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

Radioactive Box Found MOSCOW (AP) -- A container emitting strong radioactivity was found along a highway in western Siberia, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman said Wednesday. The container, about 20 centimeters square, was found along the highway between Yekaterinburg and Tyumen on Tuesday, ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said. The container was emitting radiation at a level of 2,800 microroentgens, he said. Natural background radiation in that region of Russia is about 50 microroentgens. There were no immediate details on what substance it may have contained or on its origin. Medvedev Assigns Tasks MOSCOW (MT) -- Presidential Chief of Staff Dmitry Medvedev has issued an edict dividing responsibilities among senior officials in the recently downsized and restructured presidential administration.

Players on the Russian market are ignoring an international downturn in merger and acquisition activity, pursuing corporate consolidation domestically with unprecedented fervor.

Anyone who has ever lived in a communal apartment can attest to the disadvantages of such a life: standing in line for morning showers, food being pilfered by ravenous flatmates, and, of course, a distinct lack of romantic privacy.

Eric Kraus' comment defending President Vladimir Putin's administration was quite remarkable in harking back to the old Soviet way of doing business with the West.

It's one thing for the military to outsource food and laundry services to private firms, as it started doing aggressively in the 1990s, but it's quite another to outsource the actual fighting. That is what the Pentagon is perilously close to doing in Iraq.

The puff of white smoke has appeared from the conclave of European finance ministers. Rodrigo Rato, it seems, will be the next head of the International Monetary Fund.

In Britain, the crown has just changed hands.

Russian nationalists have greeted the uprising in Iraq led by Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr with glee.

The doomsayers' gloomiest predictions of a ""new Vietnam"" in Iraq are coming true.