MOSCOW (Reuters) - Some of the world's biggest fortunes were made and lost when the fall of the Soviet Union threw together a motley gang of brash young tycoons, hard-bitten oilmen and KGB veterans to scrabble for riches amidst the rubble of the Soviet oil industry.

"The iron curtain did not go down, Russians like to say, it went up," says Georgetown professor Thane Gustafson in "Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia", a drama of chance and personality which ultimately determined the fate of Russia's oil.

On that stage Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Communist youth leader trained as a scientist, created Russia's first modern corporation, then lost his fortune and his freedom to a resurgent Russian state led by Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Gustafson, a Georgetown professor who also heads Russian and Caspian energy research at industry consultancy IHS Cera, spoke with Reuters about the personalities and circumstances which shaped the fate of Russia's modern petrostate.

Q: How could chance play such a big part in the fate of such enormous wealth?

A: It has a lot to do with these things because things were so disrupted and strong personalities emerged. But even during the Putin years, because so much depends on the people in charge of various factions and interest groups, personality remains very fundamental.

Q: What did Putin have to work with when he became president upon Boris Yeltsin's resignation in 1999? How has he managed with the hand he was dealt?

A: He was, politically speaking, almost naked. Usually when a politician reaches that high an office he has been in business for decades, has an assemblage of allies, a favor bank he can draw on, a sense of who his friends and enemies are.

Putin didn't have any of those things. He had to form a team in very short order. He turned to people he had known and worked with, mainly from St Petersburg and largely from two groups of people - the former security people of St. Petersburg and the emerging business elite in St. Petersburg.

At an early stage he laid out a vision of state action for the rebuilding of Russian power and greatness in the world and first of all was the re-centralization of power and authority.

As far as the energy sector is concerned, clearly energy would be at the center of that thinking, simply because of the role that energy has always played as a source of revenue and a source of power.

Q: You knew Khodorkovsky as the CEO of the Yukos oil company (Russia's biggest oil company), before he was jailed for tax fraud. What do you remember most about him?

A: Although he was highly educated, he had a degree in chemical engineering from a leading institute in Moscow, at the same time he was completely untutored in conventional business skills and was completely new to the outside world. A brilliant man, no doubt, but he was reinventing the wheel as he went along, and there were some things he got brilliantly wrong. One thing was that he thought that he would get much more help from the West in his political battles at home than he got, than he could possibly get.

To a considerable extent the ability of Khodorkovsky to take over Yukos was the result of the weakness of the Soviet-era oilman who was previously in charge. So that too was a factor of personality.

Q: What was the role of chance and personality in the transformation of (state oil company) Rosneft into a national champion with BP as a shareholder, from a repository for third rate oil assets which could not find a buyer?

A: In 1998 there was a (financial) crisis, the Asian flu. In the wake of that nobody was buying oil companies, least of all worthless oil companies.

Then along came from Sakhalin this completely unknown man, like the stranger riding out of the West in the Western movies, except this man rode out of the east. "Oil man from Sakhalin takes over worthless oil company," that would have been the headline of the time.

But (former Rosneft CEO) Sergei Bogdanchikov was lucky and artful enough to make his case to Putin and to the Kremlin that they needed a national oil company, and to make himself the instrument of Putin's recentralization of the oil industry.

(Reporting by Melissa Akin)

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. []

"'Do what you love' is an important message, but it's unwise to build a career on the notion that we should all be paid for our passions," argues Carl McCoy at .

McCoy says that instead of asking themselves what they love, graduates should identify what they're working toward. "The answer lies in working with a deeper sense of purpose or vocation," he writes, adding, "Does the doctor love going into the hospital to see a patient in the middle of the night? Does the firefighter love entering a burning building? Does the teacher love trying to control a classroom full of disrespectful children? Not likely. But the work is performed with a sense of purpose that 'love' doesn't capture."

Beyond limiting their perspective, telling college grads to do what they love "sets young people up to fail," say sociologists Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharp at . "[I]t's ok to set your sights just a tad below occupational ecstasy. Just find a job that you like. Use that job to help you have a full life with lots of good things and pleasure and helping others and stuff."

Doing what you love for work can actually ruin the fun, says Alison Green in . "You might love to bake, and your friends might regularly swoon over your cakes and tell you to open a bakeshop. But getting up at the crack of dawn every day, baking 100 cakes daily, and dealing with difficult customers and the stress and finances of running your own business might have nothing to do with what you love about baking — and might sap the joy right out of it." She goes on:

"Do what you love" is privileged advice that ignores the fact that the majority of the world's population works to get food and housing, not for emotional or spiritual fulfillment. And even among the most socioeconomically privileged piece of the population — the segment that this advice is usually targeted to — it causes an awful lot of angst and even shame over not loving your career when people are telling you that you should. []

View this article onGetIssues of The Week

Other stories from this section:

The Austrian parachutist known as "Fearless Felix" reached 843.6 mph, according to the official numbers released Monday. That's equivalent to Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound.

