Already a full year after a makeshift bomb exploded in the underground passageway at Pushkin Square, the place has the feel of an empty gray cement basement.

A financial watchdog with unprecedented powers is to be set up in order to fight money laundering.

Aiming to convince both the state and potential foreign clients of their abilities, the military putting on a display of the best of local avionic technology.

Bush may himself prevent the development of the new framework with Russia he has tried to champion.

At the end of last year, Putin had a bone to pick with Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko.

City Hall announced that it has suspended a $1.2 billion contract to dig a tunnel under Lefortovo Park.

Torrential rains flooded Vladivostok on Tuesday, washing away homes, disrupting power and water supplies and halting transportation. Three people were reported dead.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow has a toll phone number for visa inquiries to ease the application process.

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has come up with a sweet idea - a new beehive designed for northern climates.

Blast Kills 4 MOSCOW (AP) — Four workers were killed at an explosion at a closed defense plant in the Omsk region, emergency officials said Tuesday. The explosion occurred Monday at the Konversiya-M plant near the town of Krutaya Gorka, said Viktor Verblyudov, a spokesman for the regional emergency department. Two people were wounded, including one in serious condition, he said. Preliminary information indicated that a spark from welding caused a canister of oxygen to explode, Verblyudov said, adding that a special commission was investigating. It was unclear what the plant was producing. NTV television reported that the section of the factory where the explosion occurred was under the management of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency. Novosibirsk Killing MOSCOW (AP) — Igor Belyakov, the deputy mayor of Novosibirsk, was shot dead Tuesday in the second fatal attack on a municipal official in two weeks, police said.

Citing new details from a ""financial insider,"" fresh charges have been filed against Russian Aluminum.

Gazprom said it wants to cut the difference in price between foreign-traded shares and local stock.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans said Russia must deliver on a series of energy investments.

$2.6Bln Collected MOSCOW (MT) — Russia’s top 260 major tax-paying enterprises accounted for 40 billion rubles ($1.35 billion), about half of federal budget revenues in July, Prime-Tass quoted a Tax Ministry official as saying Tuesday. According to official Tax Ministry data, taxes totaling 77.7 billion rubles ($2.6 billion) were collected last month, 23 percent above the budgeted target. Caspian Envoy Arrives MOSCOW (Reuters) — An Iranian deputy foreign minister was to begin a visit to Russia on Tuesday, officials said, and local media said tensions over a long-running dispute over dividing the oil-rich Caspian Sea would be on the agenda. The Iranian Embassy said Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Akhani would be in Russia for three days and that he was to meet Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Caspian envoy Viktor Kalyuzhny. The Iranian envoy’s talks are likely to be connected to recent tensions over the Caspian, after Iran two weeks ago sent a gunboat to chase off a vessel used by experts from oil major BP Corp.

Ukraine's Zhanna Pintusevich-Block scored one of the biggest upsets in World Championship with her win over Marion Jones in the 100 meters in a season’s best 10.82.

In less than five years, Russia's sprawling capital has gone from a place lacking a telephone directory to a city in which cell phones ring with a cacophony of Russian folk songs, e-mail is routine and even grocery and clothing stores sell pagers. But if you want to reach someone in one of the 54,000 Russian villages without any telephone service — say, an anthropologist in a remote village of 33 homes — there is but one reliable way. Her name is Larisa, or Yelena or Margarita, and you get her by dialing 06. They are Moscow's telegram dispatchers — a shrinking but by no means dying breed in a nation that has a long way to go before reaching the digital age. The telegram may be obsolete in the United States and throughout much of Europe, but it remains a vital means of communication in Russia, where there is only one telephone for every five people and vast rural stretches are not wired, and probably never will be. To send a telegram to any destination in Russia is cheap — 63 kopeks, or two cents, per word.

A brief look at the stories making headlines in the Russian-language press