Kazan, Russia has been awarded the right to host the world swimming championships in 2015 and Guadalajara, Mexico in 2017.

World swimming body FINA made the announcement Friday just before the start of the 14th world titles in Shanghai. Barcelona, Spain, will host the same event in 2013.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has a "suicidal plan" to blow up the capital Tripoli if it is taken by rebels, the Kremlin's special envoy to Libya told a Russian newspaper Thursday.

"The Libyan premier told me: if the rebels seize the city, we will cover it with missiles and blow it up," Kremlin envoy Mikhail Margelov said in an interview with the the Izvestia daily.

Videogame powerhouse 1C Company is tapping into history with action titles that show who the good guys are in a battle can depend on which army is being asked.

Russian spies, prisoners, and Vietcong military advisers are among the heroes in videogames 1C will be releasing in a market accustomed to seeing conflicts through the eyes of U.S. forces.

A Russian passenger plane was forced to make an emergency landing on a Siberian river on Monday, killing at least five, and prompting President Dmitry Medvedev to call for the Soviet plane to be banned.

The Antonov-24 belonging to the Angara airline was carrying 37 passengers and crew between Tomsk and Surgut when an engine caught fire, forcing it to ditch in the Ob river in the Tomsk region of Siberia, the investigative committee said in a statement.

Vladimir Putin was sent to Russia by God to help it deal with its troubles in the early post-Soviet era, the Kremlin's top political adviser was quoted as saying on Friday.

"To be honest, I think of Putin as a person who was sent to Russia by fate and the Almighty at a difficult hour," Interfax quoted first deputy administration chief Vladislav Surkov as telling Chechen television.

Georgia on Thursday arrested four news photographers, including President Mikheil Saakashvili's personal photographer, on accusations of spying for a foreign country, the interior ministry said.

"The arrested are accused of passing information that they obtained because of their work to an organization acting undercover for the intelligence services of a foreign country, against the interests of Georgia," it said.

One of Russia's most prominent Kremlin foes Boris Nemtsov has been barred from leaving the country for six months because of his failure to abide by an earlier court ruling, news reports said Thursday.

Nemtsov told various Russian media from Strasbourg, where he was attending a democracy forum, that he learned of the decision by telephone Wednesday from his attorney.

A Russian cargo plane crashed into mountains in eastern Afghanistan overnight, senior officials said Wednesday, giving no indication of possible casualties on board.

Transport and interior ministry officials said the plane was chartered by NATO's International Security Assistance Force on Tuesday but a spokesman for the military said it was not yet clear who had been running the flight.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is ready to cede power in exchange for security guarantees; an unnamed senior Russian official was quoted as saying in Tuesday's edition of the Kommersant business daily.

The press report came one day after NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen discussed Libya in Russia with President Dmitry Medvedev.

The Russian foreign ministry said that it will hold onto its stance calling for revealing the truth behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and “punishing the guilty.”

“Russia has offered its support to the international tribunal since its establishment” in 2007, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday.