Ayesha Larisa, who works at the centre, says that they have registered more than 10, 000 newly converted Muslim women alone.

BBC: Moscow's Muslims find no room in the mosque

With 16 medals, Phelps is two shy of Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, who won 18 over the course of three Olympics in the 1950s and '60s.

WSJ: Menu

The silver medal for Phelps, so disappointing in his opening final Saturday, was his 17th in the Olympics, one behind the all-time record of Larisa Latynina, a Soviet gymnast.

CNN: July 29, 2012 -- Updated 2305 GMT (0705 HKT)

Peter (the subtle and sure Stephen Tyrone Williams), a black American artist who is married to a white British woman named Josephine (Larisa Polonsky), goes to Berlin, where a gallery is putting on a show of his work.

NEWYORKER: Cruel to Be Kind

She won the trust of such giants of dissidence as Vaclav Havel (now Czech president), Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky (now an Israeli politician) and Larisa Bogoraz, whose husband Anatoly Marchenko died on hunger strike in the Soviet Union.

ECONOMIST: Human rights