Moscow

Donna Summer's family says the singer died of lung cancer even though she wasn't a smoker. TMZ says the diva believed she contracted the disease by breathing in toxic air after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York. Summer, who died Thursday at 63 in Naples, Fla., lived near ground zero. Summer's family rep, Brian Edwards, also said on Friday that the singer's funeral would be private and declined to disclose a time or place for the event. J-Lo: I'm undecided Jennifer Lopez denies she's already quit American Idol.

Yves Saint Laurent introduced himself to the Soviet Union yesterday, and for the most part they got along fine. "Russian ethnic clothing has always inspired me," the fashion designer told an audience of art and fashion writers. "What interests me is the simplicity of the cut - Tolstoy's smock, for example. " Saint Laurent, making his first visit to the Soviet Union for the opening of an exhibit of his work, said he was there at the request of Raisa Gorbachev, who had asked him to come when she visited his boutique in Paris last year.

I'm not surprised that the Moscow authorities have said very little about the nuclear accident. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if next year they said that it didn't happen at all. Dave B. Olim Ambler.

A few years ago, the kitchen of the Japanese Embassy here ran out of Heinz tomato ketchup. In many of the world's largest cities, this sort of commodity can be obtained with relative ease. Such is not the case in the Soviet capital, as the Japanese knew. Off went a Telex to Helsinki, Finland, where a store that specializes in solving such problems was ready and waiting. Only one bottle could be found on short notice, but off it went, packed and labeled, on the next flight to Moscow, 650 miles away.

A Soviet citizen held up the current issue of the weekly newspaper Nedelya and pointed to the cover photograph of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, broadly smiling, in Washington. "Probably, he didn't know what happened in the streets here this week," said the Soviet. He was not himself a dissident or potential emigre, but he was well aware of the violent squelching of demonstrations in Moscow during the "Mikhail and Ron" summit. But Gorbachev did know what happened in Moscow. During his hypnotic news conference Thursday evening in Washington, he was even asked about it - specifically, about what happened last Sunday.

After slipping into Israel almost unnoticed this week, a Soviet delegation is breaking Moscow's 20-year diplomatic boycott of Israel with style. The leader of the delegation told Israeli listeners "Boker tov" (Hebrew for 'good morning') on the army radio station, and the visitors have talked nonstop with almost all the leading Israeli publications. But when it comes to diplomacy, and the underlying purpose of the visit, the Kremlin's agenda is murky. The Soviet foreign ministry insists that the delegation is concerned only with consular matters, like checking up on the Russian Orthodox Church's property in the Holy Land.

More than 1,000 prostitutes are working in Moscow, some of them students, a Soviet law-enforcement official was quoted as saying yesterday. In the daily Sovietskaya Rossiya newspaper, Lt. Col. E. T. Chaikovsky, chief of the Moscow criminal investigation department, appealed to the public for assistance in cracking down on prostitution. "In order to make a prostitute answer for it (her illegal activity), it is necessary to catch her red-handed at the moment of taking money," he said.

Soviet Communist Party Congresses are usually full of wooden platitudes recited from approved texts. But Western attention has been riveted on the meetings of the 27th party congress as if it were the Superbowl. The reason: to see whether Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev really intends to overhaul his country's economy and politics or whether his rhetoric of radical reform only masks a policy of tinkering. There was no shortage of "watershed" rhetoric. The Soviet leader ticked off all the catch phrases of Moscow's think-tank experts on economic reform like market forces and financial incentives.

Disgruntled forward Alexei Yashin flew from Ottawa to Moscow yesterday to practice with a team while he waits for the Senators to trade him. His agent, Mark Gander, said Yashin was tired of reading about himself in the local newspapers. "It will be easier for him to be in Russia," Gandler said. Ottawa suspended Yashin in early September when he failed to show up for training camp. He boycotted the Senators' camp because he wanted his contract renegotiated and has said he will never play for the team again.

BAGHDAD - Iran and six world powers wrapped up talks Thursday still far apart over how to oversee Tehran's atomic program, but with resolve to keep dialogue going as an alternative to possible military action. Envoys said they would meet again next month in Moscow after negotiations stretched out for extra hours and a sandstorm shut the airport in Iraq's capital. But the two sides agreed on little else during two days of discussions that underscored the serious challenges of reaching accords between Iran and the West.

