saying delay over this had only encouraged Russia to establish facts on the ground.