Free Republic

Think fracking pioneer Harold Hamm's divorce was pricey? Think again. The ex-wife of Russia's richest man Vladimir Potanin wants half his $15 billion fortune. The couple divorced last year. Potanin offered Natalia Potanina, his wife of 30 years, a settlement including a monthly allowance of $250,000 and properties in Moscow, London, and New York

It is the morning of September 1. Reports from North Ossetia are hard to believe: a school in Beslan has been seized. Half an hour to pack my things as my mind works furiously on how to get to the Caucasus. And another thought: to look for the Chechen separatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov, let him come out of hiding, let him go to the hostage-takers, and then ask them to free the children. Then followed a long evening at Vnukovo airport. Crowds of journalists were trying to get on a plane south, just as flights were being postponed. Obviously, there...

MOSCOW - The Moscow Times published an editorial Friday editorial, which could only have been written by Judas Iscariot. The editorial is a wholesale denunciation of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, demonizing the man as he faces a likely prison sentence if the charges brought against him by Russian prosecutors are proven to be true. Talk about hitting a man when he is down. The editorial comes in the wake of a decade-long relationship between Khodorkovsky's Menatep and Yukos companies and Moscow Times. Moscow Times is published by a former Dutch communist Derk Sauer who came to Russia as a reporter back in...