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UN Opens Center To Help Petersburg's Refugees
 A new center set up by the United Nations and the Red Cross may help relieve the suffering of hundreds of refugees who have fled their homes - but found ... |
West Bank Violence at Boiling Point
 JERUSALEM - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan landed in Israel on Monday to try to avert the danger of all-out war as an Israeli deadline for Palestinians ... |
Law of the Land Is Laid Out By Duma
MOSCOW - Remember to grab your passport when you don a robe and slippers to take out the garbage in the morning. If you forget, the police may soon be able to fine you 80 rubles. Driving over the middle divider of the road could lead to a fine from the traffic police of 240 to 400 rubles. And the refusal of an HIV-positive individual to divulge the identity of the person who infected him could cost 400 to 800 rubles. So reads the new Administrative Code that passed 366-1 with two abstentions in a final reading by the State Duma on Thursday. The 500-page document, which now goes to the Federation Council and then ... |
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Putin Promises Kostunica Support
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin sent a message of congratulation to new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica on Monday and said he would push for a full lifting of sanctions against Belgrade. Putin said in the message released by the Kremlin that ... |
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IN BRIEF
Bolshoi Director Fired MOSCOW (AP) - The artistic director for the Bolshoi Theater's legendary ballet company has been fired, continuing a shakeup of ... |
Siberian Man Joins List of World's Moronic Deaths
Whatever happens when you die? According to Shakespeare, you "lie in cold obstruction and ... rot." According to priests, it all depends on how you live. But ... |
Lottery Proposed To Help Nation's Athletes
MOSCOW - A day before Russia's victorious Olympic athletes attend a reception at the Kremlin, the president of the country's Olympics committee called ... |
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Oceanographer Claims Interference by Security Services Ruined Research
VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - A scientist accused of illegally exporting acoustic equipment to China denied the charges against him Friday and said the investigation had halted important research. The Federal Security Service charged oceanographer Vladimir Shchu rov on Tuesday with illegally exporting two pieces of equipment he had designed to pick up ocean noises. The FSB claims the equipment could be used for military purposes such as detecting submarines. But Shchurov denied that, saying the equipment, which he designed in 1992, was harmless. "I don't make weapons," he said. "It's ridiculous to say that the results of my work could be used for something like that." The FSB seized Shchurov's equipment last year on the Chinese border as it was being transported to the Harbin Engineering ... |
Babitsky Gets Fine In 'Political' Ruling
MOSCOW - A Dagestani court Friday convicted Radio Liberty journalist Andrei Babitsky of having a false passport, in what both he and his lawyers described as a politically motivated case. Judge Igor Goncharov ruled that Babitsky, who was arrested by federal troops in Chechnya early this year and spent several weeks in captivity, should pay a fine of 10,000 rubles (about $350) for using the passport to register at a hotel in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, soon after he was freed. However, this crime falls under a recently introduced amnesty and Babitsky won't have to pay the fine, Gon cha rov said in his verdict. Babitsky, who maintains his innocence, told reporters in the court in Makhachkala that he will appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court of Dagestan. Babitsky has ... |
Lithuania Vote Forces Coalition Talk
 VILNIUS, Lithuania - A left-wing coalition led by a former communist leader won the most votes in Lithuanian parliamentary elections, but fell short of ... |
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Apartment Slaying Claims Lives of 3
Two adults and a child were killed Thursday in a central city apartment, when, according to police reports, a woman and her daughter were shot by their ... |
Yakovlev Vetoes Legislative Assembly Law on Small Claims Court
Gov. Vladimir Yakovlev last week rejected a law put forward by the Legislative Assembly that would have created justices of the peace for small court claims, ... |
Navigators Call Off Strike After Meeting
Maritime pilots who threatened to begin striking on Monday canceled their action after meeting Transport Ministry officials, but said that the situation ... |
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State To Remain Force in Banking Sector
MOSCOW - The government will keep a presence in the banking industry as a temporary measure to share exorbitant risks with the private sector, but it will ... |
'External Factors' Cause Drop in the RTS Index
The stock market made a zig-zag on the week and the RTS index dropped 0.94 percent to 197.20 driven by external factors. "Hedge funds were shifting to ... |
Budget Squeaks Past But Trouble in Store
MOSCOW - The 2001 budget squeaked through the State Duma on first reading Friday amid outcries from some lawmakers that they were being pressured by the ... |
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Council Plots To Boost U.S. Deals