His top speed initially was estimated last October at 834 mph, or Mach 1.24.

Either way, he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and jumped from a capsule hoisted by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.

Baumgartner was supersonic for a half-minute "quite remarkable," according to Brian Utley, the official record-keeping official who was present for the Oct. 14 feat. His heart rate remained below 185 beats a minute, and his breathing was fairly steady.

The leap was from an altitude of 127,852 feet. That's 248 feet lower than original estimates.

"He jumped from a little bit lower, but he actually went a little bit faster, which was pretty exciting," said Art Thompson, technical project director for the Red Bull-sponsored project.

"It's fun for us to see reaching Mach speeds and proving out a lot of the safety systems," Thompson said in a phone interview from his aerospace company in Lancaster, Calif.

Thompson said everything pretty much unfolded as anticipated, with no surprises in the final report. The updated records were provided by Utley, official observer for the National Aeronautic Association's contest and records board. Utley was in Roswell, N.M., for Baumgartner's grand finale jump.

In the foreword of the 71-page report, Baumgartner said he never imagined how many people would share in his dream to make a supersonic free fall from so high.

Some 52 million people watched You Tube's live stream of the exploit.

The scientific and engineering experts who helped bring him back alive "broke boundaries in their own fields just as surely as I broke the sound barrier," Baumgartner wrote.

Baumgartner shattered the previous record for a free fall plunge, made by Joe Kittinger, an Air Force officer, in 1960. Kittinger did not quite reach supersonic speed during his jump from 19.5 miles up.

Smiling widely all the while, Williams greeted visitors, posed for photos and signed autographs on her way.

It's been more than a decade since she was so happy and played so well this deep in the tournament at Roland Garros.

Coming as close to perfect as seems possible, Williams absolutely overwhelmed last year's runner-up, fifth-seeded Sara Errani of Italy, 6-0, 6-1 in a mere 46 minutes Thursday to reach the final for the first time since winning her lone French Open championship in 2002.

"It doesn't seem like that long ago," Williams said, "even though it was."

To collect her 16th Grand Slam title Saturday, Williams will need to beat defending champion Maria Sharapova, who put aside 11 double-faults and got past third-seeded Victoria Azarenka 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 in a much more competitive semifinal.

The final features the top two women in the rankings and seedings, No. 1 Williams and No. 2 Sharapova. They are 1-2 among active players in French Open match wins, Williams with 45, Sharapova with 43. And they are two of three active women with more than two major championships; Sharapova completed a career Grand Slam in Paris last year with No. 4.

Plus, Williams has won a career-best 30 consecutive matches, the longest single-season streak on tour since 2000. Sharapova has won 13 consecutive matches in Paris.

Despite all of that, this one doesn't shape up as much of an even matchup, because Williams is 13-2 against Sharapova, including winning the last 12.

"Well, I'd be lying if it doesn't bother me, obviously," said Sharapova, who last defeated Williams all the way back in 2004, at Wimbledon and the WTA Championships. "Whatever I did in the past hasn't worked, so I'll have to try to do something different."

Williams never gave Errani a chance to switch things up.

Errani, Williams' coach Patrick Moratouglou explained, "needs to rally, she needs to run, and then she's really, really dangerous." But, he continued, Williams "decided to refuse to let her play."

Simple as that.

The 31-year-old American won the first nine games. When Errani finally got on the board, 37 minutes in, she raised both arms overhead as the crowd roared.

Williams accumulated a 40-2 discrepancy in winners yes, 40-2! showing off a full array of talents. She won 28 of 33 points she served, helped by five aces, including one at 123 mph (199 kph). She smacked 10 return winners. She mixed in overhead smashes, powerful groundstrokes, even a drop shot.

"She was playing," Williams' mother, Oracene Price, summed up, "like Serena of old."

It felt like a routine first-round match for one of the sport's greats against a qualifier or wild-card recipient ranked somewhere in the 200s, not someone ranked No. 5 and a semifinalist at three of the past five major tournaments. Errani's also an accomplished doubles player, having won three of the past four Grand Slam titles in that event.

"I really believed I had a chance and I was trying to fight," said Errani, now 0-6 against Williams. "Maybe on the outside, people will think that's not true. But I know that I tried, right until the end."

