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 The Legislative Assembly passed the St. Petersburg budget for 2001 this week, having rerouted money from a variety of sources to beef up their personal discretionary funds. But a loophole in local legislation will allow City Hall to send that money back where it wants it - mostly to finance road construction and Smolny's small-business programs. |
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THE St. Petersburg budget is more than 10 times the Murmansk city budget, but is dwarfed by the 179.4 billion rubles Moscow will spend in 2001 - not to mention its projected surplus of 27. |
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Around St. Petersburg, city residents have been staring at the sky and asking, "What's wrong with the weather?" With the exception of a two-day cold snap two weeks ago, St. Petersburg has been enveloped in comparative warmth and has been drenched with rain. |
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MOSCOW - A Russian naval officer dismissed as "utter nonsense" on Thursday suggestions that a Russian warship sunk off the Korean coast in the early 20th century might have been carrying a large shipment of gold. |
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U.S. businessman Edmond Pope appealed to President Vladimir Putin to free him Thursday, a day after a court found him guilty of stealing defense secrets and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Anatoly Pristavkin, head of the presidential commission on pardons, said the advisory body supported the release of the 54-year-old former U. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW - A Russian emigre living in Switzerland returned home to pick up one of his country's most coveted literary prizes at a lavish ceremony on Tuesday with a novel so complex it makes Dostoevsky look like light reading. The Smirnoff-Booker award for the best novel of the year in Russian, worth $12,500 to the winner, went to Mikhail Shishkin for "The Taking of Izmail" - an original work of intense prose with a highly complicated structure. |
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It looks almost certain that the Duma will reintroduce the Soviet-era anthem and tsarist-era coat-of-arms as Russia's state symbols. Galina Stolyarova took to the streets to find out people's reactions to these impending changes. |
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MOSCOW - Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin made his first public criticism of successor Vladimir Putin in an interview published on Thursday, for backing the re-introduction of the Soviet-era national anthem. Yeltsin selected Putin, a former intelligence officer, as his favored successor in August 1999 and handed power to him when he resigned last New Year's Eve. |
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VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - Mos cow dispatched a 50-strong task force headed by a government minister to Russia's Pacific coast region on Wednesday to find out why 90,000 people have been without heat in their apartments for weeks. |
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Mad Cow Worries MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has banned live cattle imports from the Netherlands and restricted beef imports from Portugal, Switzerland and Ireland over fears about the spread of mad cow disease. "We have imposed some restrictions on Portuguese, Swiss and Irish beef, the loading of which can now only be made under supervision of our veterinarians," First Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergei Dankvert told reporters this week. |
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NEW YORK -The World Jewish Congress said this week it had asked Interpol not to arrest Russian media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, charging that the Kremlin was pursuing him on political - not criminal - grounds. |
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MOSCOW - Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and local media have pounced on statements made this week by a Norwegian admiral, calling them proof that the Kursk submarine sank because of a collision with a foreign submarine. But in his statements to Norwegian television, Admiral Einar Skorgen never said there was evidence of a crash - only evidence that the Russian military had thought that to be the cause of the disaster. |
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MOSCOW - The elderly women doing calisthenics in a community center in central Moscow on Tuesday certainly didn't look like subversives. But the Moscow City Court has ruled that the organization that brings the lonely pensioners together each afternoon for lunch and activities - the venerable Salvation Army - is plotting the overthrow of the government. |
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MOSCOW - An investigator who led a tax raid on ORT television offices this week was forced to resign Wednesday for using force during the search, Interfax reported. Senior investigator Georgy Tsabia, who worked in a unit of the Prosecutor General's Office, swooped down on ORT with a group of masked agents wearing bulletproof vests on Tuesday morning. |
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Eager to be ready for an increase in international flights, St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport is planning a $60 million reconstruction of its international terminal, Pulkovo 2, officials said. St. Petersburg Gov. Vladimir Yakov lev on Nov. 30 signed a resolution under which the city-owned airport company will design and carry out the reconstruction from its own financial resources, Prime-Tass reported on Monday. |
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MOSCOW - The government is rushing to create a special investment vehicle to sell a stake in oil major LUKoil to get around a State Duma restriction on the sale of stakes in large state enterprises. |
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Don't expect any surprises when the government unveils its program to restructure the national electricity holding next week, said Anatoly Chubais, head of Unified Energy Systems. On Dec. 14, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and the administration are set to decide on a strategy to transform the nation's power generation and distribution. It is unclear whether the program will come in the form of a decree or a presidential resolution. Two measures are to be passed: The first will outline the basic philosophy and guidelines for the reorganization and the second will describe the steps to be taken at the first stage of the three-stage process. |
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 Have you ever wished for your own gangly giraffe or sleek jaguar that you could feed and, perhaps, pet? For 1,000 rubles ($35.76) to 300,000 rubles a year you can. |
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MOSCOW - The Central Bank has introduced a new set of accounts for foreign companies and individuals, both making the rules clear and tightening the screws in the foreign exchange market. "The new regulation strengthens control over transactions with nonresidents," said Mikhail Bukhtin, director with Unikon audit and consulting company. |
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Out there in the world of Internet chat rooms in cyberspace, there are conversations taking place that are so real you'd swear they were being conducted between, well, two people. |
