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Moscow-based Mobile Telecommunication Systems (MTS) announced on Tuesday that it has decided to buy St. Petersburg's Telecom XXI - and the city's cell-phone subscribers using GSM-standard services may reap the benefits of lower prices as a result. The announcement, made by MTS general director Mikhail Smirnov at a Moscow press conference, came at the end of months of speculation within industry circles that his firm was eager to purchase Telecom XXI, which holds one of the two licenses to provide cellular-phone services in the city on the Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard. |
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MOSCOW - Opponents who have been fiercely protesting a plan to import 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to Russia won a reprieve Thursday when the State Duma decided to delay a vote on the bill until at least early April. |
 A 19th-century painting with a potential market value of well over $1 million was stolen from the third floor of the State Hermitage Museum on Thursday. According to the museum's press service the painting, "Pool in a Harem," painted by French artist Jean-Leon Gerome in 1876 and insured by the museum six years ago at $1 million, was cut from its frame and stolen sometime during the day before 4 p. |
All photos from issue.
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 A educational organization for children suffering from cancer is protesting a decision by the City Property Committee, or KUGI, to award a reduced-rent space to a city public relations firm, depriving the children's center of much needed accommodation. |
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Land Bill Approved MOSCOW (AP) -The State Duma on Wednesday approved legislation that will allow trade in nonagricultural land for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. |
 I find it embarrassing to write about myself, but still this is what I've been doing all my conscious life, having chosen meditative elegy as a major genre, perhaps because in other types of literary activities the writer's 'self' is less important. - Viktor Krivulin, 1944-2001. |
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MOSCOW - A Kremlin official said Wednesday that planned contacts between U.S. officials and Chechen rebel envoys would fuel further violence in the troubled republic and sour relations between Moscow and Washington. |
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SYDNEY, Australia - From Conny Martin's standpoint, the empty expanse of the Pacific Ocean where flaming chunks of the Mir space station may find their watery grave does not feel empty at all. German-born Martin is one of 2,800 people living on Chile's Easter Island, a triangle of volcanic rock marooned in the Pacific Ocean, 3,200 kilometers from the nearest big population centers in South America or Tahiti - and potentially in Mir's flight path. "As we are the most affected ones, we get the least information," the tour operator said Wednesday in a telephone interview from the remote outcrop famous for its mysterious, giant stone heads. |
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 MOSCOW - Russia and the United States were locked in a deepening espionage row on Thursday after a U.S. official said Washington was expelling "a certain number" of Russian diplomats for alleged spying. |
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MOSCOW - Russian scientists Wed nes day sought to reassure people that the country was free of the deadly human form of mad cow disease after reports had suggested there had been three deaths from it last year. Russian news agencies and television quoted Health Ministry scientist Mels Turyanov as saying one person had died of new variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, or vCJD, last summer and two last fall. |
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MOSCOW - Russians who obtain visas to Scandinavian countries and Finland will be able to use the permits to travel throughout the rest of the European Union starting Sunday. |
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 MOSCOW - Russia officially promised the World Bank on Wednesday that it would honor its previous obligations and eliminate all subsidies to the coal industry by 2003. "The [Russian] government expressly stated that ... the coal subsidies in their present form will be eliminated in 2003," said the press release circulated by the World Bank. Last week Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko sent a letter to the bank promising that the government would stop subsidizing the coal sector, and asked for an extension of the deadline of its SECAL II, or second adjustment loan for the coal sector, until the end of the year. |
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 MOSCOW - The Russian branch of U.S. financier George Soros' charitable foundation has frozen $1.5 million in grants, fearing the funds will be subject to the 35. |
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MOSCOW - When the tentative members of Media-MOST's investment consortium were announced, one name stood out simply because of its relative obscurity - Grigory Beryozkin. Beryozkin once succeeded in rescuing a failing energy company, making a bundle in the process, and for that he's well known but only within small circles of businessmen. |
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MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov met with small-business representatives Wednesday, promising to resolve two urgent tasks: reforming tax legislation and facilitating their access to credit resources. |
 MOSCOW - Armed with new measures to fight the so-called gray imports of cellular phones, leading international manufacturers are taking further steps to expose the problem and convince consumers to shop with caution. Up to two-thirds of mobile phones in Russia are sold on the gray market, a loss of $250 million annually for phone makers, said Tina Butkhuzi, marketing manager at Alcatel. |
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MOSCOW - After more than half a dozen dead-end complaints to the Central Bank, the Moscow Stock Exchange celebrated a moral victory Monday after a local court ordered the Anti-Monopoly Ministry to investigate the bank for allegedly violating competition laws. |
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Debts to Be Honored MOSCOW (SPT) - President Vla di mir Putin said in an interview published Thursday that it would be difficult for Russia to service its foreign debts when they peak in 2003. "The situation is aggravated by the fact that the country's fixed assets are in a state of wear and tear, and a certain critical situation will also set in by 2003. |
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MOSCOW - In its first-ever corporate governance rating for emerging markets, Standard & Poor's gave top Russian airline Aeroflot a score of 5.3 on a scale of one to 10, both companies announced Tuesday. |
