Valeriy Lyndin, spokesman for Russian mission control, says the landing took place at 10:32 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan. He says the mission ended safely.

NASA television reports that helicopters have reached the landing site and the spacecraft’s hatch has been opened.

Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, NASA astronaut Michael Barratt and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte landed Sunday after leaving the International Space Station several hours earlier.

A six-member crew remain aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Bet that beat a trip to the circus!

Art Moscow, showing works from 40 Russian and international galleries, was postponed from May by its organizer, Expo Park Exhibition Projects Ltd., to coincide with the state-run Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.

“Art Moscow is the most important commercial contemporary event in Russia and will tell us a lot about the art market,” said Marina Goncharenko, director of GMG Gallery in Moscow. “There are only a handful of collectors able to buy very expensive works. Otherwise, the market is mostly about a small group willing to pay between 5,000 euros ($7,395) and 20,000 euros.”

The Russian economy contracted by about 10 percent in the first half of 2009 as prices fell for natural resources, such as oil, on which Russia is heavily dependent. Three auction houses in London sold 29.1 million pounds ($48 million) of Russian art in their June sales, half the total of last year, as art prices also plummeted.

Moscow millionaire, Igor Markin, a leading contemporary Russian collector and owner of the Art4.ru museum, said in an interview that he “hasn’t bought anything in a long time.” In spring, he even sold four artworks for half their value before the crisis began, he said.

More than half of galleries at Art Moscow are Russian, and 17 are foreign, including Volker Diehl Gallery of Berlin, and Knoll Gallery of Vienna.

While the Russian government forecasts some economic growth in 2010, it said that it may be another three years before the economy returns to 2008 levels. That means the slump in the art market could last until then, said dealers.

“Russia’s contemporary art market was never big to begin with, and so this slowdown makes it more difficult,” said Volker Diehl, a German gallerist with spaces in Berlin and Moscow. “Russians show more interest in reasonably priced art by Russian artists instead of international ones.”

The dacha is a unique phenomenon in the life of anyone who lives in the boundless expanses of the Russian Federation. A small plot – 0.15 acres – with a few currant bushes, apple trees and a vegetable patch, a little wooden house with no telephone or running water and a discreetly located outhouse.

In the last decade, of course, Russia has seen its share of over-the-top country palaces with columns, balustrades and similar excesses, but these fruits of wild imagination have nothing to do with real dachas.

In the old days, to have a dacha was a privilege. They were given only to society’s elite: senior officials, writers and scientists. In the 1960s, however, Soviet authorities let every family have a dacha. Ordinary Russian citizens could apply for a small plot of land and would receive it for free. All development, including construction of a home, was left to the owner.

Now, the Soviet man, raised on a negation of private property, could own his own piece of earth. Perhaps this was even the beginning of the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse.

Be that as it may, going to the dacha in the days before mobile phones was like visiting an uninhabited island. A person received the legal right to temporarily escape the total control of society. “I was at the dacha,” was the excuse used to explain any long absence: a sort of internal emigration.

During the Obamas’ visit to Moscow, Michelle won respect from the Russian press for “working the White House like a dacha” with her kitchen garden. As their visit demonstrated, a great way to earn Russians’ esteem is to till your own soil.

Practical aspects aside, the dacha has another purpose, and that is spiritual. Russians, who tend to think globally and worry about the fate of the world, are sometimes powerless to organise their own free time. As a result, all their agonies end on the couch in front of the television.

The dacha solves this problem once and for all. No one has to think about how to entertain themselves at weekends or waste time arguing with family members. “We’re going to the dacha” says it all. At the dacha, everyone finds an occupation after his or her own heart.

The husband bangs a nail into the wall, the wife weeds the vegetable patch, the children and dogs are left to their own devices. The dacha brings families together. And, in the end, “I was at the dacha this weekend” sounds a lot better than “I sat at home watching TV”.

The oil producer offered the rich returns of Russia’s vast energy sector but boasted Western management and a stock listing in London. Its top shareholder was Chalva Tchigirinski, a well-connected Russian billionaire who got his start peddling Orthodox icon paintings. Investors lapped it up, and the stock became the biggest by market capitalization on London’s junior stock exchange.

It all crumbled this year as Mr. Tchigirinski’s empire unraveled in the global financial crisis. When Sibir announced it had lent the Russian hundreds of millions of dollars without shareholders’ knowledge in a doomed bid to keep him afloat, investors dumped the stock, racking up billions in losses. The 60-year-old Mr. Tchigirinski left Russia for an undisclosed location, and Sibir has become the latest Russian oil company to be effectively nationalized.

Mr. Tchigirinski embarked on one of Russia’s grandest building programs since the Stalin era and became one of its richest men. Documents filed by his lawyer in London’s High Court say Mr. Tchigirinski was backed, in part, by a powerful businesswoman who is the wife of Moscow’s longtime mayor.

The nature of the business relationship between Mr. Tchigirinski and Elena Baturina, the mayor’s wife, is a matter of dispute. All that is known for sure is that Ms. Baturina loaned the Russian tycoon money that he has failed to pay back in full.

According to a statement issued by CCTV on Thursday, the Russian channel is expected to serve a potential 300-million audience in the 12 nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.

Audience in other countries will be able to watch it through the CCTV website, the statement said.  The channel will provide news, entertainment and programs to introduce China, Chinese culture and language round the clock, it said.

