More Bad News from the East

Somebody in Russia is killing journalists.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The business chief of Russian state news agency Itar-Tass was found knifed to death at his flat in central Moscow on Monday, Itar-Tass said.

Anatoly Voronin, 55, Tass's business manager, died "as a result of multiple knife wounds," a source in Moscow's Prosecutor General told Tass.

Tass sources told Reuters that Voronin was supposed to return to work on Monday from holiday and his driver waited 3 hours for him outside his block of flats in Moscow this morning before returning to Tass to report him missing.

With Tass officials, the driver went up to his flat and found the door open with all of his things scattered all over the flat and saw Voronin's body, the sources told Reuters.

"It is a colossal loss for Tass," said Ludmila Perkina, an editorial official at Tass's main news center.

"He did so much for Tass. He tried to do everything so that we -- the journalists -- could work. Our hearts are very heavy today."

Voronin had worked at Tass for 23 years.