A coal mining subsidiary of steel giant Evraz owes the federal budget over 20 billion rubles ($600 million) in taxes, an investigation by the Audit Chamber has revealed, a report said Wednesday.

A State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party was severely beaten after being involved in a traffic dispute with two unidentified assailants during rush hour in Moscow late Tuesday, investigators said. Violent confrontations are relatively common on Russia’s roads, but the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party immediately gave the incident a political spin based on reports that the attackers appeared to be Caucasus natives.

Food retailer Magnit said Wednesday that its sales rose by 30 percent in June, year on year, to stand at 47.5 billion rubles ($1.4 billion), after a rise of 34.5 percent in May. Magnit, which recently overtook rival X5 as the country's biggest grocery chain by revenue, said the June result brought sales for the first six months of the year to 273 billion rubles, an increase of 31.5 percent.

Advanced engines to upgrade the military version of the IL-76MD plane will be made by a plant in Perm. United Engine Corporation has concluded a deal worth over $1 billion with United Aircraft Corporation to supply 156 engines for Il-76MD-90A military transport planes, Interfax reported Wednesday. UEC is part of Rostec, which brings together 663 civilian and military-industrial producers, while UAC consists of the many manufacturers of the still recovering Soviet aircraft construction industry.

Twenty years after the Oslo Accords, the prospects for a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal are dimmer than ever. Indeed, roughly a half million Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, make the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state an almost impossible mission. So is the renewed vigor of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration in the quest for peace too little and too late?

A group of State Duma deputies have proposed changing the date of Russia Day from June 12 to a more "profound" date in national history, a news report said Wednesday. The bill was initiated by United Russia deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov and a group of lawmakers from the Russian Sovereignty parliamentary club — which he heads — who are preparing amendments to the Labor Code concerning national holidays, Izvestia said.

Russia's controversial anti-piracy law may cause the biggest online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, to be blocked in the country, the executive director of Wikimedia Russia said. The legislation was pushed through parliament in less than three weeks and will come into force on August 1. It will allow copyright holders to ask courts to block access to allegedly pirated content as well as hyperlinks to such content.

A Syrian opposition leader is undermining chances for proposed peace talks by saying that foes of President Bashar Assad will only attend if they make military headway first, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday. Ahmad Jarba, the new president of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, said Sunday that the coalition would not go to the conference that Russia and the United States were trying to convene in Geneva unless its battlefield fortunes improved.

The receipt of payments for professional services cannot be considered a bribe, the Supreme Court has ruled, a news report said Wednesday. A bribe is the receipt of money or services in return for actions performed by a public official using the authority delegated to him, the court said. The ruling may affect the way authorities carry out their stated aim of fighting corruption.

The “long list” for the Russian equivalent of the prestigious literary award was announced at a press conference on Wednesday. Twenty-four hopefuls have entered the running, whittled down from 87. The final shortlist of six candidates is to be announced on October 3. The award is considered one of the most prestigious literary honors in the country, and this year marks the 22nd time it will be granted to one of the prime writing talents in Russia.

Up to 10,000 first-time violators of financial laws should qualify for amnesty, Russia's chief prosecutor said. "A very large number of businesspeople" have been exempted from criminal liability or given milder penalties, or released from custody, as part of the "humanizing" legislation, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika told President Vladimir Putin Tuesday.

Boris Kagarlitsky The government's stated purpose behind the bill to reform the Russian Academy of Sciences was to free researchers from the burden of administering property so that they could devote all of their efforts to pure scientific work. That argument might have made sense back in ancient Greece, but today no major advancements in applied science are possible without significant resources and equipment.