|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - FSB special forces officers killed Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov in a special operation in the Chechen village Tolstoy-Yurt, Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin in televised remarks Tuesday night. Moscow-backed Deputy Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov called Maskhadov's death a gift for all Chechen women on the Women's Day holiday Tuesday, while Maskhadov envoy Akhmed Zakayev and fierce Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky warned that Moscow might have lost its only chance to bring peace to Chechnya. The federal military headquarters for the North Caucasus confirmed that Maskhadov was dead, but the circumstances surrounding his death were unclear. |
|
 Having a career and being a mother is hard work but the rewards are greater than the drawbacks, say Russian women who celebrated International Women's Day on Tuesday, Larisa Galushko, 33, a sales manager for Vedomosti newspaper and mother of three, has to get up at 6:30 a. |
|
The morning she had the appointment she felt a bit worried - but no more than before seeing her dentist. She got up as usual and took the bus to the clinic. She was met by her doctor who immediately started the procedure. There was no time to reconsider her decision. Six hours later she was on her way back home, feeling a bit dizzy but also relieved to have solved her "problem. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
Estonian president Arnold Ruutel and Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus have turned down the Kremlin's invitation to visit Moscow on May 9 for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. This leaves Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga as the only Baltic head of state to have accepted the Kremlin's invitation. |
|
Fourteen women's boxing teams from around the world are putting on their boxing gloves in St. Petersburg this week to participate in the first international women's boxing tournament hosted in Russia. |
|
Green Lane on Border KALININGRAD (SPT) - A green lane for buses has been opened on the Bezledy checkpoint on the Polish-Russian border, Interfax reported Friday quoting the Polish consulate in Kaliningrad. "To continue simplifying the regime to cross the Russian-Polish border at the Bezledy checkpoint, the Polish side on March 8 will open a green lane for border and customs control for all passenger buses, regardless of which state they originate from or where they are registered," Interfax cited the consulate as saying. The main condition for buses going through the green lane is that they carry no goods that have to be declared, the consulate said. |
|
 BALASHIKHA, Moscow Region - To the strains of the national anthem, a group of students at Balashikha's School No. 1 joined the ranks of United Russia's youth group Thursday with promises of new friends, better careers and summer work. |
|
MOSCOW - A Canadian man in love with an imaginary Russian woman has helped Yekaterinburg police arrest a couple behind an Internet scam that cheated love-struck foreigners out of thousands of dollars. The Canadian citizen became worried about the bride-to-be he had met through the web site after she wrote to say that all the money he had sent her had been stolen by the Russian mafia, Yekaterinburg police said. |
|
MOSCOW - Discontent within United Russia about its control over local elections spilled over into the public domain when Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov accused the party's leadership of changing its charter to require regional leaders to get the party head office's approval for all local candidates. |
|
Moscow - Despite the presence of Mozart, Verdi and Tchaikovsky, the State Duma has ordered its cultural committee to examine an experimental new opera by the Bolshoi Theater after one deputy slammed it as pornographic. United Russia Deputy Sergei Neverov complained after seeing a television report on the opera, "The Children of Rosenthal," a witty tale of cloned classical composers who have hit hard times. "It is not decent for the stage of the Bolshoi Theater," Neverov said by telephone Friday. The opera's libretto was penned by controversial writer Vladimir Sorokin. It tells the story of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Wagner, Verdi and Mozart, cloned by a scientist in the Soviet Union, who are thrown into poverty after the Soviet breakup and resort to busking on Komsomolskaya Ploshchad. |
|
 MOSCOW - When 14-year-old Ksenia Lukina was born with a congenital heart defect, the doctors told her mother, Irina, that she would be better off abandoning her daughter. |
|
MOSCOW - The Moscow Times has lost a defamation suit filed against it by Hungarian-based gas trader Eural Trans Gas over two articles published in November 2003 and June 2004 that questioned the company's possible ties with Ukrainian-born crime lord Semyon Mogilevich, who is wanted by the FBI. The Moscow Times is the sister paper of The St. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - A survey of 158 foreign companies found that corruption remains the biggest obstacle for investment into Russia, the government said Friday. A total of 71 percent of the companies polled named corruption as the top barrier to investment, according to the survey, which was conducted by PBN Company for the government's Consultative Council on Foreign Investment. The companies, about two-thirds of which are already working in Russia, were asked to name five top problems that obstruct foreign investment. "We all know that corruption is a problem, but the number of people who put corruption at the top of the list came as a surprise," Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov said Friday after a meeting of the Consultative Council on Foreign Investment. |
