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MOSCOW - Forget promoting an investor-friendly climate and a stable currency. The cheapest way to improve society and the economy just could be by making Russians more patriotic citizens. This is what a new five-year government program - which seeks to arouse feelings of pride in Russians for their country by increasing pro-Russia programming on television and selling patriotic souvenirs - states as its means of improving the general well-being of society at large. "Implementation of this program will help preserve public stability, restore the national economy and strengthen the defense capability of the country," states the text of the program, which was published in the official government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Monday. |
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 MOSCOW - Boris Yeltsin received a visit from his successor on Monday, and Russian television showed the first pictures of the former Russian president since a six-week hospital stay that sparked rumors that he was near death. |
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YANTARNY, Kaliningrad Region - On a remote spit of Russian land battered by Baltic wind and waves, dredgers trawl through a vast pit of ancient earth in search of enough amber to recreate one of Europe's most spectacular lost treasures. Yantarny is home to about 6,000 Russians whose lives revolve around an open-cast mine holding some 90 percent of the world's amber, the fossilized resin of prehistoric trees which has drawn people to this northeastern corner of Europe for thousands of years. When the king of Prussia commissioned a copy of his own amber room in 1716 to give to Russia's Peter the Great as a symbol of friendship between their lands, workers at Palmnicken, as Yantarny was called when part of Prussia, plowed through this earth for the amber to line its walls. |
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 MADRID, Spain - Russian media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky was behind bars again on Monday after a Spanish judge ordered him back to prison ahead of the start of extradition proceedings, a lawyer for Gusinsky said. |
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MOSCOW - A senior Russian arms control diplomat said on Monday that the West was deluding itself if it thought Moscow's European anti-missile defense proposal meant that Russia now envisaged a post-Cold War threat from so-called rogue rockets. Last month, Russia handed NATO a broadbrush anti-missile proposal on assessing potential threats, working out how to deal with them and only then deploying defence systems if necessary. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - A lack of cash has forced Russia to delay an operation to raise the sunken nuclear-powered submarine Kursk from the Arctic seabed, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov was quoted as saying on Sunday. Interfax quoted Klebanov as saying that the Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea last August killing all 118 men on board, would probably be raised in early autumn, rather than in July-August as was initially planned. |
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MOSCOW - Two suspected Chechen militants accused of mass kidnappings and killings in the rebel Russian region have been captured in Azerbaijan and turned over to Russian authorities, Russian television reported on Sunday. |
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Moscow Official Killed MOSCOW (SPT) - The head of Moscow's regional justice department and his chauffeur were found murdered in the official's apartment in northern Moscow on Sunday, a police spokesperson said. The bodies of Yury Vlasov, 43, and his driver had numerous knife wounds and the assailants had tried to strangle them with kitchen towels, the spokesperson said. The apartment had been ransacked, with all books taken off the shelves, pictures pulled from the walls, mattresses and chairs cut open and even stuffed animals slashed apart at the seams, she said. There were no signs of a break-in and the attackers didn't take any of Vla sov's electronic equipment, the spokesperson said, adding that they may have taken jewelry and money. |
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 KIEV - Ukrainian riot police clashed with scores of protesters over the holiday weekend as thousands of people took to the streets in the biggest march yet to demand that President Leonid Kuchma step down. |
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LONDON - Plans to return the ashes of famed ballerina Anna Pavlova to Russia have been postponed after Moscow told the London crematorium where her remains are on display that the deal should be put on hold. Moscow Deputy Mayor Viktor Shantsev said Saturday that the city government is ready to organize the reburial of Pavlova's remains only after obtaining all the necessary documents and consent from all concerned parties, Interfax reported. |
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A poll has revealed that St. Petersburg residents are largely unaware of local environmental questions, but most said that they would like to have a greater say in decisions that affect their surroundings. |
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 The head of the Presidential Administration, Vladimir Kozhin, announced Sunday that the cost of reconstructing the Konstantinov Palace in Strelnya, just outside the city, which has been chosen as the St. Petersburg residence for President Vladimir Putin at $150 million to 170 million. |
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MOSCOW - Head of national power grid Unified Energy Systems Anatoly Chubais is likely to have the upper hand at the next company shareholders meeting, slated for April 28. |
