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Editor's note: This is the first article in a two-part series examining Russia's nuclear industry and its plans for the future. By Charles Digges and Barnaby Thompson STAFF WRITERS Plans by the Russian government to import and reprocess spent nuclear fuel have caused something of a stir in recent months. As the Nuclear Power Ministry claims potential revenues of billions of dollars, its critics have loudly voiced their concerns on safety issues, financial viability and nuclear accidents in the past. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia are set to implement another billion-dollar agreement to develop special fuel using weapons-grade plutonium and burn it in existing nuclear reactors. |
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 Following the arrest of four employees of Mikhail Mirilashvili, a prominent Russian-Israeli businessman and vice president of the Russian Jewish Congress, around 300 demonstrators gathered Monday outside the City Prosecutor's Office to protest against what they called "illegal actions" on the part of prosecutors. |
 St. Petersburg is facing a critical shortage of blood and plasma in its medical reserves, which are running at 40 percent usual capacity and are rapidly depleting, City Health Committee head Anatoly Kagan told lawmakers last week. To increase the flow of donations, Kagan appealed to lawmakers to consider a 129-million-ruble ($4. |
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SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine - The Ukrainian coastguard found 14 corpses and 32 survivors marooned for two days in lifeboats and rafts in the Black Sea after a storm engulfed a small ferry, officials said on Monday. |
All photos from issue.
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 After more than a year of near silence on its investigation into the assassination of lawmaker Viktor Novosyolov, the Prosecutor's Office has said it is ready to take the case to court, Interfax reported. According to an anonymous Prosecutor's Office official quoted by Interfax, prosecutors are ready to charge four men in connection with the October 1999 slaying of Novosyolov "in the near future. |
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MOSCOW - The general director of Russia's independent NTV said on Monday that President Vla di mir Putin favored Western investment to keep the embattled station in operation in its present form, Russian news agencies reported. |
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Platimum Theft ST. PETERSBURG (AP) - Four thieves broke into the Vavilov Optical Research Institute early Monday morning and made off with 18 platinum molds worth 104 million rubles ($4.9 million), police said Monday. According to police press spokesman Alexander Rostovtsev, four men entered the institute shortly before 3 a. |
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MOSCOW - After more than a year in the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin paid his first visit to the Foreign Ministry and criticized diplomats for what he said was a lack of foresight and their failure to defend Russia's economic interests abroad. |
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OTTAWA - Canada said on Sunday it had asked Russia to waive the immunity of two diplomats involved in Ottawa traffic accidents, one of which killed a pedestrian, and both allegedly caused by drunken driving. Foreign Minister John Manley told reporters the Canadian government officially expressed concern about the weekend incidents, but could do little if Moscow refused to waive the diplomats' immunity. |
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MOSCOW - Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who quit suddenly on New Year's Eve in 1999, has kept himself busy since leaving office - so much so, he says, that he "almost didn't notice" the passing of 2000. |
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Why Did the Prosecutors Finally Choose To Arrest? AS you will by now be aware, the highly influential and extremely rich St. Petersburg businessman Mikhail Mirilashvili was arrested last week by the City Prosecutor's Office, on charges of kidnapping two people. |
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Some Welcome Tax Proposals RUSSIAN law requires that, for new taxes to become effective, they must be passed the year before they go into effect and be published at least one month before the beginning of the new tax year. |
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Japan's Numbers Better TOKYO (AP) - Industrial production in Japan rose a greater-than-expected 1.5 percent in December from the previous month, according to preliminary data released by the government on Monday. The increase in output reversed a month-on-month decline of 0. |
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MOSCOW - Oil giant British Petroleum announced Monday that it will sell its equity stake of 7 percent stake in LUKoil, Russia's No. 1 oil company, but said that the decision did not mean it was pulling back from its other investments in Russia. |
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BRUSSELS - The European Union's huge agriculture budget could be strained to its breaking point by the mad cow disease crisis as consumers turn their back on beef, the EU's farm policy chief said on Monday. Franz Fischler told EU farm ministers, meeting to debate new emergency public-protection measures designed to shore up confidence in the beef market, that the position was worse than thought. |
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NEW YORK - Telephone and cable- television giant AT&T Corp. on Monday announced losses of $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter due to falling prices in the long-distance telephone market and one-time charges, and said profit margins in its consumer and business units would fall in 2001. |
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DAVOS, Switzerland - Russia will fully service its $38.7 billion Soviet-era debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations and will try to make missed payments soon, Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin said Friday. Kudrin also said after talks with IMF First Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer that the Fund's forecasts for the world economy and Russia were better than Moscow had expected and this would be worked into Russia's own plans. |
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MOSCOW - A revised Customs Code designed to meet World Trade Organization requirements and reflect the needs of the economy is almost ready to go to lawmakers, Mikhail Vanin, head of the State Customs Committee, said Friday. |
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MOSCOW - PricewaterhouseCoopers unveiled an opacity index at the Davos summit Thursday that places Russia next to last in a group of 35 countries measured for the transparency of their economies. Russia gauged 84 on a scale of 150, while China fell in last with a score of 87. |
