CHUBAIS PROVOKES MORE CONTROVERSY.

First Deputy Premier Anatoly Chubais was at the center of another scandal yesterday, when he flew to India on an official visit on a special flight of Russia’s state airline company, Rossiya. Journalists of the anti-Chubais camp pounced on what they described as the flouting by Chubais of a recent cost-cutting decree, in which President Boris Yeltsin restricted travel on the state airline to six top officials: the president, the prime minister, the speakers of the two house of parliament, the secretary of the Security Council, and the foreign minister. Everyone else is supposed travel on regular scheduled flights. Chubais’ supporters leaped to his defense, pointing out that his trip to India had been sanctioned by Yeltsin on December 8, and that the order therefore predated Yeltsin’s December 11 decree restricting air travel. (RTR, NTV, December 16) The affair was a seeming tempest in a teacup, but a good time was had by all with a good deal of mud flung in both directions.

"The Country Is Tired of Funerals."