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MOSCOW - The state-owned stakes in natural gas monopoly Gazprom and national power grid Unified Energy Systems will not be used to settle some of Russia's $43 billion Soviet-era debts to the Paris Club of sovereign creditors, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said. At a meeting in Berlin last week, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroe der broached the proposal of a debt-for-equity swap. |
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Putin Marches To the Beat of Soviet Anthem PRESIDENT Putin gave his approval to the adoption of the former Soviet Union's national anthem - a symbol of that totalitarian state - on the eve of the anniversary of the 1936 Stalinist Constitution. This may be just a coincidence, but everything else about the story is not. |
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Summit To Determine Future of Entire Union THE 15 governments of the European Union this week begin a summit meeting that could shape relations for years to come with both the nations of Central and Eastern Europe and with the United States. |
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The conviction and sentencing of Edmond Pope was given remarkably little coverage in the Russian press this week - but the papers that have reported on the case have offered a variety of views on why, how and what comes next in the spy scandal of the decade. |
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Pope Verdict Caps a Real Show Trial MORE than eight months after his arrest and following a seven-week, closed-door trial, American businessman Edmond Pope has been convicted of espionage and given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. |
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THERE are many ways to hijack an election, and Central Asia's wannabe dynasts have learned them all. In recent weeks, Azerbaijan's Heydar Aliyev and Kyrgyzstan's Askar Akayev turned their presidential polls into national charades simply, it would seem, to retain office. By treating elections like war and voters like spoils, both presidents are helping to turn Central Asia into a front line of dictators rather than democrats. |
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As a native of the only other state that starts with a "T," I considered myself highly qualified to mosey on down and take a gander at the new "Rodeo Bar and Casino," which dubs itself a "Texas Saloon in the center of St. Petersburg" with all the wonders of the "Wild West" - "hot prairies, excellent whisky, aromatic cigars" - conveniently located on Kanal Griboyedova across from the very-Russian onion domes of the Church on the Spilled Blood. |
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After various management changes and shifts in direction, the club Manhattan still remains a popular hangout. Known as an art club that was originally intended for St. |
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Motorhead's one-off local concert bombed last week, as an estimated 2,000 fans appeared - instead of the expected 10,000 or 12,000. This flop of a show, described as "boring" by one viewer, seems not to have discouraged the Moscow-based promoters, TCI, which bring all kinds of heavier Western rock acts to Russia - from Nazareth to Biohazard. Here they are again - with the Brazilian heavy metal outfit Soulfly which ends the European leg of their "Primitive" tour in this country. The band was formed by Sepultura frontman Max (Massimiliano) Cavalera after he quit his band in 1996. Cavalera describes his new sound as a fusion of metal and Brazilian sounds, and sees it as a new musical trend that will popularize a genre dubbed "world metal. |
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 Babslei's demo CD cover shows a sandal-clad woman's foot pressing a tom-tom pedal. The design seems to stand for the high-energy folk punk which the six-member all-women band plays, while the leg belongs to drummer Katya Fyodorova who formed Babslei in 1998. |
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RENOWNED tenor Vladimir Galuzin is making a brief comeback for a single concert at the Mariinsky theater on Dec. 18. Discovered by maestro Va lery Gergiev and once a soloist of the No vosibirsk Operetta Theater, Galuzin joined the Mariinsky opera company in 1990 and now frequents the world's most acclaimed venues. |
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The Maly Theater has chosen to bring Brian Friel to the Russian stage using his most recent and least typical play, Molly Sweeny. Indeed, while Ballybeg (the setting of all of Friel's plays since 1965) is mentioned, Molly Sweeny takes place in Donegal and eschews the political undertone which has long characterized his work. |
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SANTIAGO - Three judges of a Chilean court opened an appeal hearing on Thursday on a bid to block an order to place Augusto Pino chet under house arrest on charges of kidnap and murder during his 1973-1990 rule. Court sources said the judges of a Santiago appeals court threw out a bid on Wednesday by human rights lawyers to postpone the hearing and gave them and Pinochet's lawyers time frames for allegations in an effort to reach a ruling. |
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SEOUL - South Korea wants the United States to apologize and give compensation to relatives and survivors of the killings at No Gun Ri village during the early days of the 1950-53 Korean War, Korean officials said on Thursday. |
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Cole Bombing Trial SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen has sent to prosecutors the case of the apparent suicide bombing of a U.S. destroyer in Aden and plans to put on trial six suspects next month, government officials said on Thursday. They said the six suspects included some civil servants who had allegedly provided other suspects with forged documents. |
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TALLAHASSEE, Florida - Democrat Al Gore's top attorney argued before Florida's Supreme Court Thursday that thousands of excluded Florida votes must be counted to determine the true winner of the U. |
 LONDON - Manchester United and AC Milan clinched away victories in the Champions League on Wednesday to leave Europe's richest and most glamorous clubs all well-placed to reach the quarter-finals. A first-half goal from Paul Scholes, set up by a clever flick from fellow England international Teddy Sheringham, helped twice-winners United to a 2-0 defeat of Sturm Graz in Group A in the last games before the competition's two-month winter break. |
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OAKLAND, California - For the second straight game, forward Antawn Jamison scored 51 points, eight of them in overtime, as the Golden State Warriors overcame a career-best 51 points by Kobe Bryant for a 125-122 National Basketball Association victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. |
 ATLANTA - Sami Kapanen scored twice as the Carolina Hurricanes vaulted to the top of the Southeast Division with a 5-3 National Hockey League victory over the Atlanta Thrashers. Carolina, which has won all six meetings with Atlanta, is 6-2-0-1 in its last nine games and one point in front of Washington for first place in the Southeast. |
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Dodgers Sign Ashby LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Free agent righthander Andy Ashby landed with his fourth team in less than two years by agreeing to a three-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers Wednesday. |
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