ISS international crew has day off on Defender of Fatherland Day.

MOSCOW, February 23 (Itar-Tass) - Defender of the Fatherland Day will
be the last official holiday for the two cosmonauts from the ISS-22/23
crew who are currently working in orbit. They are Russian cosmonaut Maksim
Surayev and his American partner Geoffrey Williams,
"Unlike the ISS-16 and ISS-18 crews for whom the last 'red letter' day
in orbit was Orthodox Christmas, all the employees who are now working at
the station will have a day off on the holiday of all Russian men, a
source at the Mission Control Centre told Itar-Tass.
The Russian and American sides jointly select holidays for every
expedition. Surayev and Williams have already had three days off: the
American Thanksgiving Day, Catholic Christmas and the New Year. After
four days of holidays the crew will start getting ready for landing
scheduled for March 18.
There will be no special festive program on the ISS on the Defender of
the Fatherland Day. Russian cosmonauts will have communication sessions
with their families. All the officials have congratulated two Russian war
pilots: Air Force Colonels Maksim Surayev and Oleg Kotov. Kotov will head
the international crew after Surayev and Williams return to Earth. On
February 23rd, the ISS crew will have plenty of time to listen to music or
plunge into heroic pages in Russian history and watch a new DVD film
titled "1612"which tells about one of the hardest periods in the life of
Russia known as Time of Troubles.
However, drinking alcohol is strictly forbidden onboard the ISS.

.Russian national team still has chance to win more medals -Zhukov.

VANCOUVER, February 23 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Vice-Premier Alexander
Zhukov said at the Vancouver Olympic games press centre that the Russian
national team still had a chance to improve its positions in the general
medals standings.
"So far the performance of the Russian athletes has been worse than we
expected. But, there's still time left to improve the situation,"
Alexander Zhukov said.
He said that Sochi wouldn't have many of the problems that are facing
the organizers of the 2010 Games. It's transport, for example. Zhukov
recalled that one of the advantages of Sochi is that the distance between
the clusters of Olympic facilities can be covered in 40 minutes.
"Special traffic lanes will be designated for Olympic transport. It
will take about 30 minutes to get there by an Olympic train," Zhukov
explained.
The Russian vice-premier noted that experts, including those from the
International Olympic Committee (IOC), are trying to establish how much
time it will take to travel on various routes.
He said that the Roza Khutor Alpine Ski mountain resort will become
the first Olympic facility of the 2014 Olympic Games to host test
competitions in February 2011.
Zhukov said he was sure that alpine ski courses at Roza Khutor would
become an important heritage of the Sochi Olympic Games.
For his part, the president of the Sochi-2014 Organising Committee,
Dmitry Chernyshenko, said that he was satisfied with the results achieved
at this stage of construction.
"We are sure that the quality of vital facilities like the Olympic
mountain village and the Alpine centre will be top class," Chernyshenko
emphasized.
Vladimir Potanin, the president of Interros holdings, recalled that
the company's total investments in the construction of Olympic facilities
had reached two billion dollars, of which 1.5 billion are meant for the
construction of the Mountain Cluster.
"The project is difficult. We started it from scratch. It provides for
the construction of six facilities, including four in the Mountain
Cluster, as well as a complex of hotels and an International Olympic
University.
"We will certainly use the Canadian experience. The resort's
construction plans pay great attention to environmental programs. Together
with the World Wildlife Fund we are helping to revive extinct species,
such as leopards, at the local natural reserve," Potanin emphasized.

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