NEWS

Russia's next-generation warplane scheduled for maiden flight in 2009

■ ASTRAKHAN (RIA Novosti) - Russia's first fifth-generation warplane will make its maiden flight before the end of this year, the deputy prime minister in charge of arms procurement said on Wednesday.

"We expect the plane to take to the skies no later than the end of this year," Sergei Ivanov told a news conference after a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission.

Russia's advanced multirole fighter is being developed by Sukhoi, which is part of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), along with India's Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), under a preliminary intergovernmental agreement signed in October 2007.

Ivanov said the plant had almost completed the construction of a first prototype of the fifth-generation fighter, but it will undergo only durability tests on the ground at a research facility in Zhukovsky near Moscow.

However, a second prototype will be built and will take to the skies by the end of this year, he said.

Russia says old nuclear satellite poses no threat

■ MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's military says an old Soviet-built nuclear-powered satellite has partly disintegrated but its fragments do not threaten the international space station or people on Earth.

The military's Space Forces say the decommissioned Cosmos-1818 satellite partially fragmented in July and that the debris posed no danger.

Space Forces chief of staff Gen. Alexander Yakushin said in Wednesday's statement that the satellite's fragments remained on a high orbit far above that of the international space station. Yakushin added that the fragments do not pose any threat of radioactive contamination on Earth.

The Cosmos-1818 was launched into orbit in 1987 on a mission to track ships using a powerful radar scanning the ocean surface

Roman Abramovich takes Sunday Times to court for defamation

■ MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - Russian businessman and Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich has launched legal proceedings against Times Newspapers Limited over a January 18 Sunday Times article that said he was looking to sell the club.

The club's official website announced that legal proceedings had begun in the High Court. Chelsea FC are also a claimant in the legal case.

A statement on the Chelsea website said that Abramovich had no intention of selling the club.

"Mr Abramovich has already made quite clear, through the directors of Chelsea, that he has no intention of doing so and that neither he nor anyone upon his behalf has been pursuing any such course of action." 

Quoting "Gulf sources," the Times article in question said that "representatives of the oligarch have travelled to Saudi Arabia and Dubai to elicit interest in the club."