Russian Embassy

Police in Belarus detained about 30 people who staged a demonstration outside the Russian Embassy to demand that the Kremlin stop backing hard-line President Alexander G. Lukashenko. The protest occurred three days after opposition leader Alexander Kozulin was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison in connection with demonstrations against the reelection of Lukashenko, who has been in power 12 years.

BEIRUT--Syrian officials said the death toll from a blast in Damascus, the capital, early Thursday has increased to at least 53 people and that at least 235 were injured. The midmorning explosion was probably a massive car bomb that detonated on busy Al Thawra Street in the Al Mazraa district in central Damascus, causing bloody mayhem in the heart of the city, according to news reports. The victims were mostly pedestrians, schoolchildren and motorists, the state media said. The blast also damaged nearby Al Hayat Hospital and Abdullah Bin al-Zubir school, the official news agency reported.

The Russians and Americans have reached an agreement to move the Romanov jewels from the Corcoran Gallery of Art to the Russian Embassy compound, in what appeared to be a significant breakthrough in a face-off that has drawn national and international attention.

MOSCOW--Two Russians and an Italian held hostage by the Syrian armed opposition since mid-December were released, Russian officials said Monday. The two Russians were exchanged on Sunday for rebel fighters held by the Syrian government, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told the Russia-24 TV news network. It was not clear whether similar arrangements were made for the Italian hostage. The three were employees of a steel plant near the city of Homs in central Syria.

Three Nigerian Defense Ministry staffers and three foreigners are being held pending a hearing on spying charges, court officials said. Court papers allege that the Nigerians colluded with Irishman James Nolan, Romanian Bogdan Dumitrescu and Israeli Eliav Hommossany to illegally obtain classified security documents and that they intended to pass them to the Russian Embassy in Nigeria. The six have pleaded not guilty. They could get as much as 14 years in prison if convicted.

A dispute over custody of jewels once owned by the czars of Russia led cars from the Russian Embassy to block a tractor-trailer that was to have carted the $100-million collection to its next stop in a two-year American tour. Anatoly Dubekhin, cultural attache from the embassy, said Russia wanted the collection returned to Moscow for the Russian capital's 850th anniversary. The exhibit was to have been sent from the Corcoran Gallery of Art to Houston.

A Russian air force jet briefly violated Japanese airspace over an island in the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo, the Foreign Ministry said. The three-minute flyby above Izu island ended after warnings by a Japanese fighter jet dispatched by the Air Self-Defense Forces, said a Foreign Ministry official. The ministry immediately lodged a protest over the intrusion with the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, and demanded an explanation, the official said.

Ending a peculiar three-week standoff, the Russian government agreed to allow a $100-million collection of czarist jewels and artwork to head for Houston where it will resume an American museum tour. Timothy Dickinson, an attorney for the Russian government, would not provide details except to say the parties agreed on an "equitable splitting of the revenues."

MOSCOW--Two Russians and an Italian held hostage by the Syrian armed opposition since mid-December were released, Russian officials said Monday. The two Russians were exchanged on Sunday for rebel fighters held by the Syrian government, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told the Russia-24 TV news network. It was not clear whether similar arrangements were made for the Italian hostage. The three were employees of a steel plant near the city of Homs in central Syria.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is caught in the middle of a legal and diplomatic dispute that has prompted Russian authorities to ban art loans to U.S. museums because of an American court decision in favor of the Jewish religious group Chabad. The Russian cultural ban already has aborted one U.S. museum exhibition, forced the indefinite postponement of another, and could prevent LACMA from showing 38 artworks in a major exhibition on Islamic art set to open June 5. Russia's actions are the result of a ruling in a U.S. District Court last summer that Russia must restore a trove of religious books and manuscripts to Chabad, a prominent international ministry based in New York City.

MOSCOW - Russian evacuees from war-torn Syria, mostly worried-looking women and children, emerged from two government airplanes Wednesday into the predawn chill of the Moscow winter. Several of the evacuees spoke of the mounting hardships in their adopted country, and of an uncertain fate in a motherland they have not known for years. Many of them left Russia a decade or more ago after marrying Syrian men who had come to Russia to study or work. Now their families were escaping danger in a Syria they had come to love.