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The Leningrad Oblast Legislative Assembly passed an investment law on Feb. 27 that, if signed by Leningrad Oblast Governor Valery Serdyakov, will make the region one of the country's most attractive for investors - again. The law grants exemptions to businesses locating in the area on the oblast's portion of profit, property and road-usage taxes. |
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MOSCOW - The Russian government and a mission of the International Monetary Fund have reached outline agreement on a one-year cooperation program, a government official said Monday. |
 MOSCOW - "Downstream" in the oil industry can imply gasoline, engine oils or even asphalt - but hardly the fruit jams, pickles and mineral water that Russia's No. 1 oil company has added recently to its array of products. Over the past four years, oil major LUKoil has built a canning factory and a bottling plant intended to serve the multiple purposes of feeding its workers in the northern hinterlands, promoting the company name and - if possible - bringing in some extra revenue. |
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 MOSCOW - After years of complying with a self-imposed ban on arms sales to Tehran, Moscow hopes to secure a number of lucrative new deals as a result of a four-day official visit by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami which began Monday. |
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MOSCOW - The World Bank is in final negotiations with the government to fund the "liquidation" of northern industrial settlements whose economies are considered unsalvageable. By the end of the year, the relocation of some 20,000 people from 8,000 households is scheduled to begin under the $80 million pilot program, which the Economic Development and Trade Ministry is expected to give final approval to this summer. |
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Severnaya Wins Tender MOSCOW (SPT) - Severnaya Neft, a Komi-based oil company, won the right to develop fields along the Timan-Pechora region's Gamburtseva Val, which holds an estimated 475 million barrels of recoverable reserves. |
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OPEC Studies Cuts ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil, who holds the presidency of OPEC, said this weekend that the organization was still studying production cuts ahead of an upcoming meeting. Speaking Saturday on the sidelines of a conference in Algiers, Khelil said two OPEC committees were evaluating whether to cut production for a second time this year when the group meets Friday in Vienna. |
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STOCKHOLM - Shares in Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson plunged 21 percent on Monday after the company issued a profit warning, sparking another round of sell-offs in technology stocks in Europe. |
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NEW YORK - America gears up for a "Wee Bit o' Fun" on St. Patrick's Day Saturday, but Wall Street is in no mood to party and the stock market is likely to drop further this week. It's hard to find much cheer, analysts say, amid Corporate America's almost daily confessions of downbeat earnings, in particular in the technology arena where even such marquee names as Intel Corp. have become serial warners. The best scenario is sideways action in the broad market, but some experts expect the technology-laden NASDAQ peaked at over 5,000 points a year ago amid dizzying equity valuations, but now teeters above 2,000 - down 59.3 percent from its all-time high. |
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 BRUSSELS, Belgium - European finance ministers said on Monday they remained confident that euro zone growth prospects remain good despite signs of economic weakness in Germany and the euro zone's main trading partners. |
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CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - I am not, in my own view or that of others, a plausible candidate as a political adviser to the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, but I would like to make the suggestion that it could be on course for a powerful political disaster. |
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INSTEAD of orphanages, hospitals, theaters or orchestras, businesses have now been presented with a new opportunity to step up and display their benevolence - the opportunity to take part in the renovation of the half-ruined Konstantinov Palace out at Strelna, a southern suburb of St. |
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OF all the transition economies, Russia has been among the last in the world to begin a recovery. Russia's late start made the good news about the 2000 economy all the more welcome: Real gross domestic product grew by more than 7 percent, inflation fell to about 20 percent, the ruble was stable throughout the year and the government's budget moved from running a deficit to a surplus. |
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IT has taken only seven weeks for the Bush administration's campaign rhetoric about American military involvement in the Balkans to be swayed by the realities of Kosovo. Last fall George W. Bush suggested that he would want to withdraw most or all of the 11,000 American troops serving in Bosnia and Kosovo, leaving such peacekeeping operations to the Europeans. |
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FOR the last 10 days our liberal press has been railing at the appointment of former Primorye region governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko to head the State Fisheries Committee. |
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AROUND the North Pole there is now a stretch of open sea where the ice cap has melted. Global warming is already making itself felt and is proceeding even more rapidly than previously expected. That is the gist of the latest research on the subject, summarized for us in the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released earlier this year. |
