Moscow - Russia concluded its first weapons deal with Israel, purchasing unmanned spy planes valued at around 49 million dollars, a spokesman for the Russia Defence Ministry in Moscow told daily Izvestiya on Monday. According to a military export cited by the paper the purchase was in reaction to the August 2008 war in the south Caucasus - where Georgia successfully employed such drones against Russia.

Moscow made the deal despite objections from Israel's political adversaries Iran and Syria, which are also customers of Russia military hardware.

Moscow - Russia on Sunday re-opned its cosmonauts museum after three years of renovation and expansion work. The Moscow museum, opened on the annual Cosmonauts Day, is four times as large as the previous faciltiy.

Moscow mayor Yuri Luskhov said at the opening ceremonies that Russia now had a museum where people could grasp the "magnificence of space." There was nothing comparable to it anywhere else in the world.

Moscow - Russia's state railway RZD announced Friday that it has sent one-fifth of its workforce, 250,000 workers, on unpaid leave due the ongoing worldwide economic crisis. Quoted by the Interfax news agency, the 100-per-cent state-owned company reported a loss of nearly 50 billion roubles (1.5 billion dollars), its first major loss in years.

A year's end the Russian railway reported a debt burden of 7.2 billion euros.

Moscow- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Friday in a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin requested greater investment by Russian firms in Iraq. According to the Interfax news agency, Putin agreed to help in the building of a "strong and independent Iraq."

In the first visit by an Iraqi prime minister to Moscow since the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, al-Maliki is also expected to visit Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Tbilisi/Moscow - Georgian President Miheil Saakashvili on Friday refused to quit, despite around 100,000 protestors nationwide demanding he leave his job. "The government is ready for a dialogue with all political powers, moderate or radical," Saakashvili said in a national television address.

Moscow, April 9 : A team at archaeologists, working at Egypt's Fayoum Oasis, have uncovered a number of mummies wearing golden masks, as well as other artifacts of historical value.

According to Russian News Agency RIA Novosti, a group of Russian archaeologists working in the Fayoum province, some 80km southwest of Cairo, since 2003, have made the findings.

The team has been carrying out excavations at the Deir Al-Banat necropolis for the past two years.