Legislators said Monday there was nothing essentially new in reports that the United States is preparing military contingency plans to use nuclear weapons in certain tactical situations against at least seven countries, including Russia.

After seeing 82 residents killed or vanish, villagers of Tsotsin-Yurt have signed an appeal urging the West to prevent the ""mass extermination of Chechens"" by Russian troops.

Chechnya's Moscow-backed labor and social welfare minister has announced measures to combat corruption.

Afghanistan's interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai arrived Monday for talks with President Vladimir Putin and other officials on Russian help rebuilding the Afghan military and infrastructure.

The heads of Russia's largest Protestant denominations -- the Baptists, Pentecostalists and Seventh-day Adventists -- have united for the first time to form a body aimed at giving the country's second-largest but often neglected Christian confession a common voice to present to the government and public.

The Pankisi Gorge, suspected lair of assorted international guerrillas, seemed a less threatening place when Georgia's top fashion designer chose it to launch a collection.

Kursk Lift Plan MOSCOW (AP) -- The top Rubin submarine design bureau has worked out a plan for raising fragments of the Kursk nuclear submarine that were left on the Barents Sea floor when its gutted carcass was lifted last fall, its director said Monday. Igor Spassky, the head of Rubin, which played an active role in the larger salvage effort performed by a Dutch consortium, said the operation to raise pieces of the Kursk bow would be carried out this summer exclusively by Russian experts. Spassky didn't say when the operation to raise the bow fragments would start or how much it would cost. Benefit Auction MOSCOW (MT) -- A two-day auction of Russian art to benefit victims of the Sept. 11 attacks was due to begin Monday in Manhattan, Interfax reported. The auction was organized under the auspices of the Culture Ministry, the Moscow Association of Industrialists and the Museum of Modern Russian Art in Jersey City, New Jersey.

As retailers scramble to find suppliers of cheap chicken in the wake of a Russian ban on U.S. imports, some are saying the time has come for Russia to fill the gap itself.

Boris Nikolsky's Communist Party past -- specifically his part in ordering the violent crackdown on unarmed civilians in Tbilisi in 1989 -- has raised doubts about the moral authority of the future commission.