There was, alas, no news on the adoption front in Russia this week. But there was lots of political and business news.

On Tuesday, British prosecutors asked Russia to extradite former KGB agent to face a murder charge. Andrei Lugovoi is the chief suspect in the death of another former KGB operative Alexander Litvinenko, who died in Britain last Nov. 23, after being poisoned by the radioactive substance polonium-210. Litvinenko was a British citizen at his death. Lugovoi has repeatedly denied involvement in the murder, and said the decision to charge him was politically motivated. According to the Associated Press, Russian prosecutors will not comply with the extradition request.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a trip on Thursday that his country's growing economic power now makes it less vulnerable to outside pressure. Putin was in Austria and Luxembourg to sign several energy and investment deals. According to Pravda, Putin also again criticized Washington's plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

Pravda also reported this week that 700 Russians die from smoking-related causes every day. According to a key member of the Russian Duma's Health and Safety Committee, Russia leads the world in terms of underage smoking and the country is the third-largest maker of tobacco products after China and the U.S. Russian factories produced 413 billion cigarettes in 2006, up from 206 billion a decade earlier. The legislator, Nikolai Gerasimenko, attributed Russia's high death rate to the higher levels of tar and nicotine in Russian cigarettes.

An underground explosion killed 38 Siberian coal miners on Thursday. The accident at the Yubileinaya mine came just two months after an explosion at a nearby coal mine owned by the same company killed 110 people. That explosion was Russia's worst mining accident. On Thursday Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov called for a thorough investigation of the mining company. Leaders of the miner's union called for better mine safety laws.

And there was a brief announcement on Friday that two of Russia's biggest energy companies, Gazprom and Lukoil, will be working together on oil exploration projects in Russia. There was no word on which regions the venture will focus on. The Russian government owns a controlling stake in Gazprom; Lukoil is owned primarily by private, non-Russian interests, but its president is the Russian billionaire Vagit Alekperov. Lukoil bought more than 1,000 gas stations in the United States from Getty seven years ago and has been lately rebranding them under the Lukoil name.