SLEPTSOVSKAYA, Ingushetia -- For three months, Mariam Ismailova and her three children, aged from 10 to 13, had been living with thousands of other Chechen refugees on board a train parked in Ingushetia. But over the election day weekend, Ismailova left for Chechnya, to check on her parents there. She returned to find the train f and her children f gone. All that was left of its thousands of residents were a few shocked people like herself, racing around the station trying to figure out what had happened. ""If you are a mother, you could understand what I feel,"" Ismailova said with tears in her eyes. Some of the train wagons had apparently been shunted off to other Ingush villages, like Sleptsovskaya. Others, however, were sent back into Russian-occupied Chechnya f carrying some refugees right back to the war-torn regions they had fled.

LOS ANGELES -- Four Russian emigres who sent a blizzard of e-mails pleaded guilty to fraud charges Monday in a scheme that cheated job seekers out of about $150,000 and threatened to crash major Internet systems providers. A court document detailing the scheme said college students Steve Shklovskiy, 22; Yan Shtok, 20; and Timur Safranskiy, 20, devised a way to use personal computers equipped with commercially available software to ""harvest"" electronic mail addresses. The defendants then set up a series of companies and hired Vadim Vernick, 47, to serve as their ""figurehead,"" prosecuter Christopher Johnson said. On Sept. 14, the document said, the defendants sent out more than 50 million e-mails asking job seekers to pay $35 each for a chance to work at home. At first, Johnson said, the men planned a legitimate business, but once money started arriving at their mailboxes, the plan changed.