Made no difference. Moratouglou thought one reason Williams was so terrific was what happened Tuesday in the quarterfinals, when she was pushed to three sets by 2009 French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova after having lost a total of 10 games through four rounds.

"It was good for her to feel danger for a moment," Moratouglou said.

Sharapova certainly dealt with plenty of tension against Azarenka, the winner of the past two Australian Opens.

Good as she was in the first set, Sharapova was shaky in the second, and it took her a while to straighten things out after a 35-minute rain delay that preceded the third. Up an early break, Sharapova double-faulted four times in a single game to make it 2-all. Serving for the match the first time, at 5-2, she let four match points slip away, then double-faulted on the last two points.

Finally, at 5-4, she steeled herself, serving out the victory at love, punctuated by her 12th ace.

"I did the job," Sharapova said. "I just hope that I can improve for the next one."

Probably needs to, the way Williams is hitting the ball.

While Williams has won five titles at Wimbledon and the Australian Open, and four at the U.S. Open, the slow red clay of the French Open has given her trouble through the years. It slows up her big serves and big groundstrokes enough to aid opponents. The footwork is also more difficult than on other surfaces.

After beating her sister Venus in the 2002 final, then making it to the semifinals a year later, Williams went through a drought in Paris. Four times, she lost in the quarterfinals. Once, in the third round. A year ago, she lost in the first round to a woman ranked outside the top 100, Williams' only exit at that stage in 51 career major tournaments.

"She was so mad," her mother said Thursday.

Following that setback, Williams stuck around Paris she owns an apartment in the city, and she's been wowing the locals these two weeks by conducting on-court interviews in their language and practiced at Moratoughlou's tennis academy in France.

In the last 12 months, Williams is 73-3, including titles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the London Olympics, playing as well as she did back when she pulled off her self-styled "Serena Slam" in 2002-03 by earning trophies at all four major tournaments in a row.

"I'm still here," Williams told the crowd in French, "11 years later."

___

Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

The 400-acre area known as Castle Rocks has been closed off and on to climbers since 2003, and may close permanently sometime this summer. Agency officials say they hope make a decision this month, depending how much feedback they receive from the public.

Mike Courtney, BLM field manager in Burley, said both the Shoshone-Bannock and Shoshone-Paiute tribes consider the land sacred and are worried cultural resources could be destroyed if climbing continues. BLM surveys have determined the region contains important archaeological resources and artifacts, including spearheads dating back thousands of years.

Courtney said the agency spent time combing the trail routes and climbing walls with the intention of finding middle ground with sport climbing enthusiasts. But unfortunately, Courtney said, environmental impact studies showed all the climbing areas posed at least some risk to resources the agency aims to protect.

"We kept running into resource issues with the locations of the trails and the potential climbing routes," Courtney said Friday. "We inventoried the entire area, and a lot of the areas at risk are the most desirable (climbing) areas."

Citing those and other reasons, a report from the BLM dated April 12 proposed closing the Cassia County area to climbers for good, although hikers and hunters would still have access to existing trails. Courtney said the plan targets climbing because soil erosion and vegetation destruction are most severe around staging areas, the spot near rock walls where climbers prepare for their assent.

But the BLM's plan has left regional climbers upset. They argue they've offered less prohibitive proposals that still protect the area's abundant cultural heritage and environment.

"They reversed course really quickly and went from considering the climbing management plan to coming to a decision that banned climbing right away," said R.D. Pascoe, a policy director with the climber advocacy group Access Fund.

Pascoe argues rock climbers are willing to avoid historical or archeologically significant sites, and his organization and local climbers came up with a plan that offered guidelines for when the BLM can close certain routes.

The BLM's most recent proposal, he said, unnecessarily eliminates all climbing access.

Several other routes at the nearby City of Rocks Natural Reserve will remain open for climbers. But Doug Colwell, founder of the Boise Climbers Alliance, said Castle Rocks is considered a national or even international destination by many of the sport's enthusiasts.

"When you go down there on Memorial Day weekend you will see people from other countries because it's a very well-known intermediate rock climbing area," Colwell said. "We believe there are areas we could compromise on."

RELATED:

Here, excerpted in the position in which they appear in the article, are the Times' most cutting dismissals of the president, of the PATRIOT Act, and of those in Congress who excuse and rationalize the collection of private data. We have censored those sentences that don't meet that standard.

RELATED:

RELATED:

Now, for context, .

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has suspended two employees - including one working on President Barack Obama's healthcare initiative - for improperly accepting gifts at an agency conference, two congressional staff members briefed on the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

The tax-collecting agency - already battling a political scandal and accusations of lavish spending - has begun a process to remove the two employees for violating ethics rules pending a review, the IRS said.