 MOSCOW - A newly created lobbying group of business heavyweights held its second general meeting Friday to hammer out a plan of action for promoting commerce ... |
Local Microsoft Office Faces Piracy Battle
In an attempt to attain a degree of control over the piracy-ridden Russian software market, software giant Microsoft is planning to open a representative office in St. Petersburg. Microsoft employees who are staffing the office in St. Petersburg said that they would comment officially on the situation only at the official opening of the office, which is planned for some time later this year. Microsoft representatives at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington, could not be contacted on Monday. However, Tatyana Valuiskaya, general director of local chain Computer ... |
Reiman Skirts Controversy To Talk Telecoms
 The Communications Ministry is embroiled in a conflict over radio frequencies. It is widely believed that the ministry wants to take the frequencies from ... |
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Ozone Hole Expands, Affects City In Chile
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica has stretched over a populated city for the first time after ballooning to a new ... |
Top Automakers Expect Losses
DETROIT - General Motors Corp. is expected to be the only traditional Big 3 Detroit automaker to report improved third-quarter earnings, even though the ... |
Beijing's WTO Bid Still Facing Obstacles
BEIJING - A Chinese trade official said on Monday that Beijing would press ahead with the process of joining the World Trade Organization, despite concerns ... |
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Japanese Insurance Giant Goes Bankrupt
 TOKYO - In the biggest failure of a Japanese life insurer to date, Japan's Chiyoda Mutual Life Insurance Co. said on Monday it had filed for court protection ... |
Reports: General Motors To Purchase Korean Automaker
DETROIT - General Motors Corp. and Fiat SpA reportedly are in talks to buy at least some of the assets of South Korea's second-largest automaker, Daewoo Motor Co., with an announcement on the matter expected Monday. GM, which had a 15-year alliance with Daewoo that ended in 1992, has long been interested in Daewoo as a way to expand further into Asia's auto markets, which are starting to recover from their slump during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. GM would not comment specifically on reports by The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal that it had reached agreement with Daewoo's creditors to begin negotiations for a potential purchase. Steve Harris, GM's vice president of communications, said: "We've had preliminary contact with the South Korean government, but beyond ... |
Ancient Treasures Saved From Reservoir
 BELKIS, Turkey - It was a race against time - and archeologists say they won. Water crept in 25 centimeters each day over the past three months, slowly ... |
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Scientists Give Planet Status To Low-Mass Brown Dwarfs
WASHINGTON - Scientists have always favored diversity and tolerance when it comes to defining a planet. Gassy monsters like Jupiter qualify, and so do icy little spit-wads like Pluto. Now a team of Spanish, American and German researchers is straining ... |
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George Bush and Al Gore: Not a Great Choice, Really
CERTAINLY it is true, as an editorialist for The Washington Post quite nicely put it, that last week's debate between the vice presidential candidates ... |
Lenin: A Model For Managers To Learn From
IN a recent interview with a top American manager, I heard mentioned the name of the hero of the workers of the world, Vladimir Lenin. "This is Lenin's ... |
Global Eye
Altered States Same-sex couples hankering for the sanctity of legal matrimony have found a most unlikely sanctuary these days: George W. Bush's born-again, ... |
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Polish Incumbent Is Re-elected
 WARSAW, Poland - President Aleksander Kwasniewski easily won a new five-year term in a vote that proved his popularity as a champion of average Poles struggling ... |
Candidates Deadlocked in Runup to Election
WASHINGTON - In less than a week, Republican George W. Bush has virtually eliminated Democrat Al Gore's lead and now the U.S. presidential race is deadlocked, according to the Reuters/ MSNBC poll released on Monday. The sampling of 1,208 likely voters by pollster John Zogby showed that with 29 days to go before the Nov. 7 election, Gore, the vice president, had support from 43 percent of the likely voters and Bush, the Texas governor, had 42 percent. Gore's advantage was within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. In the daily tracking survey conducted Friday through Sunday, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader continued ... |
Milosevic's Allies Step Down From Government
 BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - The government of Serbia, the largest republic of Yugoslavia and a bastion of power for former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, resigned ... |
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WORLD WATCH
U.S. Hosts Korean Visit SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - North Korea's second-most powerful official, Vice Marshal Jo Myong-rok, arrived in San Francisco on Sunday for a one-day stopover before heading to Washington where he will become the highest-ranking ... |
