Finite and nilpotent strongly verbally closed groups

We show, in particular, that, if a finite group $H$ is a retract of any finite group containing $H$ as a verbally closed subgroup, then the centre of $H$ is a direct factor of $H$.Comment: 13 pages. A Russian version of this paper is at http://halgebra.math.msu.su/staff/klyachko/papers.htm . V2: Results concerning strong retracts are improved slightly. V3: minor errors in the last section are corrected. V4: misprints are correcte

Periodic quotients of hyperbolic and large groups

Let G be either a non-elementary (word) hyperbolic group or a large group (both in the sense of Gromov). In this paper we describe several approaches for constructing continuous families of periodic quotients of G with various properties.The first three methods work for any non-elementary hyperbolic group, producing three different continua of periodic quotients of G. They are based on the results and techniques, that were developed by Ivanov and Olshanskii in order to show that there exists an integer n such that G/G^n is an infinite group of exponent n.The fourth approach starts with a large group G and produces a continuum of pairwise non-isomorphic periodic residually finite quotients. Speaking of a particular application, we use each of these methods to give a positive answer to a question of Wiegold from Kourovka Notebook