In adoption news, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said Friday that, as of Monday, June 18, 2007, its standard processing time for adoption visas will change to two business days from one. Families will still submit their documents in the morning, but will come back for their interviews at 2 p.m. the following day, instead of the same afternoon. Still no news on accreditations from the Russian Ministry of Education, however.

There was a mix of good news and bad news for Russia and its economy this week. In the good news department, Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov said that the number of Russians without jobs fell by 342,000 in 2006. Zurabov also said that the death rate in Russia fell by 138,000 people in 2006 and that the rate continued to decline in the first quarter of 2007.

Kommersant reported that Russia is no longer among the top 20 countries for software piracy. According a study by the Business Software Alliance, Russia's software piracy rate fell to 80% last year from 87% in 2003. Kommersant said that, as a result of the improvement, Microsoft will open its Windows and Office products to Russian software makers.

But there was bad news too. Russia's top AIDS specialist said Tuesday that AIDS is spreading in the country. Russia has registered 402,000 people with HIV, but Vadim Pokrovsky said that as many as 1.3 million people may be infected. Russia has a total population of 142.5 million.

And a new report from a United Nations agency said that while Russia's economy is growing rapidly, so is its income disparity, The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says that while economic growth cut the poverty rate in most Russian regions in half from 1999 to 2005, some regions are much developed than others.

Leaders of Russia and the European Union have begun a summit meeting in the southern city of Samara. Relations between the two have been frosty of late, and they may not be improved by what transpired at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport this morning: Police stopped chess champion Garry Kasparov from getting on a flight to the city, where he had planned to participate in a protest march.