British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw urged the United Nations to return to Iraq to help resolve a dispute over elections as global powerbrokers opened their annual talk-fest in this snowy Alpine resort Wednesday.

An Israeli court Wednesday indicted an Israeli businessman on charges of bribing Ariel Sharon, further complicating the prime minister's clouded legal situation.

Three years to the day after taking the oath of office, U.S. President George W. Bush began his re-election campaign Tuesday night with a State of the Union address that blended potent reminders of his role as commander in chief of a nation at war with pledges to confront the range of domestic issues that his Democratic rivals hope may keep him from a second term.

There is a contagious enthusiasm about Olga Litvinova, managing partner in Ernst & Young's St. Petersburg office.

Oleg Kiselyov, the vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, has been appointed chairman of the board at Renaissance Capital.

U.S. Consul General Jim Pettit faced criticism over new rules requiring Russians and other visitors to give fingerprints to get American visas, but he promised that it will be easier to get visas this year.

Yury Levada, the country's top sociologist, said Wednesday that he will rename the VTsIOM-A polling agency he and his team of independent researchers founded six months ago after being ousted from state-controlled VTsIOM so no one would confuse the new agency with the original one.