Andrew E Kramer The New York Times

The Russian approach, enough to make supporters of waterboarding wince, has by some accounts been grimly effective. Abductions of family members unwound the rebel leadership in Chechnya, for example.

Russia held a day of mourning Sunday for the 224 people, mostly young families on vacation, who died in a passenger jet crash in Egypt over the weekend, while a senior Russian aviation official said the wide scattering of the debris showed the plane had broken up in the air.

You may not have noticed, but since late last month, the world supply of Viagra ads and other e-mail spam  has dropped by an estimated one-fifth. With 200 billion spam messages in circulation each day, there is still plenty to...

Russia's biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud. Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank's end. The machine scans...

A year ago, a family living in this village in the middle of a marsh in the south of Russia revealed what they called a miracle: On the skin of their newborn boy, entire verses from the Koran were appearing, lingering for a few days, and then vanishing. One day, the looping swirl of letters ran down a chubby leg. Another, the name of God shone behi...

The Russian approach, enough to make supporters of waterboarding wince, has by some accounts been grimly effective. Abductions of family members unwound the rebel leadership in Chechnya, for example.

Russia held a day of mourning Sunday for the 224 people, mostly young families on vacation, who died in a passenger jet crash in Egypt over the weekend, while a senior Russian aviation official said the wide scattering of the debris showed the plane had broken up in the air.

You may not have noticed, but since late last month, the world supply of Viagra ads and other e-mail spam  has dropped by an estimated one-fifth. With 200 billion spam messages in circulation each day, there is still plenty to...

Russia's biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud. Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank's end. The machine scans...

A year ago, a family living in this village in the middle of a marsh in the south of Russia revealed what they called a miracle: On the skin of their newborn boy, entire verses from the Koran were appearing, lingering for a few days, and then vanishing. One day, the looping swirl of letters ran down a chubby leg. Another, the name of God shone behi...