Twenty-eight year old, U.S.-educated Mikheil Saakashvili was elected yesterday to the post of majority leader in the Georgian parliament. Saakashvili until now headed the parliament's committee for legal affairs and legislation. Twenty-nine year old Giorgi Baramidze, until now the majority leader, will be studying at... MORE

In a move that surprised most observers, the U.S. State Department recently ordered the Boeing Company to suspend work on the international Sea Launch program. Boeing, using Russian and Ukrainian rockets, is the project manager for the scheme that hopes to boost commercial satellites into... MORE

Millionaire Communist Vladimir Semago plans to run for mayor of Nizhny Novgorod in the repeat election set for September 27. (NTV, August 10) He will stand in for Andrei Klimentev, the nightclub-owner and thrice-convicted criminal who was elected mayor in March. That election was annulled... MORE

An official working in the Omsk regional branch of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on August 10 that counter-intelligence officers there had uncovered a network of informers working for foreign intelligence agencies under the direction of an Israeli maintaining contacts with Jews in the... MORE

Trading was briefly suspended yesterday on the Moscow stock exchange as share prices continued their downward plunge. The benchmark RTS share price index fell by over nine percent. This reflected the decline in world oil prices, which fell yesterday to their lowest in ten years.... MORE

Three days of talks between Russia's chief security official and Israeli government leaders have apparently resolved some of the differences between the two countries on the subject of alleged Russian missile cooperation with Iran. But Russian Security Council Secretary Andrei Kokoshin, in Israel on an... MORE

Armenian President Robert Kocharian yesterday appointed Vahram Nersisian as presidential adviser. Nersisian, a citizen of the United States, headed the World Bank's permanent mission to Armenia from 1993 to 1998. Toward the end of his tenure in that post, Nersisian became publicly critical of Armenia's... MORE

Japan's Marubeni Corporation has been awarded a contract worth 6.3 billion yen (approximately US$ 4.3 million) to build modern facilities at airports in Uzbekistan. The project focuses on control towers and passenger terminals at the Samarkand, Bukhara and Urgench airports. Marubeni will subcontract some of... MORE

The latest wave of industrial unrest has subsided in all but one place, Chelyabinsk Oblast in the Urals, where striking miners have been blocking rail links to the Mayak nuclear processing facility. Miners agreed on August 7 to withdraw their pickets but, no sooner had... MORE

Archbishop Korneliy has called on believers of his Orthodox Church, affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, to stage a protest "march of the cross" later this month. Korneliy's church seeks legal registration under the name "Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church" (EAOC) and outright ownership of... MORE