Pirates stand on Oasis's shoulders to prove all property is still theft

As Russia gets into the global economy, Muscovites still can't cope with the concept of intellectual property. This is great news if you are a pirate CD shopper, milling around Garbushka, the massive CD supermarket, but bad news if you are a record company executive trying to protect the latest songs of a band such as Oasis.

The band's record company, Sony, has denounced pirate copies of new songs on the internet as 'incomplete' and 'poor quality'. So imagine its surprise at learning that a high quality £2 pirate of the band's Heathen Chemistry CD has been on sale here for nearly a month, despite its global release date being tomorrow. 'They have different rules out there,' a band spokesman says.

In a land obsessed with conspiracy theories, the riots after Russia lost to Japan in the World Cup have led to a frenzy of blame. Communist politicians suggest they were organised by shadowy state organs to justify President Putin's draconian new anti-extremism laws. But the best theory belongs to the Moscow police, who have tried to shift the blame away from their poor crowd control. During the game's commercial break, a local advertising firm, Ator, ran a four-second promotional clip from the film The Big Lebowski, in which a man smashes up a car with a crowbar. Ten days after the riots, Ator's offices were raided. The theory is the advert - not the defeat by Japan - inspired the drunk fans to trash cars.

· Arrivals at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Dva Airport are finding security checks more probing than usual. After 11 September, scientists toyed with ways to increase security, such as installing CCTV cameras in planes everywhere from the cockpit to the toilets. Yet they settled on a cheaper option. For the past three months, the airport has been using a new breed of sniffer dog. A cross between a dog and a jackal, it has, scientists claim, a nose that can function at -30C, which is 15 degrees lower than that of an average mutt.

· Astronaut-spotting has become the sport du jour for Muscovites. No sooner had *NSync's Lance Bass announced he was fit to visit the International Space Station, than the hunt was on for the next space tourist.

Qualified astronauts or dedicated physicists need not apply - the more whimsical the applicant, the better. Last week, Moscow's gaze was drawn to supermodel, mother and aspirant space cadet, Cindy Crawford, right.

In town to promote a jewellery collection, she was asked: 'Do you want to go into space?' Crawford gave the requisite answer of 'Yes' before realising the trip takes about 10 days, after six months of obligatory training - apparently she could spare only a week.

· Liver damage, sweats and a feverish brow are everyday symptoms for people in a city as hedonistic as Moscow. But some hangover symptoms have a deadly cause. Cases of malaria have doubled in five years - a symptom of global warming, say medics. A shock for a city that spends eight months a year under snow.