Microsoft is vastly expanding its efforts to prevent governments from using software piracy inquiries as a pretext to suppress dissent. It plans to provide free software licenses to more than 500,000 advocacy groups, independent media outlets and other nonprofit organizations in 12 countries with tightly controlled governments, including Russia and China. With the new program in place, authorities... 

The Soviet lunar program was covered up, forgotten after failing to put a man on the moon. These rare photos from a lab inside the Moscow Aviation Institute show a junkyard of rarely-seen spacecraft, including a never-to-be-used Russian lunar lander. Soviet scientists were well ahead of their American counterparts in moon exploration before President John F. Kennedy pronounced the U.S. would put a... 

Russian company Orbital Technologies has announced it will have a space hotel in orbit possibly by the end of 2015. This will be the first hotel of its kind, revolutionising tourism and launching the massive commercialisation of space travel, another first for Russia’s eternally pioneering space program. Russia was the first nation to conquer space, was the first to orbit the Earth and the Moon,... 

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stepped out of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s shadow long enough on Tuesday to fire Moscow’s larger-than-life mayor, rattling a political establishment that until now has accepted Putin as the nation’s undisputed authority. The mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has ruled Russia’s biggest and wealthiest city since 1992 with an authority that would have... 

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the republic of Dagestan, injuring at least 42 people, including several police officers, according to media reports Saturday. The bomber broke through a police cordon in the capital, Makhachkala, where security officers were battling militia fighters. At least two Islamist rebels were killed in that incident. On Friday at least five suspected Islamist terrorists,... 

Two Russian scientists are being held in a high-security Moscow prison while being investigated on suspicion of spying for China, a lawyer for one of the scientists said Wednesday. The two men, Svyatoslav Bobyshev and Yevgeny Afanasyev, who are both university academics, are being held in Lefortovo jail while being investigated for “high treason and espionage”, Bobyshev’s lawyer... 

Security operation in Russia's North Caucasus. Russian secret service agents and members of the special police unit OMON killed eight Islamist rebels during an anti-terrorism operation in the conflict-ridden North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, the Interfax news agency reported Sunday. A woman was among the dead, Interfax quoted authorities in the capital Makhachkala as saying. They said the bandits... 

Rustem Adagamov is Russia's most popular blogger. When he writes about demonstrations by the political opposition and "unparalleled police brutality," he reaches more readers than many daily newspapers in Moscow do. As Adagamov sees it, "The Internet is the last free territory -- but it won't stay that way for long." With so many of their media sources controlled by the... 

The heatwave has caused forest and peat fires across Russia As Muscovites suffer record high temperatures this summer, a Russian political scientist has claimed the United States may be using climate-change weapons to alter the temperatures and crop yields of Russia and other Central Asian countries. In a recent article, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, wrote, “At... 

A couple embrace, with buildings shrouded in smog in the background, in central Moscow, August 15, 2010. Acrid smoke from forest and peat bog fires which blanketed Moscow until early last week returned to the Russian capital Sunday as wildfires are still burning around the city. The concentration of carbon monoxide in Moscow air on Sunday morning was more than five times higher than the usual level... 

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has called on military top brass to build “total defense” and accused Russia of planning to “overthrow Georgian democracy.” Not only has Russia not given up its “plan to control Georgia, but they are working intensively on that,” Saakashvili said, speaking at a meeting with army top commanders and senior Defense Ministry’s officials. The president... 

Muscovites attempt to keep cool in a fountain in central Moscow on July 15, 2010. More than 1,000 Russians have drowned recently as they attempted to find relief from a stifling heat wave — many of them after drinking alcohol, officials said. Vadim Seryogin, a department head at Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, told reporters Wednesday that 49 people, including two children, had drowned in... 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has announced that Moscow will supply Palestinians with fifty Russian-made armored vehicles within days. “We have sent the Palestinians 50 armored vehicles, they have arrived in Jordan, and we hope that they will arrive here in the next few days,” Lavrov told reporters in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday. The... 

Moscow: In one of the biggest show of military might since the collapse of USSR, Russia mobilised 20,000 troops and state-of-the-art weapons in a drill, with President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday asserting that his country is a “great” naval power capable of defending its interests. Medvedev watched the impressive drills of the Russian Navy as part of the strategic Vostok-2010 (Orient-2010)... 

“President” of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko Arguments by the Belarusian ruler are surprising as usual: how can we owe to Russia, if we fought together in 1941? Alyaksandr Lukashenka called today to show the Russian leadership a Belarusian-Russian film about the Brest Fortress to remind about the unity of the two peoples, Interfax news agency reports. “The film has made a storm of impressions...