Belarus Health

First came the power station and the chemical plant. Then they built the prefabs and filled them with young workers from across the Soviet Union. The planners even left some green space in this model city of the Khrushchev era. Next came the children, bored by it all, and the drugs they injected for escape. By the early 1990s, bloody syringes and hypodermic needles littered the playgrounds, courtyards and elevators of the look-alike apartment blocks.

First came the power station and the chemical plant. Then they built the prefabs and filled them with young workers from across the Soviet Union. The planners even left some green space in this model city of the Khrushchev era. Next came the children, bored by it all, and the drugs they injected for escape. By the early 1990s, bloody syringes and hypodermic needles littered the playgrounds, courtyards and elevators of the look-alike apartment blocks.

Belarus, the Soviet throwback sandwiched between Russia and Poland, is resisting efforts by McDonald's to turn it into a fast-food nation. The fast-food giant filed a lawsuit this month in a land dispute with authorities--the latest in a string of problems it has had since it opened for business in Belarus in 1996.