World: Russian to the Rescue

During a nine-hour layover at Cairo airport, TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs recently observed his fellow travelers in the transit-passenger lounge, including a group of young Americans. His report:

THREE planes had just landed close on each other's engine exhausts: a Pakistan International flight carrying a group of Chinese from the Albanian capital of Tirana to Shanghai, a Soviet Aeroflot Ilyushin-18 taking a group of students from Somalia to Moscow, and a TWA Boeing that was transporting American kids in tie-dyed shirts home to their oil-company parents in Saudi Arabia after a summer in the States.

Mao badges gleaming on their blue tunics, the...

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