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Bait and Switch "In public life it is sometimes necessary in order to appear really natural to be actually artificial." - President Calvin Coolidge There were huzzahs in the boardrooms of America when the Republican House passed George W. |
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WHEN The New York Times' former Beijing correspondent Nicholas Kristoff used to go for his daily jog, a car full of police always trailed him slowly through the smoggy streets. |
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WHENEVER I am in St. Petersburg, I make an effort to visit the war memorial at Park Pobedy. I usually place some flowers at the foot of the sculptural composition depicting the defenders of Leningrad. Quite a few of my friends died or were wounded during the 900-day siege from September 1941 to January 1943. |
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THERE are certain Legislative Assembly lawmakers who have an aversion to talented individuals, clearly prefering the gray masses to any bright lights. So it proved this week when it came to discussing how the house could show its appreciation of chess grandmaster and St. |
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ON Friday morning - if all goes as it should - the Mir space station will leave a fiery trail across the South Pacific sky and fade off into history. It is a moment worthy of reflection, a fitting time to pay tribute to this monumental achievement and the thousands of people who made it happen. |
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"DEAR friend, what's happening?" begins the e-mail message Goran Stefanovski, the playwright, sent me from the little English village where he now lives. |
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A former Fulbright scholar is incensed by the treament of John Tobin and fears the implications that may be involved for foreigners studying here; debt forgiveness for Russia is seen as a double-edged sword; and a reader from Montana assures us not all Americans are close-minded and ignorant. Spy Paranoia Dear Editor, The recent arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen and talk of the emerging spy war could do more harm than just damaging U. |
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Some good Moldovan fun will come to town this Friday as Chisinau's Zdob Si Zdub play at LDM, which seats over 1,000. Until now the band was content to perform at the scruffy and distantly-located underground club Poligon. Zdob Si Zdub blends punk with Moldovan and gypsy folk, and like to paint their bare chests with Moldovan folk designs. See story on page 11. LDM, Fri., March 23. Mumii Troll, whose "Moya Pevitsa" video has been on the MTV charts for months, is playing what is described as its "biggest ever concert" in Moscow at the Olimpiisky stadium on April 3 - but in St. Petersburg it will be a much more modest show at the unlikely and long ill-reputed venue of Hollywood Nites. |
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 Popular wisdom in the opera world has it that operatic directors put on their best work when they follow the composer's intentions, without turning the ideas inside out for the sake of experiment. |
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People love secrets. Some people adore them to such an extent that they devote their lives to digging into other people's private affairs. Others make their living from protecting and guarding secrets. Some succeed in doing both - and depending on their skill, they can end up as anything from harmless scandalmongers to top-level intelligence agents. |
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Actor Leonid Mozgovoi has had an unusual career. He has played such disparate historical figures as Anton Chekhov, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin in the films of Russian amateur film maker Alexander Sokurov. |
 Zdob Si Zdub, the Moldovan folk-punk band which rose to massive popularity on the strength of a Kino cover last year, is coming to play their biggest show so far in St. Petersburg. Victor Tsoi's gloomily romantic song "Videli Noch" (Saw the Night), recorded by the then-underground band Kino in 1985, was given an unlikely treatment - Zdob Si Zdub turned it into a frenetic folk-dance tune, with Moldovan folk instruments and gypsy backing vocals. |
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It's good to find a decent cheap Chinese restaurant just a few hundred meters away from where you live. We thought we had struck it lucky when we found such a place on the corner of our street after we had moved in to our new apartment, but after being served a cockroach in the soup on one occasion we decided it might be best to stop eating there. |
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Disease Hits Ireland DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland became on Thursday the fourth European country to fall victim to foot-and-mouth, suspending animal-product exports while the continent braced for yet more outbreaks of the highly infectious disease. Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said tests on tissue samples taken from sheep on a farm near the border with Northern Ireland had proved positive. |
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LONDON - The Netherlands, England and Sweden will feel the unwelcome glare of the spotlight in the coming week as Europe prepares for over 40 World Cup qualifiers. |
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Louisville Hires Pitino LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) - Rick Pitino became Louisville's basketball coach Wed nes day, returning to the state where he won a national championship in 1996. "I know all of you were not fond of me when I was Kentucky's coach and I'll make no bones about it - I'll always love UK and my players," Pitino said. "Now it's my time to lead the Cardinals back to prominence." Pitino, who won the national title at Kentucky, resigned as coach and president of the Boston Celtics in January after 3 1/2 disappointing seasons. Benson Reveals All BRADENTON, Florida (AP) - Kris Benson is downplaying sexually explicit remarks he and his wife made to Penthouse magazine. |
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 Starting Friday, St. Petersburg athletes will be part of the high-flying action at the Winter Stadium as the trampolines and mats are set up for the 2001 Russian Championship in Trampoline, Double-mini Trampoline, and Tumbling, which will run from March 23 to 25, culminating in the individual finals and the awarding of the Russian Cup in all areas Sunday. |
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LOS ANGELES - Diabetes sufferers may soon be able to take quick puffs of insulin rather than painful shots, clearing the way for easier treatment of the increasingly prevalent disease. "It looks like a promising treatment, although it is not yet approved by the FDA [U. |
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LAHORE, Pakistan - Pakistani police said on Thursday they released some of the senior politicians detained the previous day, but democracy activists said a military clamp down on political activities continued. |
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