October 28, 2004

BP's 50-50 Russian venture TNK-BP is posting record profits and pumps one of every five barrels of BP's worldwide oil supply; BP is maneuvering gingerly in hopes of avoiding any direct conflict with Russian government, which is moving to reassert its influence over country's lucrative energy business; need to respond to shifting political climate has been driven home ever since Russian oil company Yukos came under attack last year from authorities; Yukos's founder Mikhail B Khodorkovsky is in jail facing criminal charges and company still owes $8 billion in back taxes; chart; photos (M)

Howard Goldstein is charged with fatal beating of Rahamim Sultan, 75-year-old Brooklyn man who took him in as border to help pay rent; police say Goldstein kept Sultan's battered body in apartment for days and answered door dressed in women's clothes when police came to investigate; friends from synagogue Sultan attended reported him missing; photo (M)

Lynne F Stewart, lawyer for convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, breaks down while giving testimony at her trial in New YYork City for passing messages from him; says her actions did not violate any US restriction or commands; lays out her rationale for conveying Abdel Rahman's message to international news media, which called for end to three-year-old cease-fire by his militant followers in Egypt; answers no when asked whether she believed Abdel Rahman wanted followers to start shooting; says confidence between lawyer and client is not to be shared with anyone else (M)

Sculptor Hally Thatcher's desert ranch house in Morongo Valley, Calif, has prefabricated metal canopy over roof and dropcloth curtains around it, providing crucial shade for indoor-outdoor living in treeless landscape; photos (M)

Brazil is expected to produce record soybean crop of 60.8 million metric tons this year; harvest would be 22 percent increase from 2003; forecast also says 20 percent of soy crop was planted with genetically modified seed, which was banned until 2003 (S)m