Moscow's soaring apartment rental prices are boosting demand for roommate-matchmaking services.

Competition for your phone bill seems to have finally arrived in Moscow. Unfortunately, it is going to require an additional effort on your part.

For London-born Natalie Horsting, head chef at Denis Simachev Bar, Moscow was not a place that she ever expected to end up -- and when it was suggested it to her, she was reluctant.

Through to Friday, the Uzbek restaurant Beloye Solntse Pustyni is celebrating its 10th birthday. One of Moscow's first thematic restaurants, over the course of the last decade it has been entertaining guests with its cinematographic interior based on the 1970 cult Soviet ""Ostern"" film of the same name.

The king of Saudi Arabia met with Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday -- the first ever between a pontiff and a reigning Saudi monarch -- amid Vatican concerns about restrictions on Christian worship in the Muslim kingdom.

Pakistan's deposed chief justice urged lawyers Tuesday to defy the police and protest President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule. The government, meanwhile, debated whether to delay parliamentary elections by up to three months.Pakistan's deposed chief justice urged lawyers Tuesday to defy the police and protest President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule. The government, meanwhile, debated whether to delay parliamentary elections by up to three months.

A suicide attack on a parliamentary delegation killed at least 50 people in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday,

No western Balkan nation will be able to join the European Union before 2012, except Croatia, which may qualify as early as 2010, European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Tuesday.