MOSCOW - Russian evacuees from war-torn Syria, mostly women and children with worried eyes, emerged Wednesday from two government airplanes into the predawn chill of the Moscow winter. Several spoke of the mounting hardships in their adopted country - and of an uncertain fate in a motherland they have not known for years. Many of the 77 evacuees had departed Russia a decade or more ago after marrying Syrian men who had gone to Russia to study or work and then returned home with loved ones.

After being found guilty of hooliganism Friday morning, the three young members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot were each sentenced to two years in prison by a Moscow judge. The band faced a maximum of seven years.  Amid a volatile atmosphere outside the courthouse that reportedly included hundreds of supporters, Judge Marina Syrova in her sentencing said the three women "committed hooliganism driven by religious hatred," according to Associated Press reports. The three women -- Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich -- had argued that they were taking a stand against  the Russian Orthodox Church's support for Vladimir Putin and were not seeking to offend religious believers.  PHOTOS: Russian punk rockers on trial The women were charged with hooliganism after performing an unapproved, impromptu set at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow in February.

For more than a year, Russia has prohibited its government-run museums from sending artworks to exhibitions in the United States. The ban has frustrated and puzzled American museum officials, because it was spurred by a legal decision unrelated to anything the museums themselves have done. Diplomacy has failed to lift it. Hopes have risen recently that the impasse can be broken by a bipartisan bill that passed unopposed in the U.S. House of Representativeson March 19 and is pending in the Senate judiciary committee.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is caught in the middle of a legal and diplomatic dispute that has prompted Russian authorities to ban art loans to U.S. museums because of an American court decision in favor of the Jewish religious group Chabad. The Russian cultural ban already has aborted one U.S. museum exhibition, forced the indefinite postponement of another, and could prevent LACMA from showing 38 artworks in a major exhibition on Islamic art set to open June 5. Russia's actions are the result of a ruling in a U.S. District Court last summer that Russia must restore a trove of religious books and manuscripts to Chabad, a prominent international ministry based in New York City.

They're a chain of windswept, resource-rich Russian-held islands much closer to Tokyo than to Moscow, and they're at the center of a festering diplomatic row that in recent days has soured relations between Japan and Russia. An irate Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan last week pressed home the decades-long dispute, calling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's November visit to the islands over which both nations assert sovereignty an "unforgivable outrage. " On Friday, at a hastily arranged Moscow news conference involving the two sides, the Russian government fired back ?

BEIRUT--Syrian officials said the death toll from a blast in Damascus, the capital, early Thursday has increased to at least 53 people and that at least 235 were injured. The midmorning explosion was probably a massive car bomb that detonated on busy Al Thawra Street in the Al Mazraa district in central Damascus, causing bloody mayhem in the heart of the city, according to news reports. The victims were mostly pedestrians, schoolchildren and motorists, the state media said. The blast also damaged nearby Al Hayat Hospital and Abdullah Bin al-Zubir school, the official news agency reported.

Two Russian diplomats flew home from Norway on Sunday after they were expelled for allegedly trying to buy Norwegian government secrets and spying on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization member. In a holdover from the Cold War era, a Norwegian official disclosed last week that he had worked as a double agent since 1994, feeding the Russians false documents and information after they tried to recruit him as a spy.

A Russian air force jet briefly violated Japanese airspace over an island in the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo, the Foreign Ministry said. The three-minute flyby above Izu island ended after warnings by a Japanese fighter jet dispatched by the Air Self-Defense Forces, said a Foreign Ministry official. The ministry immediately lodged a protest over the intrusion with the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, and demanded an explanation, the official said.

Irish authorities launched an inquiry Thursday into the sudden and violent illness of former Russian Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar, whose aides said he might have been the victim of poisoning. Gaidar's illness appeared to deepen the mystery surrounding the fatal poisoning of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, in London, though investigators did not indicate that the cases were linked. Litvinenko died last week. Gaidar, 50, suddenly fell ill Saturday at a university near Dublin.