Moscow

MOSCOW -- In the old days, the typical student at Patrice Lumumba University would be a young African, someone who could hope to become his country's first native-born doctor or engineer after graduation. The new graduate would be expected to take communism home with him and preach of its glories. That communist dream is gone, but the university goes on, struggling to survive in free-market style.Patrice Lumumba University -- alma mater of the terrorist "Carlos" and of hundreds of men and women who are government officials throughout the Third World -- now is a cheap and not so choosy institution.

Sen. Ben Cardin is scheduled to meet Thursday with the family of a Russian lawyer whose death sparked an international outcry over human rights in that country, renewing focus on a controversy that has complicated U.S.-Russian relations at a sensitive time. The meeting with the widow, mother and son of Sergei Magnitsky — who died in a Russian jail in 2009 after exposing corruption in the Russian government — comes just days after the State Department released a list of Russian officials barred from obtaining U.S. visas over alleged human rights abuses.

MOSCOW -- George Blake, triple agent, came in from the bitter cold of a Moscow day yesterday and declared that even though communism hadn't quite worked out this time, it still deserved another chance.George Blake was a highly placed British intelligence officer 30 years ago when he was revealed as a Soviet spy who had betrayed 50 Western agents. He served six years in a British prison before making a dramatic escape to the Soviet Union.Yesterday he chatted companionably about his treason with reporters, more like a pensioner from an office job than a character worthy of James Bond "007" films.

This week on "The Amazing Race," we get a sneak peek of CBS's new slapstick comedy: "Boyfriend Ryan and The Professor. " It's preceded by "Lexi and The Cabbie," which is almost as good. Other stuff happens, too, and there's 95 percent less screaming from the Twins, so it's really all wonderful. Let's catch up on last week: Team Dominate and Team Goat Farmers missed a flight and ended up hours and hours behind the lead pack. They vowed to run the rest of the leg together, and we last saw Dominate watching the Farmers try to perform a synchronized swimming routine, failing over and over because of Brent's fear of water.

Imagine this situation: Secretary of State James Baker goes to Moscow, confers with Fidel Castro, restores full diplomatic relations with Cuba, works out an agreement on Angola, removes some of the last impediments to the START treaty and stops by to see Mikhail Gorbachev who revels in the two superpowers standing shoulder to shoulder in the Gulf crisis.Had this happened, which it did not, Mr. Baker's compatriots might wonder if he had moved Foggy Bottom to the banks of the Moskva River. But with appropriate variations, the above whirlwind pretty much describes how Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze ran Soviet diplomacy out of his hip pocket in Washington yesterday.

With its exquisitely timed peace plan to head off an allied ground assault against Iraq, the Soviet Union seeks to distance itself from the United States, play a major role in postwar Middle East affairs, refurbish its image among the Muslim masses and placate Communists unhappy with the Kremlin's rebuff to its old allies in Baghdad.The Bush administration may have mixed feelings about the Soviet intervention, coming at a time when weather conditions and force readiness are near optimum levels for launching a ground war. But if Mr. Hussein accepts the Soviet demand that he withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait, the savings in American lives would compensate a hundred times over for any losses in the diplomatic power game.

WASHINGTON -- A Moscow center offering useful work for former Soviet weapons scientists to prevent them from selling their skills abroad is on the way to starting in June, a key State Department official said yesterday.The $75 million International Science and Technology Center will serve as a sort of "dating service," matching scientists' knowledge with peaceful government and private-sector research projects.A high priority, said Robert Gallucci, the State Department official in charge of the project, will be research into nuclear-plant safety and management of nuclear waste.

MOSCOW -- Russian democrats charged yesterday that unrepentant Communists, allies in Parliament and leaders of the failed 1991 coup masterminded the violent May Day clashes between demonstrators and police that wounded more than 200."It was a planned action prepared well in advance," said Vasily N. Feklunin, an Information Ministry official who witnessed the two-hour melee in the Moscow square named for cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.Mr. Feklunin said a "mobile attack unit" of young men with homemade weapons rushed from the ranks of the mostly elderly Communist and nationalist marchers and hurled themselves at the police.

Dale Sprague has a grand plan to kick off the second 100 years of football at Western Maryland College: a game in Moscow."A college football team from the United States has never played in the Soviet Union, and we want to be the first," said Sprague, who's entering his sixth season as the Green Terrors' head coach. "We've got a proposed itinerary and some ideas to raise funds. If we can find the money, we're going."Sprague told The Carroll County Times of his plan last week, and in a team meeting Sunday got the overwhelming backing of his players.

A remarkable aspect of the Soviet Union's dissolution has been the generally bloodless and non-violent way in which the centralized government and the tightly controlled one-party system have been replaced by a fledgling democracy. Granted, there has been serious mayhem and bloodshed in Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan. But never before has a great empire become unglued as fast as in the former Soviet Union -- or as peacefully.This is worth noting because Russia, too, has its potential for violence.