"There was clearly inappropriate behavior involved in this situation, and immediate action is needed," acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement on Wednesday.

The agency did not identify the suspended employees, but congressional aides briefed on the matter said they were Fred Schindler, an IRS official in Washington, and Donald Toda, an IRS employee based in California.

Messages left at their office numbers were not returned.

The aides said that Schindler works for Sarah Ingram, who now leads the IRS's office responsible for enforcing tax laws related to the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration's makeover of the U.S. healthcare system.

Ingram has been under scrutiny in recent weeks because in 2009 and 2010, she led the IRS office that inappropriately targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.

The IRS's acknowledgement last month that the targeting occurred has ignited a political scandal that has led to the departure or suspension of three top IRS officials, including Ingram's successor in the agency's tax-exempt division.

At least three congressional panels are investigating the targeting of conservative groups with names such as "Tea Party," and "Patriots," while the Justice Department has launched a criminal probe.

The suspensions on Wednesday were not related to the targeting scandal, but rather to a Treasury inspector general's report that criticized extravagant spending by the IRS in 2010, a year in which Treasury reported that the tax agency spent $38 million on conferences designed to educate and boost the morale of its employees.

The Treasury report focused on a conference held for the IRS small business division in Anaheim, California, in 2010.

Some of the perks IRS employees enjoyed - potentially in lieu of better room rates - included room upgrades, the report said. The commissioner of the agency's small business and self-employed division stayed five nights in a room that the Treasury report described as having a private bedroom, wet bar and billiard table, the report said.

That official, Faris Fink, will be grilled on Thursday by members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Fink will also under the spotlight because he acted as the "Star Trek," television and movie series character Mr. Spock in an employee training video spoof, an expenditure also detailed in the Treasury's report on wasteful spending.

OHIO IRS WORKERS INTERVIEWED

The House Oversight panel is among congressional committees examining the political targeting scandal, which has led Republicans to question whether the Obama administration, in the months before the 2012 election, was involved in trying to stifle conservative groups that generally oppose the president.

The White House has rejected such suggestions. A Treasury inspector general's report that first detailed the targeting scandal did not find any evidence that the administration was involved.

Congressional investigators have been interviewing workers from the IRS's office in Cincinnati, Ohio, headquarters to the agency's tax-exempt division, which carried out the targeting of conservative groups in its role examining groups for tax-exempt status.

Investigators conducted their latest interview with an IRS employee in the Cincinnati office this week, and have another planned in the coming days, according to a congressional aide.

On Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight - led by California Republican Darrell Issa, a vocal critic of the administration - will focus on overspending by the IRS.

Agency rules allow government employees to accept items worth $20 or less, provided the total value of gifts from the same person is not more than $50 in a calendar year, according to the Office of Government Ethics.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on Tuesday criticized the IRS for wasteful spending on conferences. It said the tax agency spent about $50 million on more than 220 conferences in recent years, including to pay for luxurious hotel rooms and motivational speakers.

The inspector general said IRS employees at the Anaheim conference failed to negotiate lower hotel rates and instead sought free food and more expensive hotel suites.

In response to widespread criticism of its spending, the IRS has noted that the amount it has spent on conferences has dropped dramatically, from about $38 million in 2010 to less than $5 million in fiscal 2012.

(Reporting by Kim Dixon and Patrick Temple-West; editing by David Lindsey, Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)

The couple is awaiting permission from penal authorities for a wedding within two weeks in Piedras Gordas prison, lawyer Maximo Altez told The Associated Press.

"He is in love, that is what motivates all men (to marry), he truthfully is in love," Altez said Friday about his client, who was convicted of the brutal 2010 murder of a young Lima woman he met in a casino.

Altez's comment followed speculation in Peruvian media that Van der Sloot wants to marry 23-year-old Leydi Figueroa Uceda to avoid possible extradition to the United States. The lawyer denied that was the case.

The 24-year-old Dutchman remains the chief suspect in the 2005 disappearance in his native Aruba of U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway.

Holloway was 18 years old when she vanished during a high school graduation trip to Aruba. She was last seen leaving a bar the morning of May 30, 2005 with Van der Sloot.

Holloway's body was never found and the ensuing searches for her would create intense media scrutiny and worldwide attention. A judge later declared Holloway dead.

Van der Sloot faces extortion and wire fraud charges in Alabama in connection with Holloway's unsolved disappearance, which occurred five years to the day before he killed 21-year-old Peruvian business student Stephany Flores after playing poker with her in a Lima casino.

U.S. prosecutors allege Van der Sloot accepted $25,000 in cash from Holloway's family in exchange for a promise to lead an attorney for the family to her body in early 2010 just before he went to Lima.