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"THE destruction work is not as easy as people would think," Taleban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal told CNN in regard to his government's demolition of the unique ancient giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. |
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WHEN I joined my first newspaper about 20 years ago, an old reporter taught me the principles of Soviet journalism. The most important was to learn how to read and write between the lines. I had thought that this system had become pretty irrelevant since the dawn of Gorbachev's glasnost, but I now have learned that one should never say "never. |
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Clashes on West Bank JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian and used tear gas against stone-throwing protesters on Monday during clashes at trenches built by the army to blockade the West Bank city of Ramallah, witnesses said. |
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A hard-fought deal changing the way the European Union works, struck in Nice in December, has brought long-sought membership of the EU tantalisingly close for some of the 13 ex-communist and Mediterranean applicants. |
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JAKARTA - President Abdurrahman Wahid refused Monday to budge from office saying if he did the world's fourth-most-populous country would fall apart. But clearly frightened by mounting political and social unrest, his government dropped plans to raise prices next month on fuel that would have hit the country's impoverished masses. |
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March 12, 1918 was a fateful day for Petrograd. For tactical reasons, the seat of Soviet power was "temporarily" moved to Moscow to avoid the possibility of losing power, were the then-capital to succumb to White forces in the Russian civil war. |
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Monday's ruble/dollar rates in St. Petersburg: Buy Sell Alfa Bank 6 Kanal Griboyedova 28.20 28.80 Baltiisky Bank 34 Sadovaya Ul. 28.30 29.29 Impexbank 58 Nevsky Prospect 28.00 28.80 Inkas Bank 44 Nevsky Prospect 27.90 29.00 MOST Bank 27 Nevsky Prospect 28. |
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The cost of vodka around St. Petersburg; Prices are for half-liter bottles, in rubles. Vodka: Diplomat Flagmann Mendeleyev Nasha Russky Pyotr Vodka Standart Veliky Kontinent 90. |
 Nocturnal discussions around the kitchen table in Russia are often likely to focus on high level conspiracies infiltrating the whole state apparatus. One favorite field for nocturnal conspiracy theorists is, of course, Russia's notorious criminal community and its "cooperation" with the state authorities. |
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It has been seven years now since I became a criminal court assessor in St. Petersburg. What this means is that I am one of two jurors - paid by the state - who hears the case alongside the judge and participates in rendering the verdict. |
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Get your green clothing out, Saturday is St. Patrick's Day. While St. Petersburg's pub scene features just two "real" Irish pubs, both are planning special events to mark the death of St. Patrick, the second Bishop of Ireland and the man credited with the emerald isle's conversion to Christianity. |
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ARE, Sweden - Austria's Hermann Maier came into the final weekend of the Alpine ski World Cup season needing to overpower his competitors. Croat Janica Kostelic came in hoping only to hold on. |
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SKA, St. Petersburg's entry in Russia's Professional Hockey League, the PHL, recently managed to avoid being relegated to the second division with a couple of late-season victories. In doing so, however, they also managed to attract a fair bit of controversy. |
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LONDON - There were cup shocks in France and Scotland over the weekend, while in league action AS Roma, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid continued to set the pace. |
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LONDON - The princes of Manchester United have been usurped by the paupers of Wycombe Wanderers - but English football was still rejoicing in the newfound majesty of the FA Cup on Monday. When the Old Trafford club was given special dispensation by the Football Association to miss the famous competition last season to enter the World Club Championship instead, there were fears the image of the FA Cup had been irrevocably tarnished. The stories to emerge after this year's quarterfinals have changed that, however - and United is nowhere to be seen. While Alex Ferguson's side was knocked out in the fourth round, the imagination has been fired by Second Division Wycombe. |
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 COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - England has won a controversy-ridden second test against Sri Lanka, scraping home by three wickets on a tense final day to level the three-match series. |
 Owning and properly caring for a pet can be two very different things, especially if you are not familiar with a good local vet or pet shop. Pet care in Russia has undergone a facelift over the last decade, and while there are still many animals in the city used to a diet of leftovers and table scraps, more and more well-cared for animals are reaping the benefits of suitable food, regular health checks and immunization jabs. |
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