Dagestan

WASHINGTON -- President Obama spoke on the phone Friday with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as U.S. officials scrambled to track the movements of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers. In the evening conversation, Obama praised the "close cooperation that the United States has received from Russia on counter-terrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a written statement. The call came during an intense Boston-area manhunt for 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the bombing, and as a broader investigation spread into whether there may have been collaborators in the U.S. or abroad.

If current demographic trends continue, within the next half-century Muslims will constitute a sizable part, perhaps even a plurality, of Russia's population; indeed, Moscow currently has more Muslim inhabitants than any other European city. And unlike those in Amsterdam or Paris, most of Moscow's Muslims are citizens, not immigrants ? products of the Russian Empire's 19th century southward expansion. In the coming decades, Muslim peoples from Russia's North Caucasus and Volga regions, together with migrants from neighboring Central Asia and Azerbaijan, will continue to displace Russia's Slavic core and reshape how the country defines itself.

At 15, Israil Mirzakhanov was at a crossroads: He could stay home in the Caucasus region, where several of his friends already had been taken from their homes and had turned up dead in the street. Or he could take his chances with the rampant discrimination in Moscow. Four years later, now a tall and fit-looking college student, he becomes something of a pariah when he steps out on the snowy streets of the capital. He tries not to look people in the eyes because he knows what he'll see. Fear.

BOSTON - As the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing continued Sunday, family members prepared to bury the victims, and hundreds of stunned and sorrowful residents prayed together for the dead and wounded and worked to reclaim the streets where the violence occurred a week ago. Federal officials had yet to file charges against 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday and remains in serious condition under heavy guard at...

The Bruins and the Red Sox, Boston-based professional sports teams with home games that had been scheduled for Friday, postponed competition as authorities searched for and apprehended a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Regional rail and bus systems were closed part of the day after Gov. Deval Patrick urged residents of Boston and nearby areas to avoid going out in public. Many fans use mass transit to attend hockey games at TD Garden and watch the Red Sox at Fenway Park.

The last time Patimat Magomedova saw her daughter, she was puttering around the house, manicuring her nails and using henna to dye her hair bright red. It's high time we take care of the garden, the mother remembers Mariyam Sharipova saying that Friday. Let's plant raspberries, cucumbers, greens. And we have to do something about the kitchen, maybe get some pretty new dishes. By evening, the young woman had vanished from the house in this remote mountain village in the Russian republic of Dagestan.

The suicide bombings of two Moscow subway stations that killed 39 people Monday appear to have emanated from a place that few people could find on a map: Russia's North Caucasus region, a sliver of land wedged between the Black and Caspian seas that is home to 7 million people. Russian czars annexed the North Caucasus in the latter part of the 19th century after wars that lasted several decades, but the people in the region were reluctant Russians. No sooner did the Soviet colossus start wobbling than the region, particularly the breakaway republic of Chechnya, descended into chaos.

The events in Boston on Friday -- the gun battle that left one suspect in the marathon bombings dead, the ensuing manhunt for the second suspect -- filled the news pipeline, yet in the most unsatisfying way. For three days, all we wanted to know was who could have been so cruel as to place shrapnel-filled homemade bombs in the midst of a crowd of unsuspecting people. Then, within hours of the FBI posting pictures from surveillance cameras at the scene, we knew the names of two suspects: 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar.

When he was a boy in Douala, Cameroon, it is doubtful that Samuel Eto'o Fils could have located Makhachkala, Russia, on a map. Even the most dedicated geography teacher would have had no reason to introduce the youth to the bleak city on the shores of the Caspian Sea. But on Thursday, Samuel Eto'o, as he is more commonly known, will be winging his way north, leaving behind Inter Milan and Italy to join his new soccer club, FC Anzhi Makhachkala....

A suicide bomber detonated explosives packed into a car outside a busy market in the volatile North Caucasus region Thursday, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 100, officials said. The blast in Vladikavkaz occurred just before noon, when market activity was at its peak. A slow-moving sedan pulled up near the market's front gate and exploded, overturning cars and kiosks, and shattering windows in nearby houses, said Samir Sabatkoyev, spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Russia's North Ossetia republic.