|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - Prosecutors in Novosibirsk are investigating shipments of Russian corpses from the local medical academy to a German institute responsible for organizing an exhibition of preserved human remains in Berlin. NTV television reported that local prosecutors were looking into the export of 56 bodies and fragments of the brains of 400 people from the Novosibirsk Medical Academy to the Plastination Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. According to NTV, customs officials were concerned that the agreement between the Novosibirsk scientists and Von Hagens' Institute did not say the bodies would be returned to Russia and that the Siberian academy did not have statements from the deceased allowing their bodies to be used for scientific purposes. |
|
 President Vladimir Putin said on Monday the government should guarantee press freedom but would not interfere in what he called a business dispute over control of Russia's only independent national television channel. |
|
MOSCOW - A Gazprom-Media board member turned in his resignation Thursday in protest of what he said were the unorthodox legal methods used by the company to take over NTV television. "The powers that be, in the face of the head of Gazprom-Media [Alfred Kokh], cannot be allowed to use any methods necessary to achieve their ends," Anatoly Blinov said Thursday night on NTV's "Hero of the Day" program. Blinov, who also acted as legal counsel for Gazprom-Media, said he was particularly disturbed by a series of court decisions in Moscow and the central Russian region of Saratov that appeared contradictory. "The initial goal [of Gazprom-Media] was to get back the loan given to the Media-MOST holding," he said. |
|
 German Chancellor Gerhard Schroe der met President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Monday to discuss a range of issues, from freedom of the press to joint business deals to Russia's $16 billion debt to Berlin. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
Local Reactor Mills ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - This fall, Russia is planning to sign a contract with the Indian government to produce nuclear reactors for the country, which would boost Russia's worldwide production of nuclear reactors from 25 to 30 percent, Interfax reported. |
|
MOSCOW - "If a leader, a president, begins to put pressure on the free press, the leader is weak." This line may be timely but it was delivered nearly nine years ago by former President Boris Yeltsin in a meeting with the heads of major media outlets. |
 GENEVA - Former Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin arrived in Geneva over the weekend after being extradited from New York, and within hours was charged with money laundering and membership in a criminal organization. Borodin, 54, was arrested on a Swiss warrant Jan. |
|
President Vladimir Putin has signed two decrees intended to revitalize the post-Soviet film industry by allowing the gradual privatization of studios and establishing a state system of film distribution. |
|
It was 108 minutes on April 12, 1961 that made the difference to Yury Ga ga rin and the world - the time it took for the first man in space to complete his historic dash around the globe. That trip transformed a former farm boy into one of the greatest icons of the 20th century and stunned the West with the realization that the lumbering Soviet giant was capable of feats it could only dream of. |
|
MOSCOW - The times when accidentally scratching a gleaming Mercedes in a traffic jam could mean a month-long financial and legal ordeal might be coming to an end - now that the State Duma has passed in its first reading a bill on mandatory liability insurance. |
|
State Duma deputies for the first time defied a presidential veto Wednesday by approving the suspension of nonferrous scrap-metal exports until 2005. The bill was passed by 314 deputies, including representatives of all the pro-government and pro-presidential factions. |
|
Environmentalists are fighting a futile battle against the consolidated bulk of the Kremlin and various financial interests who are building the Baltic Pipeline System, which is planned to culminate at the Primorsk port near St. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered gas giant Gazprom to take steps to increase its transparency and raise a cap on foreign ownership. Putin also told a regular government meeting that it is high time to move Gaz prom's stocks away from a two-tier system under which shares traded in Russia are sold at a large discount to American Depositary Receipts in Europe. Markets greeted the president's comments as a much-needed sign that the government would finally tackle Gaz prom's murky dealings and provide a more level playing field for Russian and foreign investors. Gazprom shares shot up 6 percent to close at 35 cents in Mos cow. But the ADR price fell 0. |
|
 MOSCOW - Top oil producer LUKoil scored positive image points on a variety of fronts Friday and gained considerable ground on its self-professed drive to become more "transparent and understandable" for investors. |
|
Baltika Brewery on Monday posted bullish financial results for 2000, as the company continues its strategy of focusing on volume and revenue growth. Russia's largest brewery reported a 66.7 percent increase in revenue to $333 million from $199 million in 1999. Gross profit rose 50 percent year-on-year to $108.9 million, a Baltika spokesperson said. Total output increased 65 percent, beating out the industry average of 22 percent and hitting 999 million liters. "The figures speak for themselves," said Yekaterina Ozimkina, head of Baltika's finance department. "Last year's growth outdid our expectations, and we're on the road to our goal of capturing 25 percent of the entire beer market in Russia. |
|
 LOTOSHINO, Moscow Region - Just mention foot-and-mouth disease and meat farmer Viktor Legezin squirms. Although no cases of the disease that has raised an uproar in Western Europe have been reported in Russia, Legezin is taking no chances. |
 When Moscow-based cellular telephone service provider MTS purchased Telecom XXI last month, St. Petersburg finally seemed set for the type of competition between mobile operators that has taken place in the Moscow market in recent years and may soon spread to the rest of Russia. Telecom XXI owned one of the two licenses which the Communications Ministry has granted to operate on the Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard in the city. |