MOSCOW - Prominent Russian novelists and poets led a street protest by more than 10,000 people in Moscow on Sunday without obtaining the required permit, and police did not intervene. The demonstrators skirted the law by remaining silent and carrying no posters, even though the demonstration had clearly been organized as an anti-President Vladimir Putin rally. The gathering was the latest of several impromptu protests that have taken place in Moscow since Putin's inauguration Monday, held by people unhappy that he is the country's formal leader once again.

MOSCOW - A demonstration by at least 20,000 people on the eve of Vladimir Putin's inauguration as president turned into a battle with police Sunday after some protesters tried to split off from the approved venue and march to the Kremlin. Club-wielding officers wearing helmets seized demonstrators and hauled them to police vehicles, dragging some by the hair, others by the neck. Several protesters were injured, including one man with blood dripping from his head down the left side of his face.

For half a century, David Attenborough has taken viewers on extraordinary, well-informed, thought-provoking, and moving tours of the rich flora and fauna of virtually every corner of our planet. The 85-year-old British naturalist provides energetic and stimulating narration on the BBC's Frozen Planet , a stunning, six-hour exploration that takes us, quite literally, to the ends of the Earth: the Arctic and Antarctic. Produced by Alastair Fothergill and Vanessa Berlowitz, the team responsible for the equally glorious The Blue Planet and Planet Earth series, Frozen Planet opens with a general introduction to the topography and the history of the two polar regions, with stunning views of giant glaciers and the creatures that live in their shadows, including polar bears, Adélie and emperor penguins, albatross, narwhals, even wolves.

MOSCOW - Two weeks ago, during a trip to Moscow, I visited an amazing family that symbolized the dynamism of the new Russia. On Thursday the husband, Alexei Kozlov, was sentenced to five years in prison. The story of Kozlov and his journalist wife, Olga Romanova, is one of hope that Russia can change, and of despair that the old order will crush reformers. His case is a grim reminder that Russia will never reach its full potential as a developed nation until it institutes the rule of law. We met in the couple's comfortable Moscow apartment, where china cabinets and bookshelves lined the walls.

MOSCOW - Thousands of cars flying white ribbons or balloons circled central Moscow Sunday in a show of protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. The cars - ranging from luxury sedans and sporty convertibles to old, exhaust-spewing Soviet models - jammed the inner lanes all along the nearly 10-mile Garden Ring, which has as many as 16 lanes of traffic at its widest points. More protesters stood along the side of the road waving white ribbons and flags as the vehicles passed, their horns blaring.

Associated Press LONDON - It was the spy saga that sounded too implausible to be true - British intelligence officers communicating with Russian agents using equipment hidden inside a fake rock left in a Moscow park. Now Tony Blair's ex-chief of staff Jonathan Powell has acknowledged that Russia's accusations against Britain over the 2006 affair were correct, the first official acknowledgment of the espionage plot that soured ties between London and the Kremlin. At the time, Russian state television broadcast footage which appeared to show four British officials placing or retrieving the fake rock, and exposed the sophisticated communications equipment inside the plastic boulder.

MOSCOW - Tens of thousands of people fed up with Vladimir V. Putin's domination of Russian politics and his perceived arrogance toward them jammed one of Moscow's broadest avenues Saturday for a giant protest, vowing to keep building the pressure until the longtime leader is driven from power. "Russia without Putin!" the crowd chanted as it protested alleged fraud during Dec. 4 parliamentary elections that saw Prime Minister Putin's United Russia party garner nearly 50 percent of the vote.

MOSCOW - About 1,000 demonstrators demanding a rerun of parliamentary elections gathered Saturday in central Moscow for a second weekend of protests against Russia's fraud-tainted vote, a comparatively small crowd that underlined the challenge to the opposition of keeping up public pressure on authorities. The turnout was far below the nationwide protests last Saturday in at least 60 cities, including a dramatic gathering of tens of thousands in Moscow, the largest show of public anger in post-Soviet Russia.

MOSCOW - Tens of thousands of people on Saturday held the largest antigovernment protests that post-Soviet Russia has ever seen to criticize electoral fraud and demand an end to Vladimir Putin's rule. Police showed surprising restraint, and state-controlled TV gave the nationwide demonstrations unexpected airtime, but there was no indication the opposition was strong enough to push for real change from the prime minister or his ruling party. Nonetheless, Putin seems to be in a weaker position than he was a week ago, before Russians voted in parliamentary elections.