Russia

Finnair has launched an airfare sale on flights between New York City and Estonia , Sweden , Russia and Lithuania for less than $700 round trip. Los Angeles fliers could use up some air miles or hunt down a cheap L.A.-New York airfare to take advantage of sale prices. The deal: Prices for economy seats from New York start at $655 to Tallinn, Estonia; $670 to Stockholm; $679 to St. Petersburg, Russia; and $695 to Vilnius, Lithuania. The sale applies to business class seats too, which cost $2,729 to $2,755, depending on the destination.

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday began a U.S.-Russian youth hockey game opening the world championship competition by declaring a minute of silence for the casualties of the Boston bombings and the West, Texas, explosion. “In recent days, terrible tragedies that claimed lives happened in the country from which the team of our competitors today came: the terrorist act in Boston and the explosion at a Texas plant,” Putin said in televised remarks in the southern city of Sochi.

Both allies and opponents of the United States expressed horror at the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, as sympathetic statements emerged from Canada to China on Tuesday. Iran denounced the attacks as part of a scourge that should be prevented “irrespective of wherever they occur,” its Foreign Ministry told state news media. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that although some governments may believe that supporting terrorists can benefit them, “the evil phenomenon of terrorism will harm all, and all should rise to counter it,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Sony Pictures Releasing International will distribute "Stalingrad," the first Russian-made feature film to be shot in the IMAX 3-D format, in the picture's home country. A teaser trailer for the film from director Fedor Bondarchuk will be screened at Sony Pictures Entertainment's CinemaCon presentation on Wednesday. "Stalingrad" is a love story set in 1942 against the backdrop of the devastating World War II battle of the same name. The Battle of Stalingrad, in which the Soviet Union finally prevailed, lasted more than five months and resulted in the deaths of nearly two million people.

Military spending fell last year in the United States and across western and central Europe, but surged in Russia, China, the Middle East and North Africa, according to new figures released by a research group based in Sweden. The changes “may be the beginning of a shift in the balance of world military spending from the rich Western countries to emerging nations,” Sam Perlo-Freeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a statement announcing the report Monday.

Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician who continued to work on complex equations from memory even after he went blind, is honored in Monday's Google Doodle on the 306th anniversary of his birth. Euler, who wrote nearly 900 books over the course of his career on topics such as lunar motion, optics, acoustics, algebra, calculus, geometry and number theory, is one of the most prolific and important mathematicians of the 18th century, and possibly of all time. He was so prolific that a St. Petersburg, Russia, academy continued to publish his unpublished works for at least 30 years after his death in 1783.

MOSCOW -- Russian officials Saturday banned 18 American officials from entering the country, a day after the U.S. announced similar sanctions on 18 Russians in connection with the prosecution and subsequent death of Russian auditor Sergei Magnitsky. The auditor's death in custody in 2009, after allegedly blowing the whistle on a multimillion-dollar scam, led to passage of a law calling for visa restrictions and financial sanctions for those involved. The American list published Friday included Russian police officers, tax inspectors and other officials, most of whom were involved with the Magnitsky case.

Ford is headed to Mother Russia. The American automaker announced Thursday that the first Explorer SUV built from the ground up outside of the U.S. rolled off the assembly line in Elabuga, Russia. Previously, the Explorer was built in large chunks at Ford's plant in Chicago, and then shipped to Russia for final assembly. Ford said the Chicago facility will continue to build Explorers for the U.S. market and for export to 64 countries. The Russian-built Explorers are built by Ford Sollers, a joint venture between Ford and Sollers.

President Reagan stunned fellow citizens and the world 30 years ago this month with a dramatic announcement that the United States would develop and deploy a system capable of intercepting and destroying strategic ballistic missiles. Like President Kennedy's pledge to send a man to the moon, Reagan's vision was meant to stretch minds to new realities that most found inconceivable. As the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, developed, this vision encompassed three big ideas. First, technological advances would make it possible to "hit a bullet with a bullet.

If you are feeling like you are being shortchanged on your annual vacation time, in a global sense, you are. On average, Americans fall near the bottom of a ranking of workers from around the globe, based on the number of vacation days and holidays offered. Workers in the U.S. get an average of 10 days of paid vacation, plus another 10 days to celebrate national holidays, according to a survey of 30 nations by the the hotel booking website Hotels.com. ( Several studies have also shown that most Americans don't use all the vacation days they've got coming to them.)