Local Crash Course By Sergei Dmitriyev Driving in Russia has become a risky way to get around. Each year, some 197,000 traffic accidents are registered nationwide, with 25,000 fatalities on the road, according to Traffic Police statistics. And the numbers keep growing at a staggering rate of 10 percent per year. In Moscow, the annual number of accidents averages 14,000, with over 1,000 fatalities. Up to ten children die everyday in car accidents, or 3,600 a year.

News Cabinet Promotions Signal Changes By Anna Arutunyan President Vladimir Putin revealed his new cabinet of ministers on Monday, ending nearly two weeks of speculations and suspense after the president dismissed his government and appointed the little-known Viktor Zubkov as prime minister. Most of the replacements in the new cabinet had been widely anticipated, as was Putin's refusal to sign Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov's resignation. But two important promotions of the president's close allies as well as the appointments of two women to the cabinet shed light on what the government will really look like this election year.

News Olympic Host City to Reclaim Land for Hotel Construction By Kirill Bessonov One of the most interesting events announced at this year's business forum in the resort town of Sochi was the presentation of the Federation Island project. The $6 billion, 330 hectare square meters complex will be built by 2013 on land reclaimed from the Black Sea.

News In Brief A member of the Armenian parliament was shot during a fight at the casino of Moscow's Metropol Hotel on Wednesday, Russian news agencies reported.

Politics Georgia, Russia Clash at UN The Moscow News Georgian officials refused to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the United Nations Tuesday over a deadly and disputed Sept. 20 clash between Georgian security forces and Russian troops in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia. Two Russian officers were killed.

News Space Test Called a Successful Failure By Kirill Bessonov A space transportation experiment held on Tuesday from the Russian satellite Foton 3M was curiously described as both successful and unsuccessful. While officials said the space lift failed to deliver its load to Earth, some, including the authors of the project, assert that the results were nevertheless of great value.

News Boy Survives Flight Inside Jet Wheel Well MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - A 15-year-old boy from the Urals suffered acute frostbite after riding in a Boeing-737 plane on a two-hour flight from Perm to Moscow, Russian radio station Mayak reported on Monday. Later reports said the boy had been riding in the wheel well of the airplane.

Local The Wild Side of a Russian Education By Theodore Merz For those who have never been inside the Moscow State University (MSU) main building, it is simply another of Moscow's Seven Sister skyscrapers. For visitors who have managed to bargain their way past the militsia at the entrance without a student ID card, it must seem like just a collection of uncomfortable dormitories, Soviet-era lecture halls and run-down canteens.

Local Become a Dragon? By Tom Washington I hated rugby at school, my memories are of hanging around in the cold waiting to be flattened, and all for the sake of a small rubber ball. I was astonished to learn that people actually enjoyed this torment and moreover continued with it after their school's toughening-up policies could no longer touch them. I have, in recent years, come round to the fact that rugby might actually be entertaining in its own way, and even considered the possibility of taking it up again. A trip to Moscow seemed put paid to that.

Local Long Live the Republic By Tom Washington Moscow is awash with book shops, with well-established bastions of the publishing trade, like Moskva, and foreign language shops like Anglia, dotting the capital. Does Moscow really need another bookseller? This is a question that Respublica - which opened a year ago on Tverskaya-Yamskaya and now operates a chain around Moscow with outlets at Krylatsky Hill Business Park, Gorbushkin Dvor, Serpukhovskaya and Novinsky Bulvar, with a new one planned to open at the Mega Belaya Dacha Shopping Mall in November - will have to answer.

Local ‘Moscow Versailles' By Phoebe Taiplin Arkhangelskoye, a royal collection of palaces and parkland just outside Moscow, is known for its beautiful gardens as much as for Prince Yusupov's art collection. Although some of the statues have already been boxed up for winter, and - like so much of Moscow - there is a perpetual "work-in-progress" feel about the place, the relative peace and freedom of the surroundings more than makes up for it.

Local Landlords Beware: The Taxman Cometh By Anna Arutunyan Russia's tax authorities are getting serious about making people who rent out their apartments pay their taxes. While talk of tough measures against tax evaders has been going on for months, legal experts say, given the shady nature of the sector it's hard enough to figure out what leasers actually own, let alone getting them to pay. The current measure - sending out official notifications to people who own two or more apartments - is more psychological than practical given the legal hurdles in enforcing it.

World Baltic Invasion? By Sergei Podolsky For some reason, it is with a touch of irony that Russians talk about "our little but proud" Baltic neighbors, about their armed forces, their foreign policy, and their political demarches. Needless to say, any reference to intelligence operations conducted by Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian government agencies against this country typically evoke a skeptical smile among the Russians.

Ask the experts ‘Playing Doctor' a Risky Game By Olga Orlova As of this fall, the Higher Certification Committee (known in Russia by its acronym VAK) introduced a system called ‘Anti-Plagiarism VAK' at its expert review councils. In an interview with The Moscow News, Mikhail Petrovich Kirpischnikov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, VAK chairman, and dean of the Moscow State University School of Biology, explains how the new system will help fight "black dissertations."

National Hello. Can U Meet 4 Coffee ASAP 2 Discuss English Lingo, Cheers! By Marina Lapenkova Agence France Presse One young Russian woman texts another's mobile phone in central Moscow: "Hi, Katya. Ne poiti li nam drink coffee? Call asap! Cheers, Masha."