CORRESPONDENTS
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
Only small-time Afghan drug dealers serve time
The Pul-I-Charki prison rises out of the dirt fields and mud walls on the edge of east Kabul like a medieval fortress, its castle towers surrounded by checkpoints and machine gun nests. | 05/10/09 00:00:00 By - Tom Lasseter
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Attention readers: The RSS feed for the Tom Lasseter section on McClatchyDC.com has moved here as part of an upgrade to improve service. Please update your subscription in your RSS reader. | 04/14/09 13:43:02 By -
Russian advice: More troops won't help in Afghanistan
As the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan from 1979 to 1986, Fikryat Tabeyev saw the number of Soviet troops there rise to more than 100,000, without any possibility of victory against a growing insurgency. Now with President Obama ordering in 17,000 more U.S. troops, former Soviet envoys and generals are warning it would be a mistake to ignore a decade of their experience there. | 03/09/09 15:04:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Russia outmaneuvered U.S. over air base, analysts say
When Kyrgyzstan announced last month that it was expelling a U.S. air base after Russia promised it $2 billion-plus in aid and loans, American officials said the decision wasn't final and a U.S. presence was still under discussion. | 03/05/09 16:24:00 By - Tom Lasseter
Kyrgyz parliament OKs closing air base that's crucial to U.S.
The Kyrgyz parliament voted Thursday to force the U.S. military to abandon its air base here — part of what many say is a Kremlin-backed initiative — posing a severe setback to American efforts in Afghanistan. | 02/19/09 10:34:00 By - Tom Lasseter
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