Moscow, Jan. 21: Lots of Russians believe that under President Obama, U. S.-Russia relations in the post-Cold War scenario should pick up.

"After Barack Obama becomes president, he should establish better contacts and improve ties with Russia," CBS quoted Maxim, a young boy from the Russian city of Yaroslavl, as saying.

"I would advise President Obama to telephone our President Medvedev and arrange a meeting between them," adds Vitaly, also from Yaroslavl.

Russian officials have recently been talking most favorably of the future of the bilateral relations, significantly toning down their anti-American rhetoric which has for years been Moscow''s trademark in foreign relations.

Kiev- Siphoning of Russian gas moving to Europe by Ukraine was not taking place, a European Union official said Tuesday.

"We do not have any information that Ukraine performed unsanctioned siphoning of (Russian natural gas earmarked for Europe) after December 31," said Andris Piebalgs, the European Union's Energy Commissioner, at a Kiev press conference.

Piebalgs' remarks came on the first day of a resumption of Russian natural gas shipments to Ukraine, cut off at the end of 2008 over a series of Russo-Ukrainian disputes, among them Russian allegations that Ukraine had stolen Russian gas in the past.

Vienna- While Austria tapped into its natural gas stocks amid the recent stoppage of Russian gas supplies, engineers in the Austrian town of Guessing were busy producing an alternative: natural gas from wood.

With the help of Swiss and Austrian scientists, the European Centre for Renewable Energy Guessing produced so-called synthetic natural gas for the first time outside a laboratory in December.

Moscow- Russian police were on Tuesday scanning public video recordings in their search for the killers of a high-profile lawyer and journalist, whose murders in public drew international attention.

Police officials confirmed that no suspects had been identified yet.

Attorney Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova were shot dead in public after a press conference on Monday afternoon, only a 10-minute walk from the Kremlin.

Markelov was killed immediately by an assailant armed with a silencer-fitted firearm on Prechistinkaya street, in downtown Moscow.

Moscow - The Russian gas monopoly Gazprom began Tuesday to pump gas to Europe into a Ukrainian transit pipeline for the first time since a nearly two-week supply blockade began, the Russian Interfax news agency reported.

The supply resumed after both countries laid aside a bitter dispute over fees and the illegal siphoning of gas, which had cut European countries off from energy supplies in the middle of a harsh winter.

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