CCTV said it hopes the channel will help improve understanding between Chinese and people in Russian-spoken countries, the statement said.  CCTV currently broadcasts channels in the English, French, Spanish and Arabic languages

Both the vaccines contain actual strains of flu viruses and have been recommended by the World Health Organisation for the 2009-2010 period.

“Within the priority national project in the healthcare sphere, inoculation of the population from the ‘risk groups’ — medical workers, school students, children attending preschool institutions, persons older than 60 years of age,” the Russian Federal Consumer Protection and Human Welfare Service has said.

“On August 26, central staff members will be inoculated against influenza. The Russian national vaccine Grippol will be used for immunisation,” the agency added.

Meanwhile, the first case of the A-H1N1 type influenza has been registered in the capital of Russia’s Tatarstan Republic — Kazan, head of Rospotrebnadzor’s epidemiological department for Tatarstan, Tatyana Makarova told Itar-Tass.

The Latin spelling for the Russian name of Sukhumi is Cyxymu. Cyxymu is also the name of the blogger who was targeted last week in the cyber attack on Google Blog, Twitter, Live Journal and You Tube by Russian intelligence. The attack caused Twitter to crash.

Mostly written in Russian, Cyxymu is intended for other Abkhazian refugees. Criticizing Russian aggression, but pulling no punches as to Georgia, the site quickly became quite popular. However, in October 20o8, Live Journal, the blog’s host, was the target of a massive cyber attack, probably by Russian intelligence. Succumbing to the pressure, Live Journal, Russia’s largest blog platform, deleted Cyxymu’s account.

Twice canceled due to Russian cyber warfare censorship, Cyxymu now moved on to Twitter, Google Blog, and You Tube. Changing his name to Cyxymu2, he reappeared on Live Journal.

Moscow’s cyber attack was a ham-fisted attempt to censor the blogosphere. But, not only did it fail, but by taking down Twitter, a front and center platform in the West, it guaranteed publicity for Cyxymu.

The two nuclear-powered subs are actually operating in international waters as close as 200 miles from the Eastern seaboard. That is the closest Russian subs have come to the US in about a decade, Pentagon officials said.

The patrols are probably meant to send a political signal, not a military one, says Stephen Flanagan, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

This is Russia essentially saying: “don’t count us out,” he says. “They want to show that they are a capable military power that can do these things.”

The subs’ foray is part of a trend. Reports suggest that Russian “Bear Bombers” have been flying over the North Cape of Norway more often lately. The Japanese have reported similar overflights, Mr. Flanagan says. The Russians conducted some naval exercises with Venezuela during the last year, as well.

“It’s not a good sign politically, but not a militarily worrisome development,” Flanagan says.

The Pentagon has sought to play down the subs’s significance.

“What are they doing? I don’t know what they’re doing off the coast, I don’t think any of us know what they’re doing,” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon’s press secretary, told reporters Wednesday.

Mr. Morrell acknowledged that American vessels freely operate in international waters off the Russian coast from time to time, and that the Russian subs are “entitled” to do the same. He said he did not believe the US had reached out to the Russians for clarification on the subs’ operations.

But with US attempting to improve its relations with Russia, it is important not to have a knee-jerk reaction, assigning motives that may not necessarily be there, he added.

This week, though, the Kremlin essentially said not so fast.  Russian officials announced that an error was made in 2007 when poker was added to the list of official sports. As a result, poker clubs will also be illegal under the antigambling law.

The ban, which took effect on July 1, was promoted by Vladimir V. Putin, the former president and current prime minister, who said casinos and slots parlors had proliferated in post-Soviet Russia and were a social blight.

Casino owners had long predicted that Mr. Putin would not go through with it, especially with the financial crisis damaging the Russian economy. But he did not let up, and the industry says the ban has left more than 400,000 people unemployed.

Samuil Binder, deputy executive director of the Russian Association for Gaming Business Development, said Wednesday that the decision to no longer classify poker as a sport underscored the haphazard regulation of gambling in general.

Under the antigambling law, casinos and other such facilities can relocate to four remote regions in Russia. But none of the regions are prepared, so no casinos are expected to open soon.

Russian ballet is a form of ballet characteristic of or originating from Russia. In the early 19th century, the theaters were opened up to anyone who could afford a ticket. There was a seating section called a rayok, or ‘paradise gallery’, that was comprised of simple wooden benches. This allowed non-wealthy people access to the ballet, because tickets in this section were inexpensive.

The first ballet company was the Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg in the 1740s. The Ballet Russe was a ballet company founded in the 1909 by Sergey Diaghilev, an enormously important figure in the Russian ballet scene. The headquarters of his ballet company was located in Paris, France. A protégé of Diaghileve, George Balanchine, founded the New York City Ballet Company in 1948. Today, the Kirov Ballet company (now known as the Mariinsky Ballet) and the Bol’shoy company are two world-renowned Russian ballet companies that tour the world.

Many Russian dancers have gone on to reach worldwide acclaim; notable Russian dancers include: Avdotia Istomina, Paul Gerdt, Olga Preobrajenska, Mathilde Kschessinska, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spesivtseva, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Lydia Lopokova, Galina Ulanova, Marina Semenova, Yury Grigorovich, Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Soloviev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Maya Plisetskaya, Galina Mezentseva, Ulyana Lopatkina, Ilya Kuznetsov, Vladimir Malakhov, Nina Ananiashvili, Alexei Ratmansky, Yevgeni Panfilov, Ekaterina Maksimova, Nikolay Ciskaridze, Svetlana Zakharova.