Altez said that Van der Sloot met Figueroa while she was selling goods inside the Peruvian prison. The young woman visited Van der Sloot constantly after that and several months ago he began taking the steps needed to wed.

The lawyer denied press reports that Figueroa bore Van der Sloot a son.

On Wednesday, Altez sought a sentence reduction to 20 years for Van der Sloot.

He said he should hear back from the Supreme Court in about 10 days.

"He wants to get married, change his life, make a new life," he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House stepped in Monday with a veto threat against a House GOP plan to advance a round of 2014 spending bills that would ease sequester-imposed cuts on the Pentagon while forcing even deeper cuts on non-defense programs.

Those cuts would come in areas like education, energy and water development and foreign aid.

In a statement, the White House budget office said the cuts called for in the GOP plan would force thousands of poor children off of Head Start, harm special education, cut federal law enforcement and dent medical research grants to thousands of scientists. It called on the Democratic Senate and GOP House to reach a broader agreement on the budget before advancing spending bills.

The veto promise comes as the House is set this week to consider the first of 12 spending bills for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The first measure totals $73 billion and awards a 3.5 percent increase for veterans programs while cutting construction costs at military bases. The House is also slated to debate and pass a $39 billion measure this week boosting the Homeland Security Department's budget by almost $1 billion compared with current levels.

Democrats and the White House don't have a problem with the substance of the first two bills. Rather they oppose the overall level of funding set by Republicans for the day-to-day operations of federal agencies.

The statement promised a veto of every spending bill until Washington reaches a bargain on "an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future."

At issue is the almost $1 trillion portion of the $3.6 trillion federal budget that must be approved by Congress each year. This so-called discretionary spending has been cut sharply with the imposition in March of across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration. The Pentagon is absorbing cuts of 7 percent this year and domestic discretionary programs are bearing a 5 percent cut from last year's levels.

Hopes are fading for a budget bargain that would replace the cuts, which leaves lawmakers stuck with even bigger cuts for the upcoming year.Appropriated funding for the ongoing budget year totals $984 billion; the House measures total $967 billion, an almost 2 percent cut below already austere current spending.

Under a 2011 budget deal, the panel was supposed to receive almost $1.06 trillion for the 12 appropriations bills; the House panel is instead stuck with $967 billion under the across-the-board cuts imposed because Congress and President Barack Obama were unable to follow up the 2011 deal with further deficit cuts. The Democratic figures are $91 billion higher, a 9 percent increase from current levels.

Obama and Senate Democrats support advancing the annual spending bills at the higher levels called for under the hard-fought 2011 bargain, replacing the cuts with a mixture of tax increases and spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. But conservatives controlling the House insist that the spending bills be written at the post-sequestration cap of $967 billion.

The GOP plan opposed by Obama restores cuts to the military while making cuts to domestic programs favored by Democrats even deeper. The deepest cuts almost 20 percent would come from a huge domestic spending bill that funds aid to local school districts, health research and enforcement of labor laws. Cuts to housing, foreign aid, transportation and community development grants would be severe, though a popular program that provides food aid to pregnant women and their babies is likely to emerge intact.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., appears to be embarking on a strategy to advance a handful of the annual spending bills by funding them at levels closer to Obama's budget than the tea party budget that passed the House in March. GOP conservatives have balked at such moves in the past, saying they're a trick aimed at boosting spending, but some Democrats were willing to give Rogers the benefit of the doubt by voting for the veterans and homeland security measures during Appropriations Committee consideration last month.

Neither the House nor the Senate are likely to have much luck in advancing the measures very far unless a broader deal is made.

The image, titled , is composed of a .

The March 11th earthquake and tsunami had a traumatic effect on Japan. Issues of life and death, hope and despair, beauty and tragedy became an all too real part of peoples everyday lives, reads a press release from Tokyo-based ad agency J&S BBDO, which created the image for the Nishinihon Tenrei funeral home. Funerals became a commonplace ordeal as the nation dealt with unprecedented loss.

J&S BBDO recently debuted the image at a trade show, saying it was created to counter the tradition in Japanese culture of funerals being somber events accented with black and white. The company said it was tasked with coming up with a concept that would bend the tradition without being seen as disrespectful.

The funeral industry in the U.S. has had some unusual moments of its own in recent years.

For example, in May 2012 a gold-plated coffin was put on sale for $35,000 that was based on the same model used for Michael Jackson after his death. That same month, a New Englandhe had spent decades preserving.

And in March, a Philadelphia couple decided to turn their deceased relatives funeral into a festive environment .