In 1994 a study found that 55% of the heat produced in Tomsk was wasted.

ECONOMIST: The time-bombs of Tomsk

On January 25th, the ministry held hearings in Seversk which one bus-load of Tomsk citizens was allowed to attend.

ECONOMIST: The time-bombs of Tomsk

He is lobbying for public hearings to be held in Tomsk itself.

ECONOMIST: The time-bombs of Tomsk

In icy Tomsk, the potential for heat loss is even worse: astonishingly, the pipes that carry warm water around the district heating network of Seversk and Tomsk are completely uninsulated.

ECONOMIST: The time-bombs of Tomsk

He was sent to Tomsk in Siberia to interview an out-of-work ballistics missiles expert, was ambushed in a field outside Osijek, Croatia when war broke out in Yugoslavia and undercover in Russia, tried to buy a MiG fighter jet from an arms dealer.

BBC: Jeremy Vine

So Nynex, hardly the most popular local telephone company in America, knew it was in for a scrap when it recently unveiled a plan to deprive some Manhattanites of their treasured 212 area code--arguably the only local telephone code that is recognised from Tokyo to Tomsk.

ECONOMIST: The sexiest code on earth

There's the slick salesman who needs billions of dollars in capital and technical know-how from the outside in order to exploit a quadrillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves (50 years' U.S. consumption) and 300, 000 miles of pipeline crisscrossing Russia from the Baltic border east to Tomsk in Siberia and from Uzbekistan north toward the Arctic Circle.

FORBES: Energy Tsar