Norilsk Strike Expands MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Tensions between management and unions at metals giant Norilsk Nickel increased by a notch Friday when representatives of the main union joined a hunger strike to press for more pay. The Interregional Alliance of Trade Unions, the largest union at the Arctic division, the base of Norilsk's main mines and plants, said it was joining the hunger strike started by a minority union this week to back their demands. Railways Bill Passes MOSCOW (MT) -- The State Duma on Friday approved the draft law on managing railway property, which paves the way for creating the 100 percent state-owned joint-stock company Russian Railways as a part of the railway reform. The draft law includes amendments proposed by the Federation Council's conciliatory commission after the council rejected it last month. It now returns to the Federation Council for approval and then must be signed by President Vladimir Putin.

In just over a decade as independent states, the various former Soviet republics have gone their separate ways so fast and so far that it's hard to believe they were once parts of the same empire.

It's curious that the image-savvy Bush administration installed solar energy at the White House.

In the summer of 1946 I was a young lieutenant serving as junior navigator on the Krasny Krym.

Such a Fiestaware color for such an Armageddon moment. We're orange, but U.S. officials tell us not to be blue.

Israel has offered the Palestinians a gradual cease fire, a senior government official said, while suggesting that efforts to remove Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader will intensify after the U.S.-Iraq conflict is resolved.

Residents of this capital city nursed their wounded and grieved for their dead, struggling to fathom an apparent return to the dark days of urban terrorism that many thought had passed until a car bomb shattered an exclusive social club, killing 32 and injuring 162.

U.S. diplomats are engaged in delicate negotiations here that could allow tens of thousands of Turkish soldiers to occupy part of northern Iraq behind an advancing American army, Turkish and Kurdish officials said.

The chief United Nations arms inspectors resumed talks with Iraqi officials Sunday after a ""useful"" day on which the Baghdad government delivered documents apparently intended to answer some questions about old chemical and biological weapons.