Foreign religious organizations carrying out missionary work in Russia are complaining that, under new government regulations, foreign missionaries are being given visas valid for only three months. They are also required to leave the country four times per year to obtain renewals. (AP, August 6)... MORE

Interviewed in yesterday's issue of the official Slovo Kyrgyzstana, Aleksandr Yarkov--the country's foremost specialist in nonferrous metallurgy--strongly criticizes the changes made in the last few years to the legislation on foreign investment. The nonferrous sector is Kyrgyzstan's chief source of foreign exchange earnings. Potentially a... MORE

First Deputy Prime Minister Uraz Jandosov met with other government members on July 28 to discuss the plight of Kazakhstan's sixty "small towns." This definition embraces towns with a population of around 100,000 inhabitants; together, they account for over twenty percent of Kazakhstan's urban population.... MORE

Colonel Mikhail Bergman, the closest confidant of General Aleksandr Lebed during the latter's service in Moldova, and now a political supporter of Lebed, is suing Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev in a military court in Tiraspol. Bergman seeks reinstatement in the post of military commandant... MORE

The United States is donating more than 40,000 M14 automatic rifles to Estonia, and apparently some 80,000 of them to Lithuania. The two countries have chosen the M14 as the basic weapon for their military reserves, whose number exceeds by many times that of the... MORE

The Defense Ministers of Russia and Armenia, Marshal Igor Sergeev and Vazgen Sarkisian, have held a "working meeting" in Moscow in the course of Sarkisian's visit to Russia. The ministers were said to have conferred on bilateral military cooperation, regional security issues in the Caucasus... MORE

The Presidium of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party appealed yesterday to "all those who hold the fate of the Motherland dear" to prepare for a nationwide strike to demand "a change of political course, the resignation of the president and the formation... MORE

A political party representing women's interests is to be set up in Russia. At a meeting in Moscow yesterday, Tatyana Roschina, head of an organization called Women for Russia's Future, was elected to head a working group that will organize the founding conference of the... MORE

The Russian Defense Ministry appeared to end several weeks of waffling yesterday when one of its representatives said that Russian troops would participate in a NATO military exercise scheduled to take place in Albania on August 17-22. Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, who heads the ministry's... MORE

As concerns mount on both sides of the Atlantic over the implementation of a 1993 agreement calling for the United States to purchase the equivalent of 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia recently... MORE