News of the Day, 15:00 Moscow time

* A group of Russian Navy officials are suspected of smuggling 30 anti-submarine missiles and 200 airplane bombs, worth a total of $18 million, to Tajikistan for sale to China, the chief military prosecutor said

* Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said:

- Russia's government will pump 2.7 trillion rubles ($74.9 billion) into the country's economy amid the global financial crisis,

- Russia's budget expenditure will exceed earlier approved levels by some 500 billion rubles ($13.9 billion) in 2009, with revenues 42% below forecast

* Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said:

- Russia's government is set to impose state regulation of prices for defense orders

- Russian arms exports in 2009 will remain at last year's level

* The Middle East Quartet comprising Russia, the U.S., the EU and the UN, is considering holding a ministerial-level meeting in Egypt's Sharm el Sheikh, a Russian Foreign Ministry source said

* Foreign direct investment in Russia dropped by 14.2% to $103.8 billion in 2008, the Russian state statistics service said

* Russia's top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, said the Makhmudov brothers, acquitted of the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, were involved in her death, but the prosecutors had failed to convince the jurors of this

* At least five people were killed when a Turkish Airlines passenger plane with 134 people on board crashed as it came in to land at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, the Dutch NOS channel said

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is due to pay a visit to the south Italian city of Bari on March 1 at the invitation of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the Kremlin press service said

* Russia has completed the construction of Iran's first nuclear power plant at Bushehr and is launching start-up operations, the head of Russia's nuclear power corporation, Sergei Kiriyenko, said

* Russian authorities have invested almost 400 billion rubles ($11.2 billion) in the financial recovery of domestic banks to date, a Central Bank senior official, Mikhail Sukhov, said