The period for advanced ticket sales on 10 popular destinations will be extended from 45 days to 60 days starting Nov. 12, Russian Railways said in a statement. The routes affected include trains going from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Saratov, Kazan, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod and other cities. The rail authority also said that it is increasing the number of trains going from Moscow to St. Petersburg and from St. Petersburg to Helsinki during the New Year holidays.

A pack of drugs to treat high blood pressure, destined for Russia, is rolling off a conveyor belt at a Zentiva plant in Prague (the background is of a group of reporters on a guided tour of the facility). Czech firm Zentiva's drug to treat high blood pressure took just three months on the Russian market to outsell rival medication made by U.S.-based Merck.

Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin will present a proposal Monday to completely restructure Russia's law enforcement system through the creation of independent municipal, regional and federal authorities. The reforms were formulated by The Institute for the Rule of Law at the European University in St. Petersburg and anti-corruption NGO the Indem Foundation, fulfilling a request by Kudrin's Civil Initiatives Committee, Vedomosti reported.

Two Russian nationalists who threw a tomato at visiting Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima at a concert in Moscow have been charged with petty hooliganism and may face 15 days in prison, officials said. The tomato, thrown from the crowd outside the Moscow Conservatory, missed its target and the royal couple proceeded to walk the red carpet to a concert this weekend celebrating the Russian-Dutch relations, Interfax reported.

Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest nickel producer, plans to sell its foreign assets and double its spending on resource exploration in Russia in the face of weak metal prices, the company's chief executive, Vladimir Potanin, told The Wall Street Journal. The move signals changes in Norilsk Nickel's strategy to focus only on large-scale, profitable "Tier 1" operations, with margins of more than 40 percent and revenue of more than $1 billion.

Russian cosmonaut Yurchikhin holding the Sochi Olympic torch after landing in Kazakhstan in a Soyuz capsule. Shamil Zhumatov NEAR ZHEZKAZGAN, Kazakhstan — A Russian spacecraft brought three astronauts and the Olympic torch back to Earth on Monday after the torch was taken on its first spacewalk in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.

Russia's state-controlled media has been hailing the anniversary of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu's first year in office almost as if he were the president. Such fanfare never greeted the first anniversary of any of his predecessors. Obviously, the general consensus among his colleagues is that Shoigu is headed for bigger and better things and so every move he makes attracts a great deal of attention.

The Cabinet is opposed to the idea put forth by Rosneft's President Igor Sechin that his firm buy the state's stake in the port of Novorossiysk, high-ranking officials familiar a report on the facility's privatization said Monday.

Ukraine halted Russian gas imports last Friday in a dispute over pricing, sources in Russia's gas industry and state export monopoly Gazprom told Reuters on Monday, but the flow to Europe via Ukraine is so far unaffected. The gas imports to Ukraine stopped weeks before Kiev was due to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union, a move that has angered Moscow.

I am one of the winners of this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which makes me acutely aware of criticism of the prize by those who claim that economics — unlike other Nobel Prize disciplines such as chemistry, physics or medicine, — is not a science. Are they right? One problem with economics is that it is necessarily focused on policy, rather than discovery of fundamentals.

The sale of alcohol has been banned in 11 Auchan hypermarkets in the Moscow region. The decision was made by the Moscow region's government after the federal watchdog, Rosalcoholregularovaniye, discovered errors in Auchan's declarations on the turnover of alcohol in its stores.

A dog standing near a train believed to be transporting the 30 people arrested over the Greenpeace protest. Sergei Khitrov Thirty people arrested in Russia over a protest against Arctic oil drilling were moved from the northern city of Murmansk on Monday on their way to pre-trial detention centers in St. Petersburg, federal investigators and Greenpeace said.

Russia's fifth-generation strategic and attack submarines will most likely be non-nuclear-powered, more compact and less "visible," a senior designer at the Rubin design bureau said Monday. Large nuclear-powered vessels, including Russia's Typhoon-class strategic boats, have so far dominated past and current trends in combat submarine construction.

Food retailer Magnit said Monday its sales rose by 26.7 percent in October, year-on-year, to 48.6 billion rubles ($1.49 billion) after a rise of 28 percent in the previous month. Magnit, which this year overtook rival X5 as Russia's No. 1 grocery chain by revenue, said the October result brought sales for the first 10 months of the year to 466 billion rubles, up 30 percent on last year. The company opened 93 stores last month, bringing its total to 7,739.

The Presidential Administration has announced a tender to supply and assemble new furniture for 42 apartments whose residents are members of the State Duma and Federation Council, a news report said Monday. The starting price for the movables is 41.8 million rubles ($1.2 million). The furniture should be in "classic style" and have "increased comfort and durability,"the tender documentation said, Kommersant reported.