Word: russian
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...KM/H Speed of the collision between NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft and the comet Tempel 1?the climax of a six-month, $333 million mission to study the comet's composition $300 MILLION Damages sought by Russian astrologer Marina Bai, who claimed that the celestial crash "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe" and skews her horoscope predictions
...endangered treasure. Crammed into 113 sq m of a decrepit six-bedroom apartment in downtown Tallinn, capital of Estonia, are some 50,000 mostly handwritten pages of music and manuscripts, and 1,500 hours of unique audio and video recordings of music by the great 20th century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. This cache of riches has been piling up at the apartment, home of Matsov's father, Roman, Shostakovich's favorite conductor. The works were performed and recorded against the will of Soviet bosses, who either banned Shostakovich or suspected him of "formalism" and other anti-Communist sins. The persecution...
...year old Russian joke has Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev having a smoke with U.S. President Richard Nixon and French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Nixon produces a steel cigarette case inscribed with the words "To our leader, from the GOP." Giscard opens a silver case bearing the simple inlay "To my dear Valery." Brezhnev shrugs and flips open a massive gold case, with the inscription set in diamonds: "To our beloved Czar Nicolas II, from the grateful Russian gentry...
...cares whether Nixon or Giscard ever smoked - or ever shared Brezhnev's company together? Their function in the tale was simply to underscore Russians' jaundiced view of their own rulers. I was reminded of this joke from my youth by the furor over President Putin's recent acquisition of a unique piece of jewelry. At the Russian president's reception for American tycoons, Robert Kraft, the owner of this year's Super Bowl Champions New England Patriots, showed Putin his 2005 Super Bowl ring. It's a 14-karat, four ounces white-gold piece, studded with 124 diamonds arranged...
...media had a field day, reporting that while Kraft thought he was just showing his ring to Putin, the Russian president assumed it was a gift. To avoid embarrassment, Kraft released a statement later to the effect that Putin had been so taken with the ring that, "At that point I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin...