Moscow- Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday saw off the nation's Olympic team with a rallying call and a prayer service at the Kremlin to the upcoming Beijing Games.

"We will not make prognoses, but all Olympians should know that we will cheer for you with all our hearts," Medvedev told the blue- and red-jacketed athletes in the Kremlin's gilded Georgevsky hall.

Moscow, July 29 : Archaeologists in the Sverdlovsk Region in Russia''s Urals have discovered the 9000-year-old bones of a rhinoceros, a local museum worker has said.

The finding is likely to belie the assumption that rhinoceros last wandered the Urals some 15,000-20,000 years ago. It seems to prove that they existed in the area a lot more recently.

Moscow - Two Russian submersibles plumbed the depths of Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia on Tuesday, diving a record 1,680 metres (5,512 feet) in one of the world's largest lakes.

"It is a world record for deep-water submersion in fresh water," an organizer told news agencies Itar-Tass on the barge fielding expedition that was to last another five hours.

The exploration mission is headed by pro-Kremlin lawmaker Artur Chilingarov, who led a mission with the same two mini-submarines to plant a Russian flag on the sea bed below the North Pole last August.

The Soviet-designed Mir-1 and Mir-2 submersibles are to scour Baikal's waters through mid-September for research on global warming and the local ecology and archeology.

Moscow - Sergei Kislyak, Russia's deputy foreign minister, was named the country's new ambassador to Washington, news agencies reported Tuesday.

Kislyak, 57, has headed difficult negotiations with the United States in recent months over Washington's plan to install parts of a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe.

The countries' conflicting security vision is one of a number of issues that makes for tense relations that show no signs of easing as Kislyak takes the post, despite a change of administrations in both capitals.

The two front-runners in the US presidential race have been strongly critical of former president Vladimir Putin, whose legacy his successor Dmitry Medvedev has pledged to follow.

Amman - A new generation of portable Russian grenade launchers that can fire multi-sized rounds and punch through tank armour will be built in Jordan starting next year, a senior official was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

The project will be carried out by a joint Jordanian-Russian company that was established last year, Muayyad Samman, Chairman and CEO of King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau (KADDB) was quoted as saying by the Jordan Times.

"The factory will be a strategic project that seeks to transfer the technology to Jordan, provide the Jordan Armed Forces with its needs of this weapon, export to other markets, create jobs and bring hard currency into the Kingdom," Samman said.

Moscow - A top Kremlin advisor on Monday denied political meddling in the legal struggles of TNK-BP head Robert Dudley with Russian shareholders of the joint oil venture.

"TNK-BP faces no risks whatsoever to its operations in Russia, and the shareholders must decide what to do next," Kremlin economist Arkady Dvorkovich was quoted by news agency RIA-Novosti as saying Monday.

Observers have suspected that the shareholder battle between British Petroleum (BP) and its Russian billionaire partners, as well as recent legal enquires into foreign employees working at the company preface a takeover by a Russian state firm such as Gazprom.