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Russian Minister of Energy and Fuel Alexander Gavrin arrived in Baghdad on Monday leading a delegation on an official visit to Iraq, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. |
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MOSCOW - Gas giant Gazprom handed out hundreds of millions of dollars in interest-free loans from 1999 to 2000 while borrowing more than $1 billion with interest rates of 10 percent to 15 percent, the Audit Chamber found in a scathing report. The 75-page report - the result of a five-month investigation that was released Friday - also found that state-controlled Gazprom's debt to the federal budget soared while its output fell sharply last year. |
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MOSCOW - While the majority of analysts have written off the possibility of Russia receiving foreign loans this year, the World Bank apparently has not. |
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AMONG the tank barriers that mark the Gerzel checkpoint between Dagestan and tormented Chechnya, a ritual is repeated with oppressive regularity. In one particular instance, a black Jeep Grand Cherokee inched its way into the no-man's land area from the Chechen side, and was met midway by a white Volga from Dagestan. |
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How China and Russia Are Reacting to NMD WHILE the U.S. State Department warned Americans about traveling to the World Economic Forum in dangerous Davos, intrepid opinion-mongers trekked into the Alps to learn how Chinese and Russian leaders react to Bush administration plans for missile defense. |
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Could Stalin Win in Chechnya? LAST week President Vladimir Putin announced a radical overhaul of the "counter-terrorist operation" in Chechnya. According to the plan, Russian army units will be partially pulled out of Chechnya while overall command will be taken over by the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor organization to the Soviet KGB. |
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So Much for Taking on The Regions "Respected citizens, you know better than I do that government laxity hits millions of ordinary people hardest. The price we pay for lack of discipline is our personal security, the inviolability of our property and homes, and, finally, our prosperity and our children's prosperity. |
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Kremlin Prefers Payments Made Under the Table THE Prosecutor General's Office - the main state body overseeing the rule of law in Russia - has distributed a list of journalists who received loans from Media-MOST. This list has been widely circulated around Moscow and is currently being studied by top Kremlin officials. |
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NINE years ago Western economic advisors were certain that their plans for Russia's rapid transition to the market would bring prosperity and progress. |
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 In Russia, it's hard to predict what will happen next week, let alone next year. For those cursed to live in interesting times, the stars are as good a place to turn as any to find out what the future holds. Astrologer Pavel Globa - the rector of Moscow's Institute of Astrology and former television prognosticator - has turned the country's doubt and uncertainty into his own personal good fortune, becoming one of the country's best-known experts on the fate of a land. |
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SANTIAGO, Chile - A Chilean judge on Monday reordered the arrest of ex-strongman Augusto Pinochet on charges of his alleged involvement in the murder and kidnap of leftists during his 1973-1990 dictatorship, brushing aside a bid to stop any trial of the aged general on health grounds. |
 BHUJ, India - Rescuers picking through the rubble of India's worst earthquake found a small boy trapped alive Monday, but three days after the quake many towns and villages struggled to cope without help from the outside. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee arrived in the ancient town of Bhuj in Gujarat state, western India, which bore the brunt of Friday's quake, and complained that villages in the region were not getting necessary help fast enough. |
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Sharon Leads Polls JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A new opinion poll on Monday put Ariel Sharon firmly on course to become Israel's next prime minister after peace contacts with the Palestinians were put on hold and violence flared in the Gaza Strip. |
 TROUBLE SHOOTER In the on-going battle of wills between St. Petersburg's foreign residents and some of the city's most sacred institutions over so-called "foreigner prices," it can safely be said that the latter still have the upper hand, despite a constitutional ban on discrimination. |
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The weekend marked the lifting of the Nazi blockade of Leningrad, which came to an end 57 years ago on Saturday. Despite the city coming out victorious, over the course of the 900-day siege more than half a million people died of starvation, illness and from bombing raids. |
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Zagorodny Prospect is well known as one of the best shopping streets for electronics in town, where a dozen or so technology stores compete, keeping prices relatively low. |
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ONE IN 4.7 MILLION This is the first of a revolving column in which different authors describe their experiences of living in St. Petersburg. Being greeted with a shy "privyet" might not be a particular joy for most people, but working with some of the most deprived children in the city makes any small gesture of trust very significant. |
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VOX POPULI Do the city's residents consider St. Petersburg to be the cultural capital of Russia? Irina Titova took to the streets to find out. Photos by Segey Grachev. |
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Snow is forecast again this week. Before winter passes us by completely, have a go at cross-country skiing at Kavgolovo. From the Finland Station take the elektrichka to Kavgolovo - any train with the final destination of Priozersk, Sosnovo or Kuznechnoye will get you there (trains every 30 min. |
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LONDON - West Ham striker Paolo Di Canio outwitted the Manchester United defense with a memorable 75th-minute goal to send the favorites crashing out of the English FA Cup. |
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Rockies Sign Walker DENVER (AP) - Second baseman Todd Walker, who had filed for salary arbitration, has agreed to a three-year, $6.55 million deal with the Colorado Rockies. The contract was to have been announced Friday, but the team delayed it because Walker was undergoing corrective eye surgery. |
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