This week on "The Amazing Race," Moscow will kill all of your dreams. You will find sadness and despair. You won't get engaged, you won't get invited to go clubbing, you won't be able to wear a bow tie in a swimming pool, it's just dreary. Cold and gray, like Seattle, but it's Moscow, people. The capital of hopelessness. Don't forget your passport. Before we dive into all that, though, remember last week when the Twins picked up Rock On's money and kept it? Phil Keoghan was getting all sorts of flak on Twitter for not mentioning it during their Pit Stop interview.

Horse racing Pino's win in Erie puts him alone in 10th on all-time list Jockey Mario Pino moved into sole possession of 10th place on the all-time wins list with a victory aboard Incredibly Smart in the second race at Presque Isle Downs in Erie, Pa. The win was number 6,471 for Pino, one more than Hall of Famer Earlie Fires . Pino, 51, is an Ellicott City resident who has spent most of his career in Maryland. Fires rode until he was 61, retiring in 2008. - From Sun staff and news services Et cetera Ovechkin reportedly to join Dynamo Moscow of KHL According to Russia's Sport-Express, Washington Capitals star left wing Alex Ovechkin will sign with Dynamo Moscow of Russia's KHL. Ovechkin played for Dynamo from 2001-02 through 2004-05 before he began his NHL career.

Plenty of young girls dream of performing with a prestigious ballet company, and for about 50 of them from the greater Baltimore area the first step was Sunday. During a marathon, multi-hour session at the Moving Company Dance Center in Cockeysville, the girls, and a couple of boys, auditioned to perform a version of the holiday classic "The Nutcracker" with the Moscow Ballet Company. It was the 19th year that local ballet students have auditioned to perform with the Russian troupe.

MOSCOW - Russia's natural gas monopoly drastically cut flows to Europe through Ukraine yesterday, sharpening fears of winter fuel shortages. Despite warnings from the European Union, a pricing dispute between Gazprom and Ukraine showed no signs of letting up. As the two sides traded accusations and blame, negotiations remained frozen for the sixth day. Bulgarian authorities said two-thirds of their natural gas supply had been cut off and consumption would...

As the third and final production of its opening season, Standing O is introducing its Chesapeake Academy black box theater audience to British playwright William Nicholson's The Retreat from Moscow. With this play, Standing O founder and artistic director Ron Giddings continues the mission of Anne Arundel County's newest theater company to offer little-known recent theater gems to local audiences. Nominated for three Tony Awards in 2004, The Retreat from Moscow tells the story of an English couple, Edward and Alice, who are dealing with a dying marriage of three decades.

MOSCOW - Russian troops dismantled checkpoints and decamped from Georgia proper yesterday, abandoning a two-month occupation of broad swaths of the smaller former Soviet republic and pushing the festering conflict to a new status quo. The withdrawal brings a measure of relief, but sheds little light on the bitter dispute over the future of Georgia's two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia plans to leave thousands of troops stationed in the rebel regions, which Moscow has recognized as independent states and whose residents hold Russian passports.

It is easy to see how President Clinton played so seemingly well in Moscow. Never before had Russians seen anything as polished as his mixture of high-level substance and showmanship. One minute he would sign arms agreements, another he would play the saxophone.Mikhail S. Gorbachev was able to charm Americans in the dying days of communism because he was seen as a different kind of a Russian. President Clinton achieved something similar in Moscow this week through his theatrics.After years of viewing aging U.S. presidents, the Russians saw Mr. Clinton projecting youth and vitality, an easy mixture of hype and seriousness.

Perhaps the most intriguing words at the Moscow summit came not from Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin but from Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Having staked out a hard-line position against Russia's sale of two light-water nuclear reactors to Iran, warning Moscow there would be "consequences" if it went ahead, Mr. Christopher contended there had been "real progress."How so? He cited Mr. Yeltsin's agreement not to sell gas centrifuges to Iran for processing spent reactor fuel into weapons-grade plutonium.

MOSCOW - Nobel laureate Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, the reclusive icon of the Russian intelligentsia and chronicler of communist repression, has died of heart failure, Russian news agencies reported. He was 89. Stephan Solzhenitsyn told the Associated Press his father died late yesterday, but he declined to comment further. The soulful writer and spiritual father of Russia's nationalist patriotic movement lived to be reunited with his beloved homeland after two decades of exile - only to be as distressed by communism's damage to the Russian character as he was by his earlier forced estrangement from the land and people he loved.

I'm a child of the Cold War -- the old one with the Soviet Union, that is, not the new frost toward Iran. So, a few months back, after I checked into Moscow's Hotel Baltschug Kempinski, a view from my room's window set my heart -- and nerves -- racing. Straight ahead were the brightly colored onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral, as well as the forbidding fortifications surrounding the Kremlin. It was a photo opportunity not to be missed. Angling my camera to get both sights into one frame, I climbed on top of a radiator cover.