CORRESPONDENTS
Tom Lasseter
Violence and corruption shake a Moscow suburb
After journalist Mikhail Beketov printed a series of articles about the development in Khimki, a suburb of Russia, he was beaten to a bloody pulp. At least three journalists and one civic rights activist have been savagely beaten in Khimki since last year. The chain of attacks shows the depth of Russia's vast corruption problems. | 08/18/09 16:58:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Suicide bombing kills 20 in latest southern Russia violence
A suicide bomber slammed a truck into a police station in Russia's troubled Caucasus region Monday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens in a fireball that scattered charred bodies and set the building on fire. | 08/17/09 00:18:00 By - Tom Lasseter and Dina Djidjoeva
Notorious Afghan warlord returns to help Karzai
A notorious Afghan warlord accused of allowing the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners and then destroying the evidence returned to Afghanistan Sunday night as part of what appears to be a political deal brokered with President Hamid Karzai. | 08/16/09 16:31:00 By - Jonathan S. Landay and Tom Lasseter
Russian priest, family, burned alive; officials blame victims
The fire consumed the priest's body, charring bones and flesh, and raged for hours. The bodies of his wife, Oksana, and their children, 10, 7 and 5, lay close to Andrei Nikolayev's corpse in the ashes of their simple gingerbread house in the Russian countryside. | 08/05/09 00:10:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Biden had it right: Rural Russia is dying of poverty, neglect
Vice President Joe Biden struck a sensitive nerve among Russia's ruling elite when he said recently that the country has "a shrinking population base; they have a withering economy," and added, "It's a very difficult thing to deal with, loss of empire." A visit to Kuvshinovo shows why: the area around this rural enclave is in steep decline and the population is in free fall. | 08/05/09 00:09:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Can world economy count on developing countries for cure?
The global economy this year will still suffer its steepest contraction in trade and industrial production since the Great Depression. Despite their dramatic growth, the BRIC nations — Brazil, Russia, India and China — aren't powerful enough to power a global rebound, and all four of them face their own economic problems. | 08/02/09 18:02:00 By - Tyler Bridges, Kevin G. Hall and Tom Lasseter
Obama offers Russia cooperation, criticizes 'old assumptions'
President Barack Obama laid out a vision of greater cooperation between the United States and Russia Tuesday, in a speech which also contained a thinly veiled criticism of the Kremlin's authoritarian style of rule. | 07/07/09 10:50:00 By - Tom Lasseter
U.S., Russia agree to missile cuts, but tensions remain
Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev on Monday agreed to cut up to a third of the nuclear warheads in their strategic arsenals, but acknowledged that disagreements linger about a proposed U.S. missile defense shield. | 07/06/09 17:28:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Obama in Moscow: Can tense relationship be 'reset'?
When President Barack Obama flies into Moscow on Monday for meetings with Kremlin leadership, at the top of his agenda will be reducing the number of strategic nuclear weapons capable of destroying life on Earth. And that might be the easy part. | 07/05/09 14:27:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Flood of Afghan heroin fuels drug plague in Russia
Once known for its T-34 tank production, Chelyabinsk has become a major transshipment center for Afghan opium and heroin, which enters Russia from Central Asia. They blame the Americans. | 06/29/09 00:00:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Russia treats drug addicts with lasers or quarantine
Russia's conflicted stance about its growing drug crisis — criticism of the West, but silence at home — seems unlikely to address the problem, and it may even have prompted a misguided and dangerous search for remedies. | 06/29/09 06:00:00 By - Tom Lasseter
U.S.-built bridge is windfall — for illegal Afghan drug trade
In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia's poorest countries. Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It's paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe. | 06/28/09 00:45:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Afghan drug trade thrives with help, and neglect, of officials
When it's harvest time in the poppy fields of Kandahar, dust-covered Taliban fighters pull up on their motorbikes to collect a 10 percent tax on the crop. Afghan police arrive in Ford Ranger pickups — bought with U.S. aid money — and demand their cut of the cash in exchange for promises to skip the farms during annual eradication. | 05/10/09 00:00:00 By - Tom Lasseter
West looked the other way as Afghan drug trade exploded
Locals call them "poppy palaces," the three- or four-story marble homes with fake Roman columns perched behind razor wire and guard shacks in Afghanistan's capital. | 05/10/09 00:00:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Karzai's brother threatened McClatchy writer reporting Afghan drug story
Ahmed Wali Karzai is feared by many in southern Afghanistan, and being threatened by him, in his home, isn't something to be taken lightly. So after a quick consultation with locals, I headed for the airport. | 05/10/09 00:00:00 By - Tom Lasseter
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