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MOSCOW - The conflict over Media-MOST's debts to energy giant Gazprom continued on Thursday, when Gazprom-Media appealed to a Moscow court seeking a return of the debts and asking for the holding's property to be seized. Reports following the filing of the lawsuits were conflicting. |
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Gazprom-Media head Alfred Kokh and Media-MOST spokesman Dmitry Ostalsky offered two different versions Wednesday of how negotiations broke down over Media-MOST's $473 million debt last week. |
All photos from issue.
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 Organizers of an environmental project to clean up three of St. Petersburg's parks say that they are hoping to turn the scheme into an example for other European cities to follow. The project, which was launched this month, is being funded by Danish Cooperation for Environment in Eastern Europe (DANCEE), part of the Danish Environment Ministry. |
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MOSCOW - Russia has frozen a contract to sell laser equipment to Iran because of U.S. concern about technology transfers to the Islamic republic, the Nuclear Energy Ministry said Thursday. |
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Hostages in Sochie n MOSCOW (Reuters) - Three masked men brandishing firearms and grenades took four people hostage in a southern Russian resort town on Thursday, demanding a $30 million ransom and the freeing of all Chechens from jail. The FSB security service said in a statement the gunmen had initially taken four people hostage in a small hotel under construction in the Black Sea resort town of Lazarevskoye, but that one of the captives had escaped by jumping from a window. |
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MOSCOW - Russia and India are close to clinching a package of hefty arms deals that are capable of keeping the order books of some of the nation's defense industry flagships busy for years, experts said. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday to negotiate what he has described as "an enormous package" of documents that cover all spheres of Russian-Indian relations, including arms deals. |
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MOSCOW - With a surprise bid of $1.08 billion, a company connected to Tyumen Oil Co. beat out three other contenders to win a privatization tender for control of the Onako oil company, the Federal Property Fund announced Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW - Russian tax police have launched a criminal investigation into top managers of Russia's Unified Energy System, UES, the national power utility headed by Anatoly Chubais, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday. Itar-Tass cited tax officials as saying the investigation was connected with suspected tax evasion of 3. |
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Ericsson Gets the Nod n MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Sonic Duo, in which Finland's Sonera has a minority stake, has chosen Sweden's Ericsson to build a Moscow GSM mobile network, Deputy Commercial Director Anton Mironov said on Thursday. |
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BEIJING - China cheered Wednesday the U.S. Senate's approval of a trade deal as a potential new beginning for often tortured relations between the world's last major communist government and the world's capitalist superpower. "We hope the passage of the bill can become a new starting point," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters after the U. |
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THE European fuel crisis has found an echo in St. Petersburg, with gasoline prices starting to rise and local suppliers saying that stocks are going down. The same combination in fact sent fuel prices rocketing twice in April and May 1999, and it was too much of a shock for anyone to have forgotten it. |
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AMERICAN presidents (and presidential candidates) come with families. Beaming wives and well-scrubbed children are a feature of every campaign. Laura Bush spoke up for her husband at the Republican convention, and Tipper Gore got a famous kiss from hers. |
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As it emerged this week that the government, acting - as many suspect - through the agency of Gazprom, was plotting to take over Vladimir Gusinsky's media empire, Gusinsky himself claimed that an agreement handing over control of his Media-MOST holding amounted to little more than blackmail. Meanwhile, a professional hitman was sending a message to a leading local crime-fighter, while the country's minister in charge of law and order was in town berating the police for their abysmal record. |
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 The hilarious, knockabout "Shanghai Noon," Jackie Chan's best American picture to date, breathes fresh life into the virtually dormant comedy-western. It also marks the relaxed and confident directorial debut of Tom Dey, working from a consistently funny, inventive and perceptive script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, whose previous major screen credit was "Lethal Weapon 4." To top off all these pluses, Chan has a sensational sidekick in Owen Wilson and a beautiful and intrepid leading lady in Lucy Liu. |
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 She entered the Bolshoi Drama Theater in 1931, and is preparing to mark a venerable 70 years on stage next year. Yes, Maria Prizvan-Sokolova, born in 1909, is still acting, with her most recent performance being Voinitskaya in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" on Sept. |
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While St. Petersburg can claim to have museums devoted to a bewildering array of topics, there is no museum devoted to Judaism as such. But the center "Petersburg Judaism," which was opened this year, plans to recreate the Jewish Museum that existed in the city from 1916 to 1928, and also to research Jewish architecture memorials. |
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Far from St. Petersburg, in the Nether lands, rests a microcosm of Russian history in the form of a small house where Peter the Great once lived. This humble dwelling is located in the town of Zaandam, which is about 20 minutes by commuter train from Amsterdam. |
 When local Afro-rock band Markscheider Kunst plays at Moloko, it's advisable to stay away from the event - otherwise you risk finding yourself sweating in a stuffy basement crammed with 400 or so fans, or even having to hang around outside. The danceable band's only link to the dark continent is the Congolese singer known as Seraphim, who has been adding hot African rhythms to the lukewarm St. |
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Stary Nevsky - the part of Nevsky Prospect that stretches from Ploshchad Vosstaniya to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery - is not exactly the best place to go walking at a late hour. |
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Bryan Ferry's St. Petersburg concert is approaching, and it was confirmed Thursday that everything is going ahead, so the 28-strong entourage will land on St. Petersburg on Monday as scheduled to prepare for Ferry's first concert in Russia. Backed by his 13-member band of jazz and classical musicians, including one harp player, he will sing songs from his entire career, which started in 1972 with Roxy Music. |
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LONDON - A "small missile" was fired at the headquarters of the MI6 foreign intelligence service in central London Wednesday night, a high-profile symbol of the establishment and one of Britain's most secure buildings. Police at the scene of the explosion said early Thursday it had hit the upper part of the building but caused little damage. |
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SYDNEY - Andreea Raducan led a Romanian sweep of the medals in the Olympic gymnastics women's all-round competition on Thursday, but they were made to wait for their victory after some gymnasts were allowed to repeat vaults because of faulty apparatus settings. |
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SYDNEY - The U.S. women's basketball team outlasted arch rival Russia 88-77 on Wednesday in a preliminary round Group B match in what was widely seen as a preview of the gold-medal game. Russia, and its predecessor the Soviet Union, is the only team to have beaten the Americans in Olympic play, doing it twice in 1976 and once in 1992. |
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LONDON - Lazio and Rangers asserted their authority in the Champions League on Wednesday, but Arsenal was given the fright of their lives by 300-1 outsiders Shakhtar Donetsk. |
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Iran Cuts Sentences n TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - An appeals court has reduced the sentences against 10 Iranian Jews found guilty of spying for Israel, the judiciary announced Thursday, casting aside two of the three charges on which they were convicted in a trial that won international condemnation. The court reduced their prison terms from a range of four to 13 years to terms of two to nine years, provincial judiciary chief Hossein Ali Amiri said. He said that the time they already served would be included in the sentences. The case attracted international attention, with jurists questioning whether the trial could be fair when there was no jury and the judge also acted as prosecutor. |
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 NEW YORK - The Patrick Ewing era in New York came to an end Wednesday night as the longtime Knicks star center was traded to Seattle as the centerpiece of a 12-player deal involving four NBA teams. |
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BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - More than 150,000 people turned out to cheer the man seeking to replace Slobodan Milosevic in Sunday's elections, leaving the Yugoslav president to fire verbal volleys at him from a suburban sports stadium. Vojislav Kostunica, already leading in opinion polls, took the initiative from Milosevic on Wednesday evening when he drew 10 times as many people to a pre-election rally in downtown Belgrade as turned up at the president's indoor meeting. |
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