|
 The Russian chapter of World Women in IT network, recently launched in St. Petersburg, promises to be the first organization that will unite Russian-speaking business women all over the world, its executive directors say. |
|
One of Sweden's largest banks, Swedbank, is considering an acquisition of a Russian bank, its chairman told the Dow Jones news wire on Tuesday. Chairman Carl Eric Staalberg, the head of Foereningssparbanken AB, internationally known as Swedbank, said that the bank may seek growth through "an additional acquisition in Russia. |
|
MOSCOW - The country's mergers and acquisitions market grew by 70 percent last year to a record $30 billion, according to a report released by Ernst & Young on Thursday. |
|
Latvia May Bar Nafta VILNIUS (Bloomberg) - Latvia's stock exchange said it may halt the trading of Ventspils Nafta, which runs an oil terminal on the Baltic Sea, unless the company clarifies an announced plan to possibly leave the bourse and list elsewhere. |
|
To be rich in St. Petersburg is no big deal, according to Russia's Top 500 Rich List, published last month by economic monthly Finance. Finans figures show that the country's second city does not have a single dollar billionaire, its first entry on the list coming in as low as 71 with banker Vladimir Kogan. |
|
MOSCOW - The gap between rich and poor has widened over the past year, crossing a threshold beyond which social discontent could reach dangerous levels. In 2004, the richest 10 percent of Russians earned 14.8 times more than the poorest 10 percent, according to data published by the State Statistics Service earlier this week. The real disparity may be a differential of up to 40 times because people don't declare fully their incomes, sociologist Vyacheslav Lokosov said. "We have a polarized country - one [part] lives according to Western standards, the other is just trying to survive," said Lokosov, deputy director of the Institute for Social and Political Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences. |
|
 The end of spring will finally see a major expansion on the St. Petersburg four-star hotel market as the opening of at least three new hotels will nearly double the segment's size in the city. |
 In a city built on low-lying marshes, skyscrapers would resemble castles in the sky. Yet now that St Petersburg's architects, engineers, and administrators are moving forward with specific proposals for high-rise construction within city limits, the technical challenges present only part of the dilemma. |
|
The government has passed a new law to protect the interests of people who invest in ongoing residential construction. To satisfy the multiple claims of investors against what they see as the unrestricted behaviour of construction companies, the State Duma ratified the law "On interest-holder rights in residential construction," to come into force on April 1. |
|
|
|
|
In recent weeks, President Vladimir Putin's politics have generated most of the worry in the West. He has been cutting welfare benefits for veterans and pensioners, clamping down on free media and meddling in the Ukrainian election. Even President Bush, who badly needs the Kremlin's cooperation in combating terrorism, the spread of nuclear weapons and narcotics trafficking, gently chided Mr. |
|
The Kremlin finally heeded the demands of a very special group of protesters last month. No, they weren't pensioners. The demonstrations protesting the end of social benefits resulted in arrests and the general indifference of the government, which mumbled something to the effect that next time, "we'll keep it in mind. |
|
Along with the replacement of in-kind benefits with cash payments that sparked nationwide protests, several other reforms began to bear fruit recently, including the transition to appointed, as opposed to popularly elected, governors. In late January and in February, President Vladimir Putin recommended nine candidates for governor. |
|
Recently democratic opponents of the Kremlin's policies have initiated a discussion about how they should behave. The discussion is in many ways reminiscent of the one that took place in the late 1980s during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. |
|
Sex, sex, sex - how it haunts the damp and fervid dreams of the Bushist Party faithful. And nowhere more so than in the depths of Dixie, where stout Christian soldiers were singing hosannas last week after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their righteous warfare against the foulest form of evil in the modern world: Genital stimulators. |
|
|
|
|
Men Can Take Heart BOSTON (Reuters) - Taking a baby aspirin may prevent heart attacks in men, but it does little to ward off a first heart attack in women aged 45 to 64, researchers reported on Monday. However, the low-dose aspirin therapy widely recommended for both men and women may reduce the risk of stroke caused by a blocked blood vessel in the brain, according to the findings. |
|
Rude Rooney Probe LONDON (AFP) - Sir Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney are reportedly being investigated by the Football Association for their behaviour during Manchester United's goalless draw at Crystal Palace. |
Temp: -2°C overcast 
Issues Archive