In the movie ""The Interpreter,"" Nicole Kidman plays an intense UN staffer, portraying the job of interpreting as both thrilling and risky. While not a Hollywood celebrity, NASA interpreter Irina Yashkova stars in real-life space adventures as the crucial language link between astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the international space station.

Mmd Corporate & Public Affairs has announced the appointment of Mikhail Kouriatchev as its first Commonwealth of Independent States chairman.

A Sudanese farmer named Atahar nailed it in simple words: ""We want to return to our village, but if they see us, they will kill us,"" he said quietly to me as we talked in a displaced persons camp in Darfur in 2004.

Shamil Basayev has been destroyed. Or so everyone says. I am not trying to cast doubt on the claims that he is dead -- though I could be forgiven for doing so, following all the previous false reports of his death.

Everyone knows that official holidays are little different from natural disasters in Russia. The older generation remembers how the Soviet Union prepared for the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow.

All that remains of Shamil Basayev are his head and pieces of his prosthetic leg. Regardless of whether the blast that killed the Chechen separatist leader resulted from his own carelessness or Moscow's cunning, his death could not have come at a better time for President Vladimir Putin.

A day after bombs ripped through seven trains, some residents of Mumbai look for loved ones, while others resume their commutes.