The Moscow Times

Bosch is planning to localize more auto parts assembly lines in Russia following a profitable year during which the technology supplier saw its sales in the country jump 50 percent to almost 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion).

The mysterious cloak-and-dagger world of international espionage and its real-life heroes and villains are exposed in a new exhibition, the first to be sanctioned by U.S. intelligence agencies.

A boom in infrastructure development at the head of the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg is causing stress to the environment and risk of ecological disaster.

The start of 2012 was pretty gloomy for M&A bankers; 2011 had just finished on a very uncertain note, and politicians in Europe were unable to plug the stream of bad news about the European crisis. And although it was not nearly as gloomy as the start of 2009, expectations for M&A bankers in 2012 were quite low and representative of the overall mood on the market as both market and M&A volumes have historically been pretty correlated elsewhere in the world. Not in Russia, however, as M&A volumes remain, high here and seemed little effected by the market prices, as there a set of deals for any set market conditions.

A Russian defense company worker was convicted Friday of passing missile secrets to foreign intelligence in the latest espionage case amid a cold spell in Moscow's relations with Washington.

Russia's richest man recognized the value of Facebook three years ago when he invested in the social-networking company and has now enjoyed a payday of about $1 billion, propelling him further ahead of Russia's oligarchs, who have largely stuck with oil and steel.

Not everyone is happy that Russia will likely join the World Trade Organization this summer, and a referendum drive is under way to question the country's accession. Many Russia-based lawyers, however, welcome the nation's entry into the WTO.

Emerging economies like Russia have long been the bane of industries dependent on intellectual property rights, such as the software industry. Sixty-five percent of software in Russia is stolen, Bloomberg reported last year. The country's accession to the WTO, however, has already resulted in important steps to more effectively enforce intellectual property rights, said Michael Malloy, head of the intellectual property and technology practice at DLA Piper in Russia.

From sweeping new regulations in industries such as pharmaceuticals to the Civil Code revisions and migration amnesty law currently under discussion, Russia's legal environment is constantly changing. The Moscow Times posed four questions by e-mail to four Moscow-based lawyers specializing in different fields about new developments in their areas of practice.

Half a century ago, this town on the White Sea coast was a supply mecca for residents of the nearby metropolis Arkhangelsk, who regularly made the 35-kilometer trip just to buy sausage, which was usually available in the well-stocked stores of strategically important defense industry centers.

Nearly 200 of Moscow's museums, parks, theaters and cultural centers are staying open after hours Saturday as part of the city's sixth annual Night at the Museum project. Most participating venues will be open from 6 p.m. until midnight, some much later, and will offer free admission.

Officials are responsible for about half the registered violations of anti-monopoly laws, deputy head of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service Andrei Tsarikovsky said in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Mobile TeleSystems is rolling out a service that will let its customers make purchases and check bank balances with a wave of their phones.