CARISTAS

Russia's state-owned Ria Novosti news agency provides this English-language report. More than a bit of cheerleading going on, but still, a Lada fun. (Sorry.)

Docked in Bremerhaven: 'inadequate' sanitary facilities. ( Last of a series)    The navy wanted two dock landing ships, and it didn't want to wait the five or six years it would take to build them. A partial solution seemed at hand. The S/S City of Havana , a onetime dock landing ship converted into an automobile ferry, was available, and could be returned to its original purpose.    That the navy belonged to Germany, and the City of Havana , ex HMS Northway , ex HMS Cutlass , had been built to aid in that nation's defeat, would not have raised eyebrows. Warships have traded between combatants  —  past, future, even current  —  throughout history. And the Second World War, though hardly forgotten, was by 1962 a sealed chapter, supplanted in public attention by a Cold War in which Germany, or at least the 11 states then making up the federal republic, was on the side of democracy. The mission of its navy: control the approaches ...