Russian

Alexander Ovechkin , Evgeni Malkin and Ilya Kovalchuk are among the 14 NHL players on the 23-player Russia squad for the Vancouver Olympics. Forwards Pavel Datsyuk of Detroit and Alexander Semin of Washington, defensemen Sergei Gonchar of Pittsburgh and Andrei Markov of Montreal, and goaltenders Evgeni Nabokov of San Jose and Ilya Bryzgalov of Phoenix were also selected. Coach Vyacheslav Bykov says his team should be considered among the favorites as the reigning world champions.

MOSCOW - An explosion apparently caused by pyrotechnics tore through a nightclub in the Russian city of Perm early Saturday, killing more than 100 people, according to emergency officials quoted by state television. It was not immediately clear if the pyrotechnics were kept in storage at the club or being used as part of a show like in the fire that killed 100 people at a rock club in Rhode Island in 2003. In the chaotic aftermath of the blast and subsequent fire, casualty figures differed.

The union that represents 2,500 employees at the Sparrows Point steel mill received a draft proposal from the plant's Russian owners last month detailing a restructuring that could affect as many as 580 jobs, or nearly a third of the workforce, according to the union president. John Cirri, president of United Steelworkers Local 9477, said in a phone interview Thursday that draft restructuring presented by Russian steel company Severstal detailed a number of ways the jobs could be affected, including reductions, retirements or transfers to other departments.

NEW YORK -- She is a little bug they cannot crush. She is Melanie Oudin, age 17, a four-match sensation at the biggest tennis carnival in the world, the U.S. Open. She left home in Marietta, Ga., to come to New York City and see whether she could make it there. Little did she know, thanks to television and the Internet, she would make it everywhere. She is 5 feet 6 and seems to have a specialty. She beats Russians, usually big Russians. She is in the round of 16 because she did it again Monday, sending away 5-foot-11 Nadia Petrova, the 13th-seeded player, 1-6, 7-6 (2)

A fire during a vehicle testing operation Thursday morning in the Edgewood area of Aberdeen Proving Ground left one employee dead and critically injured two others. "The crew of three was testing a vehicle and a malfunction occurred with an ensuing fire," said George Mercer, a spokesman for the Army base. Officials at the Harford County base said they will follow the Army's 24-hour policy for releasing the names of the victims - all civilians - and will disclose the information today.

A Harford County boy might earn Scouting's highest honor with a community project thousands of miles from his home in Jarrettsville. Life Scout Alex Griffith, 15, knows the criteria for the rank of Eagle involve service to the community, a school or church. Alex, adopted in 1994 by Dwight and Jenny Griffith, lived the first year of his life at a hospital for abandoned children in Krasnoyarsk, a city in the Siberian region of Russia. He wants to give the children living at Hospital No. 20 a playground.

The first time Jennifer Muccioli performed in The Nutcracker ballet she was 6 years old. As a member of the snow scene, she dreamed of a day when she would have a more prominent role, she said. "I always wanted to do bigger parts in the ballet," said Jennifer, 14, a ninth-grader at Fallston High. "I often thought about what it would be like to get to do that." After a seven-year hiatus, she is returning to the Lyric Opera House stage in Baltimore as a butterfly and a member of the Russian Variation, said Jennifer, who lives in Bel Air. She will be performing as a children's cast member of the Moscow Ballet's traveling tour of the Great Russian Nutcracker.

MOSCOW - It's a truism that stable and friendly relations between two countries require each to look at a situation from the other's point of view. The recent tussle between Russia and the West over Georgia is a stark reminder of how the United States has fundamentally never understood Russia's point of view. The conventional view is that Russia in recent years has been pushing away from the West. But the reverse is more accurate. The Russia-Georgia conflict is a consequence of the West's "pushing away" of Russia.

Earlier this week, I wrote about the death of Joseph Glus, 84, a longtime Charles Village resident who was hired as the first Russian-language teacher by Baltimore County's public schools in 1959. Mr. Glus, who was the son of immigrant parents from the Carpathian Mountains, grew up in McKeesport, Pa., in a bilingual household, where he learned Russian. Across town, he would eventually become acquainted with his counterpart at the Friends School, Claire Groben Walker, who had introduced the teaching of Russian at the North Baltimore private school in 1956, a year before Sputnik 1 spurred the teaching of the language in high schools and colleges across the nation.

MOSCOW - Russian troops dismantled checkpoints and decamped from Georgia proper yesterday, abandoning a two-month occupation of broad swaths of the smaller former Soviet republic and pushing the festering conflict to a new status quo. The withdrawal brings a measure of relief, but sheds little light on the bitter dispute over the future of Georgia's two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia plans to leave thousands of troops stationed in the rebel regions, which Moscow has recognized as independent states and whose residents hold Russian passports.