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 Driving a taxi is one of St. Petersburg's most dangerous professions, where each new fare offers a possible - often unwanted - glance into the city's grim and sordid underbelly, where many a driver has felt the steel of a knife at his neck during robbery or picked up a half-naked girl fleeing a rape. |
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MOSCOW - With Pavel Borodin sitting in a New York jail, the question being asked is was the former Kremlin property chief foolhardy - or was he just fooled? Borodin was arrested on a Swiss warrant when he arrived on Wednesday at John F. |
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MOSCOW - A consortium of foreign investors led by CNN founder Ted Turner is ready to pay at least $300 million for stakes in NTV television and its sister media - provided Turner gets assurances from President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin will not interfere in NTV's reporting or operations. NTV is in debt to state-owned Gazprom to the tune of almost $300 million, and its journalists claim the Kremlin is using that debt to squeeze the station's independence. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - Publishers for former MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson said Monday that they had released his inside story of Britain's spy service - but finding the publishers, the spy or the book was a task worthy of any James Bond. Publishers Narodny Variant said a formal launch press conference planned for Monday and which Tomlinson was to have attended had been postponed for security reasons. |
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MOSCOW - Russia has handed over documents declaring that Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg died a victim of Stalin's terror, but Sweden is still refusing to close the case and declare him legally dead. |
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Blast in City Center ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A bomb exploded on Sunday afternoon in an apartment block on Ul. Rubinshteina in the city's Central district, Interfax reported. There were no casualties. According to the report, the bomb - which police say contained 300 to 400 grams of explosives - blew up at 4:25 p. |
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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Pu tin backed away on Monday from a pledge to amend criminal code procedures to limit arbitrary arrests by prosecutors, changes Russian liberals see as a key to upholding democracy. |
 MOSCOW - Prominent politicians and former dissidents joined more than 1,000 activists in Moscow this weekend to declare a national emergency for human rights and urge a consolidated fight to protect the Constitution. Human rights campaigners from 65 regions representing more than 300 organizations attended the two-day Emergency Congress in Defense of Human Rights. Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky and Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov were among the speakers. |
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 For nearly 20 years, Natalya Mik hai lova and Olga Savinova and their families have lived in a small dormitory at the Artistic Restoration College, where they have both taught English for almost all of that time. |
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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has ordered ministers to end the heating and power cuts that have made life a misery in vast regions hit by bitter cold. "Who is responsible for the situation in the eastern regions of the country? We talk a lot about needed structural changes in the government and its departments and we set up new structures, but nobody is taking specific, personal responsibility for the current situation," Putin said Friday. |
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Mad Cow Costs BRUSSELS (AP) - The European Union estimated on Monday that dealing with the mad cow crisis across Europe would cost the EU about $1 billion, possibly putting other agricultural programs at risk. The EU's executive office said that the costs of carrying out mandated BSE tests on cattle over 30 months could cut deeply into the EU's agricultural budget for this year. |
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NEW YORK - A year after commercials by Internet companies dominated the airwaves at America's most-watched sporting event, the dot-coms have been punted out of the Super Bowl. |
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FRANKFURT - German automaker DaimlerChrysler AG's plan to revive its loss-making Chrysler unit could involve cutting 20,000 jobs and closing six plants, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Citing people familiar with the company's thinking, the WSJ Europe reported that over time as many as 6,000 of 30,000 white-collar jobs would probably disappear, along with as many as 15,000 of Chrysler's 95,000 manufacturing workers. |
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TOKYO - Data released on Monday showed growth in Japan grinding to a halt in the fourth quarter and the country's central bank said the risk of more setbacks had grown. |
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AT least according to the papers I've read, astrologers are predicting a good year in 2001 "relative to last year." Considering that most analysts think that last year wasn't so bad, 2001 should be spectacular. Economists, though, are less optimistic. |
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Russia's largest brewery, St. Petersburg-based Baltika, is launching a new brand of nonalcoholic beer called Baltika No. 0 that will join its lineup of other brews, which include Baltika Nos. |
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MOSCOW - Oil major Yukos is beginning to pay an interim dividend for the year 2000, distributing some $100 million to its shareholders declared in October last year, the company said in a statement Monday. Until recently, the nation's No. 2 oil firm dividend history was nothing to write home about. |
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MOSCOW - The government is drawing up a plan to merge the military aviation powerhouses Sukhoi and MiG in a holding, as part of a wide-scale program to streamline the country's bloated defense industry. |
