MOSCOW (Reuters) – A handful of foreign election observers scrambled to monitor voting across Russia’s vast territory on Sunday, with the chief of one mission admitting there was little his team could do.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday played down expectations for a peace deal with the Palestinians before the end of 2008 as laid out at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference last week.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Former world chess champion and opposition leader Garry Kasparov accused Russian authorities of “raping the whole electoral system” with numerous instances of irregularities in Sunday’s parliamentary election.