U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid is preparing to stay on board the Russian space station Mir for an additional six weeks if rocket boosters on the U.S. shuttle Atlantis are ruled unsafe. The 53-year-old mother of three was to have returned to earth in early August,... MORE

One person was killed, and 28 injured, eight of them critically, when a bomb exploded on a trolleybus in central Moscow during the morning rush hour. This was the second bombing of a trolleybus in as many days; yesterday's blast miraculously left only five people... MORE

Scores of civilians were killed yesterday by unprovoked Russian aviation and artillery strikes on the village of Gekhi in western Chechnya and the villages of Makhkati, Vedeno, Elistanji, Kirov-Yurt, and Katuni in southeastern Chechnya, according to refugees, medical personnel, and Russian and Western correspondents. Casualty... MORE

Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski said yesterday that he had received assurances from top Clinton administration officials that Poland will be among the first new states invited to join NATO after an alliance meeting in December. "I think that on this the U.S. administration made a... MORE

Tentative plans for Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to attend Boris Yeltsin's upcoming inauguration (see Monitor, July 11) seem likely to be scuttled because the date of the ceremony -- August 9 -- falls on the 51st anniversary of the Soviet Union's 1945 attack on... MORE

Coalmine workers' strike committees in several eastern Ukrainian cities yesterday announced plans to block rail and other inter-city transport as of today, until they receive overdue wages. A rail blockade would have wreak far greater economic damage on Ukraine than the road traffic blockades which... MORE

Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev yesterday ordered the release from detention of Arif Pashaev, a prominent figure in the opposition Popular Front. Aliev determined that his May decree which amnestied thousands of detainees applies to Pashaev as well. Considered second only to former president Abulfaz Elchibey... MORE

Commenting yesterday on the latest round of OSCE-mediated Karabakh talks, held last week in Stockholm, Azerbaijani foreign minister Hassan Hassanov rejected the draft political agreement on Karabakh settlement which was discussed there as "unbalanced" and "ignoring Azerbaijan's national interests." The agreement was prepared by the... MORE

A closed-door meeting was held July 8 to discuss the creation of a new movement on the basis of the Communist and nationalist alliance that backed Gennady Zyuganov's presidential bid. The founding congress of the new movement, to be called the Popular-Patriotic Union of Russia... MORE

Baltic Challenge 96, the most important military exercise held in the Baltic states since the restoration of their independence, began yesterday at Adazi military base outside Riga and will continue for 10 days. The participants are 320 U.S. soldiers, 80 from host country Latvia, 70... MORE