The public has been told very little about the true causes of the disaster that killed 118 men.

A U.S. federal appeals court ruled last week that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional because the pledge contains the phrase ""under God,"" a decision blasted by Democrats, Republicans and brand managers, who say the United States is making a grave mistake in dropping its principal sponsor.

AIDS will claim an additional 65 million lives by 2020, more than triple the number who died in the first 20 years of the epidemic, unless more countries vastly expand their prevention programs, according to the first long-range forecast of the epidemic from the United Nations.

When I arrived in Japan just before the start of the World Cup, the overriding mood in the country was one of nervousness that an army of soccer hooligans was about to invade.

President George W. Bush last week embraced President Vladimir Putin as a fellow foe of terrorism. ""President Putin has been a stalwart in the fight against terror,"" Bush said as the two leaders stood shoulder to shoulder in Canada. ""He understands the threat of terror, because he has lived through terror.""

A chartered plane from Bashkortostan collides with a Boeing flown by DHL in airspace controlled by Switzerland. Bashkortostan -- DHL -- Switzerland. Which would you first suspect to be the weakest link?

One thing can be said about mandatory military service. It got at least one young man back into school.

Yukos and Sibneft pulled the RTS index firmly into positive territory Wednesday, while utilities continued to lag, closing in the red.

The country's leading truck maker KamAZ has imported computer technology and brought in specialized operators from Japan in its efforts to modernize the plant.

A top U.S. agriculture official said Wednesday that a months-long spat over American poultry imports to Russia was nearing an end and normal trade would resume shortly.

It has only been a week since Mobile TeleSystems launched its network in Belarus, but Russia's largest cellular operator has already run into trouble with the competition.

German utility E.ON has become the first foreign company to join up with Unified Energy Systems' modernization plans, agreeing to a study construction of a gas-fired power plant at a UES site south of Moscow.

Germany has given permission for the families of those killed when their charter plane collided with a cargo jet over southern Germany to visit the crash site without visas.

Two scientists went on trial in Vladivostok on Wednesday on charges of attempting to pass technology to China that could be used for military purposes.

Swiss authorities said a collision-warning system was out of service in the Zurich tower when it took control of a Bashkirian Airlines Tu-154 and a cargo jet shortly before they collided at 10,500 meters, killing 71 people, mostly children headed for a summer vacation.

SUAL, the country's second-largest aluminum producer, aims to go public next year and is looking for financing for a $2 billion startup, company president Viktor Vekselberg said Wednesday.

On a winter night five years ago, Ayman al-Zawahri slipped into Russia across a narrow wedge of land between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains.

Slavneft Exporting MOSCOW (AP) -- Oil company Slavneft resumed exports of crude and refined products Wednesday after a five-day halt caused by a standoff over the company leadership. Slavneft president Yury Sukhanov and other senior employees had been locked out of the company's head office since June 27, when police stormed the offices after business hours as part of a search for evidence in connection with an embezzlement investigation against him. He was allowed back in on Tuesday. The Slavneft management said that the company, which is majority owned by the Russian government, lost $7 million each day that it could not go ahead with exports. France Eyes Gas MOSCOW (MT) -- France's TotalFinaElf is interested in joining a gas consortium being set up by Russia and Ukraine with German participation, Interfax quoted Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov as saying Wednesday. About a quarter of gas consumed in France comes from Russia, Kasyanov said during a visit to Paris.

4th Budanov Test ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia (AP) -- The judge presiding over the trial of Colonel Yury Budanov, who is charged with killing a Chechen woman, ordered that the defendant remain in custody for another three months Wednesday and sent him to Moscow for a fourth psychiatric evaluation. Budanov has already been evaluated three times by psychiatrists. The first evaluation found that he was sane, the results of the second were never revealed, and the third, at Moscow's Serbsky Center for Forensic Psychiatry, concluded that he was temporarily insane at the time of the killing. Judge Viktor Kostin ordered Budanov sent back to the Serbsky center for a fourth evaluation to be conducted by new experts, including a team led by psychiatrist Alexander Bukhanovsky. Bukhanovsky worked on the case of Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted of murdering more than 50 women and children and was executed in 1994.

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