|
 Cellular-communications industry representatives tend to speak glowingly of the technological innovations that have expanded in recent years the range of services providers offer. |
|
So-called "third-generation" (3G) technologies once appeared to be the future of cellular communications. While this may still be the case, it now seems that the future is further away than the mobile communications industry previously believed. And while licenses have already been granted in a number of countries, it seems that this step is even further away in Russia. The auction of Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard licenses in 1998 marked the arrival of second-generation cellular technology in Russia. Two licenses were granted by the Communications Ministry in each of eight regions, and the new standard has quickly come to rival older, analog systems in popularity among subscribers. |
|
 Sebastian FitzLyon holds a British passport, lives in an apartment along the Moika River that once belonged to his grandfather, Lev Zinoviev, and came to St. |
|
THE Russian Federation's Antimonopoly Ministry has recently changed the rules for the maintenance of the Register of Natural Monopolists, which may seriously and adversely affect all of the telecommunications companies doing business in Russia. In accordance with RF Law No. |
|
TWO conflicts - both concerning the mass media - were the focus of public attention last week. One was the scandal surrounding the national TV channel NTV and the abrupt and highly contested change of management there. |
|
|
|
|
IN the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet government suspended the development of its nuclear industry. For 10 years no nuclear power plants were brought into operation, and the nuclear research industry suffered severe cutbacks. But over the last few years, Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry has once again begun to expand - and, unfortunately, to expand at the expense of safety. |
|
AS I was turning the pages of a thick tourism magazine, I sighed at how frustrating it was facing the choice of a zillion cities and resorts to spend my summer holidays. |
|
THE ousting of Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and his replacement by President Vladimir Putin's right-hand man, Sergei Ivanov, has generated some hope that meaningful military reform will get underway at last. But this hope of reform will be unlikely to improve U. |
|
ACCORDING to reports, discussions between German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg will touch (but not dwell) upon the NTV crisis. |
|
WELL, the Kremlin has stepped on its own rake. For an entire year now, the Kremlin has been suffocating the non-state media and has made itself believe that the only true information is what it receives from those media outlets that are loyal to it. Thus, the Kremlin has left itself without any means of assessing the real state of affairs across the country. |
|
ONCE upon a time, as a reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin, I asked a group of bright high-school seniors what they knew about Adolf Hitler. By then, the Fuehrer had long been dead, so most of the answers were not surprising. |
|
|
|
|
M |
|
 Editor's Note - This is the final part of a series of articles dealing with legal problems in St. Petersburg. According to Russian law, every individual is subject to the same provisions and entitled to the same rights, no matter whether he or she is a citizen of the Russian Federation or a foreigner on Russian soil. |
|
Someone once said you feel most American when living abroad, and this has certainly been true of my experience in St. Petersburg. My wife and I cannot walk down Nevsky Prospect without getting curious stares from people who pass; each cautious glance reminds us that we are, indeed, outsiders. |
|
ST. PAUL, Minnesota - The Colorado Avalanche put the finishing touches on a sensational regular season Sunday with Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy adding personal milestones to a 4-2 triumph over the Minnesota Wild. |
|
With last week's developments in the NTV/Gazprom-Media power struggle, Russian television audiences are soon to be left with no national television network independent of government control. How do locals feel about this and what are the chances for an objective state-controlled media in Russia? Irina Titova asked passersby for their opinions. |
|
British Chopper Crash KACANIK, Yugoslavia (AP) - A British helicopter with seven on board crashed Monday in heavy rain above mountainous terrain close to Kosovo's tense boundary with Macedonia. |
 LONDON - Australia battled its way past a determined Brazilian side and a ferocious Florianopolis crowd on Sunday to win a place in the Davis Cup semifinals. Lleyton Hewitt beat world No. 2 Gustavo Kuerten 7-6, 6-3, 7-6 to give the 1999 champions a decisive 3-1 lead. |
|
NEW YORK - CBS News on Sunday quoted a former U.S. Olympics Committee doping-control official as saying the United States routinely sent drug-using athletes to the Olympics. |
|
LONDON - FA Cup reality took over from romance in England where Arsenal and Liverpool reached the final while France's Nantes, like Liverpool, stayed on course for a treble. Juventus kept the heat on Italian leaders AS Roma. Real Madrid opened a potentially decisive eight-point lead in Spain, while Bayern's advantage was down to a single point in Germany as Europe's league races reached the final lap. |
|
Zenit striker Yevgeny Tarasov scored his third goal of the season leading the Petersburg side to a 2-1 victory over Saturn Ramenskoye Saturday at Petrovsky Stadium. |
|
The Russian space program's proudest day was April 12, 1961, when Yury Gagarin made history as the first human being to leave the earth's atmosphere and travel into space, at the age of just 27. During his short flight, Gagarin tested his hand-eye coordination and tried eating, to see if it was possible. |
|
It's a thankless task to write about issues whose complexity has long proved a headache generations. However, I am sure that of those millions of people who found themselves near their TVs last week, I am not the only one trying to answer the painful question: What is happening to freedom of speech in this country? I have been an admirer of NTV since it began broadcasts eight years ago. |
Temp: 0°C overcast 
Issues Archive