Spain's population fell last year the first time since annual records began in 1998 as immigrants left in droves because of a steep recession that has tipped one in four people in the country out of work, official data showed Monday. There were 47.1 million residents in Spain as of the first of January, 205,788 fewer than during the same time last year, according to provisional figures from the national statistics institute. The drop was entirely accounted for by a fall in the number of registered foreign residents, mostly from Spain's former colonies in Latin America.

By Denis Dyomkin SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi asked Russia on Friday for grain and a loan to help ease a deepening economic crisis but secured neither at talks with President Vladimir Putin. Russian officials said only that Moscow would consider the loan request, which a Moscow-based source had earlier put at about $2 billion (1.3 billion pounds), and that it might increase grain supplies if its harvest reached the target level this year.

A German court set to start a neo-Nazi murder trial next month said Friday it would relaunch its media accreditation process to guarantee four seats to journalists from Turkey, where most of the victims hailed from. The court will assign those spots using a lottery system and will also have quotas for other foreign media to cover what has been dubbed the country's trial of the decade.

The Russian government announced Friday that it had sacked the head of the state postal company Russian Post owing to severe delays in international package delivery. Alexander Kiselyov, who has run the company since 2009, was replaced by telecoms executive Dmitry Strashnov, the Russian communications ministry said in a statement. Russian Post has faced criticism in recent weeks for unusual delays to deliveries which the company blamed on problems with airport and customs logistics, and the need to expand capacities to accomodate a booming Internet commerce.