Volga River

A group of nuclear engineers from the Russian city of Balakovo spent this week at the San Onofre nuclear power plant learning about technology and operations that they can apply in their country. The visit was part of an international exchange program organized by the World Assn. of Nuclear Operators (WANO).

West Germany and the Soviet Union Thursday initialed a 20-year friendship treaty that is aimed at expanding bilateral ties and building greater trust. The accord, which will serve as a framework for German-Soviet political relations as well as economic and technical matters, was initialed by West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

After five decades of trying to bring peace to the four corners of the world, Esther Palo has finally brought a little peace to her North Hollywood neighborhood. The 80-year-old peace activist has erected a six-foot-tall redwood "peace pole" in her front yard to remind others to continue struggling for peace both at home and abroad. "I have to continue my work until we get peace in the whole world," said Palo, who lives on Burton Street and says she has been a peace activist since her early 30s.

For decades, scientists have shared Bob Cimiano's frustration. Back in 1988, "I was ready to quit and work on something else," says Dr. Sangram S. Sisodia, chairman of the departments of neurobiology, pharmacology and physiology at the University of Chicago and one of the nation's top Alzheimer's researchers. "Then they discovered the gene."

The Soviet Union, apparently reflecting the wishes of its leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, has dropped a plan for diverting water from rivers flowing north to irrigate the arid south of Central Asia, a senior official said Tuesday. "At present, we can manage without the switching of water from the northern rivers," Leonard Vid, deputy chief of Gosplan, the state planning agency, told reporters.

Dozens of passengers were killed when a Soviet plane crashed last October as the pilot tried a blind landing on a dare, the newspaper Soviet Russia said Thursday. The paper reported that the Supreme Court in the Russian Federation sentenced the pilot, A. Klyuyev, to 15 years in prison for the crash at Kuibishev, 500 miles east of Moscow. The report in Soviet Russia was the first known mention of the crash in the Soviet media.

Six people--two would-be hijackers, two passengers and two policemen--were killed in gun battles during an abortive attempt to commandeer a Soviet airliner in the provincial city of Ufa last Saturday, the Soviet news agency Tass said Monday. It was one of the rare episodes of hijacking reported in recent years in the Soviet Union, where pilots carry sidearms and heavy security measures are taken routinely at airports.

Women in Chuvashia, a normally placid republic in Russia's Volga River heartland, fume publicly that President Boris N. Yeltsin should be shot for sending boys to perish in Chechnya. The republic's chief spokesman calls Yeltsin "a mangy dog." Chuvashia's president warns that the separatists here are gaining ground with every soldier's corpse sent home for burial.

At an Orthodox seminary in St. Petersburg, Russia, an American church visitor observed several U.S. evangelists trying to imprint their particular brand of Christianity on students training for the Russian church's ministry. "A variety of Western evangelists would corner students in the dormitory hallways or other places, trying to proselytize them," said the Rev. Elaine Stanovsky, head of the Greater Church Council of Seattle. "I was appalled," she added. "It broke my heart."

The governor appointed by President Boris N. Yeltsin in the "red belt" region of Saratov crushed his Communist challenger in the first of 52 autumn elections for control of Russia's provincial heartland, complete returns showed Monday. The lopsided outcome of Sunday's closely watched election spelled trouble for the Communists' goal of rebounding from defeat in the July presidential vote by gaining power at the grass roots.