Washington yesterday condemned the July 13 brutal knife attack by a young Muscovite on a Jewish cultural official in Moscow (see the Monitor, July 14). State Department spokesman James Rubin, calling the attack a "cowardly act of terrorism," said that "anti-Semitism, religious and racial intolerance... MORE

Meeting in Ajaria's main city, Batumi, on July 11, leaders of a wide spectrum of Georgian opposition parties created a bloc with the stated purpose of defeating President Eduard Shevardnadze's Union of Citizens of Georgia (UCG) in the October 1999 parliamentary elections. Success in those... MORE

On July 10, Georgia's coastal guard began patrolling the country's economic zone off the Abkhaz coast. The move signifies incremental progress toward asserting control of Georgia's maritime borders. The coastal guard will, for the time being, not enter what the Abkhaz authorities term their "territorial... MORE

On an official visit to Kyiv on July 8-9, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder publicly came out in favor of President Leonid Kuchma's reelection in the October presidential contest in Ukraine. "With all due respect for Ukrainian voters' right to choose, I would tell them that... MORE

On July 9 police in the Tsymadinsk region of Dagestan raided the village of Echeda and seized weapons, ammunition, narcotics and anti-Russian literature. In response, local adherents of Wahabbi Islam took two policemen hostage and demanded that police personnel be removed from Echeda and other... MORE

The stabbing of a prominent member of Moscow's Jewish community has raised tensions and sparked charges that the authorities have not taken adequate steps to thwart anti-Semitic political extremists. Leopold Kaimovsky, executive director of the Jewish Arts Center at the Moscow Choral Synagogue, remained in... MORE

Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and Central Bank Chief Viktor Gerashchenko yesterday signed a memorandum approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Russian economic policy for the remainder of 1999. The signing of the document, which was negotiated with the IMF, means it is virtually... MORE

In a move likely to raise new concerns among human rights groups in Russia and the West, security agents in Russia's Far East have raided the home and laboratory of a scientist studying the Pacific Fleet's dumping of nuclear wastes. Reports out of Vladivostok yesterday... MORE

The uneasy entry of Russian troops into the Kosovo countryside is continuing this week. Yesterday a convoy of Russian soldiers was welcomed into the Malisevo area of southwestern Kosovo by the German and Dutch peacekeepers already stationed there. The reception given by the local Kosovo... MORE

Also on July 8, the Latvian parliament approved a new language law, designed to reverse the Soviet-era linguistic russification. The law essentially requires public-sector and most private-sector organizations and entities (1) to conduct official business and record-keeping in the Latvian language; (2) to provide--upon employees'... MORE