Lidia Tschritter comes to the door barefoot to meet her nine children as they return home from school. Her hair is tied in a kerchief and she wears a homemade flower-print dress that reaches her ankles just as she did in her native Mennonite village in Kazakhstan.

I got obsessed with the Japanese economy after it was fashionable. Americans paid a lot of attention to Japan in the 1980s, when Japanese manufacturers were conquering the world.

Although the economy was slowing even before President George W. Bush took office, he has made the situation much worse than it had to be. What could have been a mild and brief recession has instead turned into a prolonged downturn likely to last more than two years.

With a shopping cart filled with pizza, milk, tomatoes, cucumbers, sausages, bread, frozen vegetables and yogurt, Kolya and I picked an empty checkout lane at Ramstore.

Two years ago America was consumed with the spectacle of its flawed voting system. The U.S. presidential election took 36 days to resolve and both parties promised federal legislation to fix democracy's glitches.

The United States and Britain were last week wooing the other permanent members of the UN Security Council -- France, Russia and China -- to support a draft resolution that threatens the use of force, if the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein does not promptly surrender all weapons of mass destruction.

U.S.-based Intel Corp. plans to triple its Russian workforce in the next two years and open four new research laboratories, Intel chief Craig Barrett said Wednesday.

Vodka magnate Yury Shefler, wanted in Russia for allegedly threatening to kill a government official, says he has no intention of returning to his homeland any time soon.

The Central Bank and the government on Wednesday confirmed their commitment to reforming Russia's banking sector, which remains an obstacle to economic growth.

Oil at $31 Per Barrel SINGAPORE (Reuters) -- World oil prices rose above $31 per barrel Wednesday as crude stocks in the United States dropped almost 5 percent, the second-largest weekly fall in almost two decades. Benchmark U.S. crude peaked at $31.05 per barrel, the second day in a row that oil has breached the $31 mark and just below the 19-month peak of $31.39 hit late last week. At 4:01 GMT, crude was trading 10 cents up at $30.93. Fresh weekly data from the American Petroleum Institute showed a massive 13.94 million barrel fall in U.S. crude inventories last week as Tropical Storm Isidore closed oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. The plunge in crude supplies, the second-biggest drop in at least 18 years according to the API, left national crude stocks at 275.88 million barrels, a deficit of almost 32 million barrels compared with the same period last year. Iraq Machine Shipment ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia (Prime-Tass) -- Rostselmash, the country's No.

Once the proud producers of a quarter of the world's commercial fleet, Russian airplane manufacturers are now humbly trying to reenter markets they previously ruled.

They came halfway around the world to escape misery, poverty and violence. But home was never this bad.

Kiev Asks to See Tapes KIEV (Reuters) -- Ukraine's top prosecutor called on U.S. officials on Wednesday to hand over tape recordings that Washington says indicate the country might have sold arms to Iraq on President Leonid Kuchma's approval. Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Pyskun said Washington had refused to allow Ukrainian experts to check the tapes and prove that Kiev did not sell arms to Baghdad in contravention of United Nations sanctions. At a meeting in Kiev on Tuesday, Kuchma told a senior U.S. diplomat he would cooperate with any probe into claims Ukraine sold an early warning system to Iraq, but again denied making the transfer. ""Kuchma said he was ready to investigate the charges about illegal arms sales to Iraq together with U.S. experts,"" a spokeswoman for Kuchma said after he met Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Elizabeth Jones.

A videotape apparently shot by a British reporter provides compelling evidence that Chechen rebels are allowed to move freely in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a lower court's decision to extend the pretrial detention of Igor Sutyagin, an arms control researcher accused of spying for the United States, and sent it back for further consideration, one of his lawyers said.

One of the suspects in the kidnapping of the LUKoil chief financial officer came forward on Wednesday.

A brief look at the stories making headlines in the Russian-language press

Russia said Wednesday it would consider a new resolution governing weapons inspections in Iraq. France also backed changes in the UN weapons program, but its proposal did not include tough conditions demanded by the United States.

In a symbolic gesture that Russia hopes portends the future, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham guided Energy Minister Igor Yusufov through a key section of the heavily guarded U.S. emergency oil reserve network Tuesday. It was the first time a Russian official has been given such a tour.

Forty-three years after his first visit to Moscow, former PepsiCo Inc. president and CEO Don Kendall is back in town on a mission.