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MOSCOW - In a move that apparently ends a long-running feud between oil majors Sidanko and Tyumen Oil Co., Chernogorneft has dropped a lawsuit to have those assets returned and the sale annulled, Tyumen Oil, or TNK, said in a statement Friday. "Now, basically, there are no serious differences to be settled, especially with Sidanko's foreign shareholders," said Mikhail Fridman, chairman of the supervisory board of directors of Alfa Group, which effectively controls TNK in alliance with the Access/Renova group. |
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MOSCOW - Russia is about to bring North America and Southeast Asia closer together - and it could earn over a quarter of a billion dollars over the next decade doing so. |
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MOSCOW - Gas monopoly Gazprom said Monday it is planning to dip its toes in international capital markets for the first time in three years with a $500 million bond issue. Gazprom spokesman Vladimir Sos kov confirmed a Monday report in The Times of London that a proposal is being drawn up, but declined to give details. |
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Food Producers Faced With New Rules for Registration RUSSIAN Federation Law No. 29-FZ "On the Safety and Quality of Food" of Jan. 2, 2000, stipulates that food and food-related materials and products which are used for the production, packaging and use of food, as well as perfume and cosmetics, means and products for mouth care, and tobacco products, which are produced for the first time in Russia, are subject to state registration. |
 MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has given the government three weeks to patch up differences with the Paris Club of creditors, an order that is sending ministers scrambling to find the $1.6 billion needed to pay a first-quarter debt they had hoped partially to skip. "Russia never refused, and is not refusing, to fulfill its financial obligations to creditors," Putin said Friday at a meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and other top government, Central Bank and Kremlin administration officials. |
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 ANKARA, Turkey - It was built to be a jewel in the crown of the mighty Soviet navy, though they never got around to installing the engine. Now the 300-meter aircraft carrier Varyag, sold into ignominy to be used in China as a giant floating casino, languishes in the mists of the Black Sea. |
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Water Sports Hollywood's earnest seekers of spirituality - other people's spirituality, but still - were sadly disappointed last week when they were prevented from setting up luxury tents on the banks of the Ganges to watch millions of Hindu pilgrims purge their sins in the holy river. |
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Government Needs Checks And Balances THE defective nature of Russia's system of governance was evident last week during the public scandal between Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's chief economic adviser, and the government of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. |
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Rhetoric Is a Bad Defense Of Rights LAST weekend, more than 1,000 political figures and civic activists gathered for a two-day Emergency Congress in Defense of Human Rights. Sponsored by the Yabloko political faction and a number of other groups, the congress was convened to draw attention to a number of serious human-rights issues that have emerged over the last year or so. |
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THE Putin administration ought to be careful about how it carries out its latest initiative to help the media. Last week Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin announced an impending expansion of tax deductions that businesses can take for advertising expenses. |
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Spill Threatens Island QUITO, Ecuador (NYT) - Officials and volunteers for the Galapagos Biological Marine Reserve raced against the clock and nature today to try to keep an oil spill of an estimated 550,000 liters from turning into an environmental disaster. |
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WASHINGTON - Outgoing U.S. President Bill Clinton kept busy on his last two days in office, cutting a deal on on Friday to escape criminal indictment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, then pardoning Whitewater figure Susan McDougal and one-time revolutionary and kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst Shaw on Saturday. |
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WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush threw open the White House to the public on Sunday, saying he had slept "pretty well" on his first night and looked forward to getting to work on his top priority of education reform. Bush and his wife, Laura, greeted dozens of citizens from around the country and accompanied some of them on a tour of the 132-room mansion. The newly inaugurated president said he had not done much work on Sunday but was eager to get going. He said his $47.6 billion education plan to hold failing schools accountable, give local officials more control and teach all children to read by the third grade was at the top of his list. |
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 LOS ANGELES - The Miami Heat neutralized Shaquille O'Neal and pounded the boards to beat the Los Angeles Lakers 103-92 on Sunday. Heat coach Pat Riley had his players repeatedly double-team O'Neal and take their chances with Kobe Bryant's perimeter game. |
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ANAHEIM, California - Alex Tanguay scored one goal and set up another in a four-goal first period, and Joe Sakic picked up his 700th career assist in the outburst as the Colorado Avalanche defeated the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, 4-2, Sunday. The Avalanche extended their unbeaten streak to seven games (6-0-1-0) and have at least a point in each of their last 13 (9-0-3-1). |
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Buck Raises Cash ST. LOUIS (AP) - St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck has raised $1 million for a local organization that benefits families of slain police officers, firefighters and paramedics. |
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LONDON - Manchester United surged 13 points clear at the top of the English premier league but Serie A leaders AS Roma slipped to a 3-2 defeat at AC Milan. Real Madrid was confirmed as winter champion at the halfway stage of the Spanish first-division season while league champion Monaco was the victim of an upset in the French Cup. |
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Issues Archive