Topic: Siberia

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Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 06/13
4 great summer books for middle-grade readers

Once school is out, will your young reader be likely to pick up a book? The answer is yes – if the right title is at hand. Here are four strong summer reading choices for kids from ages 9 up.
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 04/21
In Pictures: Sandhill crane migration
Best books of 2010: nonfiction

In 2010 Monitor reviewers critiqued hundreds of books. Here's a list of the 28 nonfiction titles they considered the most outstanding. To assist you with your holiday shopping, each title here has a link that allows you to purchase the book – even as you help to support The Christian Science Monitor

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Just Send Me Word

The letters of a young Soviet couple tell of Gulag life and love.
Pakistan's price: US to pay $365 million more a year to reopen supply lines

A US-Pakistan deal to reopen a key NATO supply route through Pakistan, closed for nearly six months, would raise the cost of the war effort in Afghanistan by about $365 million annually.
A Sense of Direction

This first-rate travel book is – like all the best travel books – most fascinating when it has the author at its center.
Chapter & Verse
'Between Shades of Gray' – probably not the book you're thinking of

Young adult author Ruta Sepetys says her novel 'Between Shades of Gray,' about a Lithuanian girl sent to one of Stalin's work camps, is frequently being mixed up with E L James' erotic trilogy.
America's Stuxnet? Weakness found in systems used by Pentagon, power grid.

An amateur enthusiast has found evidence that hackers could exploit a security vulnerability in the systems of a company that serves power plants and military installations.
Skyscraper fire reignites controversy over Moscow's building boom (+video)

A major blaze broke out Monday at a Moscow skyscraper under construction. Critics are raising questions about a culture of lax regulation as Moscow pursues a rapid makeover.
Plane crash kills 31 in Siberia (+video)

A twin engine turboprop aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff Monday from a Siberian airport.
Astronauts scramble for escape pods as space junk threat gets serious

Some 22,000 chunks of space junk zip around the earth. On Saturday, six International Space Station astronauts scrambled for safety as a piece of a Russian satellite whizzed by.
How scientists brought 30,000-year-old flower back to life

In what is being hailed as the oldest successful regeneration of a living plant, researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences used cells from a 30,000-year-old plant buried in permafrost to create living seedlings.
Why there are no more woolly mammoths

Last week, a video allegedly showing a live woolly mammoth stirred frenzied speculation over its authenticity. Even though it was quickly debunked, it captured the popular imagination. What is it about these shaggy elephants that enchants us, and why did they disappear from the earth?
Shocker: Video of live woolly mammoth not entirely authentic (+videos)

Footage from a Russian filmmaker's personal history project was altered to create a widely discussed – and now thoroughly debunked – sighting of a woolly mammoth.
Remarkably blurry video captures live 'woolly mammoth'

A spectacularly low-quality video from Siberia appears to capture a woolly mammoth, an animal that has been extinct in mainland Russia for about 10,000 years. Either that or it's a bear with a fish in its mouth.
How Lake Vostok could transform our understanding of life as we know it

Russian researchers in Antarctica say they have successfully drilled through more than two miles of ice to reach a vast lake that has been sealed off from light or air for at least 14 million years. If living organisms are found in the lake, it would greatly boost hopes of finding life on other worlds.
Putin harnesses Russian nationalism to boost presidential bid

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says that multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot' but must find its own way.
Global News Blog
Russia hints foreign sabotage may be behind space program troubles

The head of Russia's space agency said it is 'suspicious' that most of the program's accidents occur in places that Russian radars can't reach.
Teaching on the run

Life lessons from a 100-mile expedition in the Indian desert.
Kim Jong-il: Legendary golfer and mythical powers even in death

North Korea's propaganda machine gave Kim Jong-il supernatural powers, creating a mystique around the leader. Next up: his son Kim Jong-un.
So a Russian, an American, and a Dutchman blast off in a rocket...

An international trio of astronauts blasted off in a Russian Soyuz rocket Wednesday, and are en route to the International Space Station.
Killing the Cranes

After decades in Afghanistan, a Monitor journalist offers a memoir and field report.
After Russia's elections, public anger at Putin: Can he fix corruption?

A protest vote against Putin's United Russia party in parliament is being followed by sustained protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Putin is still headed for the presidency, but if he doesn't fix corruption, Russia risks the stagnation of the Brezhnev years.
The Daily Reckoning
Saving money in a debt-soaked economy

Saving money is nearly impossible in an economy ridden with debt. But for the 70 million baby boomers approaching retirement age, it's the only choice there is.
What Putin wants from China

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing today for a two-day visit, just days after calling for the creation of a 'Eurasian Union' of former soviet states.
ISS crew stranded on space station as Russia investigates rocket failure (video)

Russia is investigating the failure of resupply rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). NASA said today that the Soyuz investigation will delay the return of the ISS crew to Earth.
North Korea tells Russia it may be ready to halt nuke testing. Is it?

Analysts view Kim Jong-il's mention of a moratorium on nuclear testing, if six party talks resume, more as a gesture to Russian hosts than as a serious promise.
Russian spacecraft falls from the sky. Is the International Space Station in trouble?

The second embarrassing loss of a Russian space vehicle in a week spells trouble for Russia's space program and its ability to maintain the International Space Station.