|
|
|
 MOSCOW - Media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky said on Thursday he planned to sell his remaining stake in the independent NTV television channel after the company fell under control of state- dominated gas monopoly Gazprom. The announcement - made on Ekho-Mosvky radio, a part of Gusinsky's crumbling empire - came Thursday, a day following a Spanish court's ruling not to extradite him to Russia where he is wanted on fraud charges. |
|
 At the St. Petersburg Zoo in Tuesday's April warmth, two newborn polar bears took their first awkward steps in front of the public after their birth on Dec. |
|
KIEV - Ukrainian Prime Minister Vik tor Yushchenko on Thursday predicted he would be toppled in a looming no-confidence vote, after parliament condemned his policies and economic reforms in a stormy debate. Passions were running high in parliament, with one deputy poised to set herself alight in protest at the vote against the premier. Colleagues swiftly intervened to avert tragedy. Yushchenko, the country's main champion of liberal economic reform, said he was under no illusions about his government's chances of survival. "This government should be retained because of its value and effectiveness. But I am convinced that it will not be retained," Yushchenko told reporters in parliament. |
|
 MOSCOW - Ignoring environmentalists' warnings, the State Duma on Wednesday passed in the second reading a set of highly controversial bills allowing the import and storage of spent nuclear fuel rods in Russia. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - The ousted director of Russia's NTV station and his rebel colleagues came under fresh fire on Thursday, this time from journalists they are replacing at another Moscow-based television network. Financier Boris Berezovsky, once NTV's arch rival, gave a new home at his TV-6 station to Yevgeny Kiselyov and journalists who had quit NTV rather than work with managers installed after a boardroom coup by state-dominated Gazprom, the natural gas monopoly. |
|
MOSCOW - Four parties that usually back President Vladimir Putin in the State Duma pledged on Tuesday to work together, formalizing their cooperation and giving another boost to the Kremlin leader. |
 BOGORODITSKOYE, Southern Russia - It all started at the village disco. Or maybe a bit earlier, when the first goose vanished. Some even say the seeds of discord in Bogoroditskoye were sown 20 years ago, when Sultan, a shepherd, came to work on the collective farm. |
|
WASHINGTON - The United States said on Wednesday that it was very worried about the takeover of Russia's sole national independent television station NTV and that "reasonable observers" saw it as politically motivated. |
|
MOSCOW - Three days after Gazprom-Media took over Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV, it came for his print media too. The Segodnya newspaper was suddenly closed and the entire team of the Itogi news magazine was ousted when they showed up for work on Tuesday. Both publications were part of the Sem Dnei publishing house, which is now controlled by Gazprom-Media and Sem Dnei's president Dmitry Biryukov. |
|
Spy-Plane Treaty MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's lower house of Parliament on Wednesday ratified a treaty allowing other countries to fly surveillance flights over its territory - a pact that aimed at preventing confrontations like the recent U. |
|
MOSCOW - A crowd of at least 100 poachers and their relatives have stormed a coast-guard station in Dagestan and forcibly retrieved their confiscated boats and fishing nets in a well-organized attack that local officials described as part of the ongoing war with the local "caviar mafia. |
|
MOSCOW - The Federal Security Service said Wednesday that it has charged a Krasnoyarsk scientist with treason for passing secret technology to China that could help it develop spacecraft. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - Intellectual property rights advocates got a major boost Tuesday when a Moscow court found a leading local computer retailer guilty of profiting from pirated copies of Microsoft's Windows 98 operating system. The Moscow arbitration court ordered the Formoza Center chain to pay Microsoft 584,200 rubles ($20,000) in damages - one of the largest awards of its kind in Russia. |
|
MOSCOW - Deutsche Bank is cherishing plans to crack the Bank of New York's monopoly on American Depositary Receipts esstablished by Russian companies. "We started marketing 10 months ago to sign up new issuers, looking to do ADR placements," said Michael Hughes, global depositary receipts product manager with Deutsche Bank in London. |
|
MOSCOW - Europe is betting billions that a new cooperation agreement with Russia can help it bridge its defense technology gap with the United States. The agreement signed April 4 between the giant European consortium European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., or EADS, and its Russian counterpart the Russian Aviation and Space Agency - the largest ever between the two - is a lifeline for Russia's struggling defense industry and a boost to Europe's efforts to gain ground on the United States in aerospace technology. A source close to EADS's negotiating team said in a telephone interview last week that the deal could generate $2.3 billion worth of orders for Russia's aerospace industry over the next decade. |
|
 SEATTLE, Washington - One of Russia's youngest and richest industrialists wants to lure U.S. investors to Russia's far eastern region, pledging to rid the frigid area of the political risk and red tape that has ruined other foreign investors. |
|
MOSCOW - It waited nine years before it let outsiders get a peek at its books. Itera, the second largest gas company in the nation and seventh in the world, decided this week to make public its list of shareholders. The decision was made to "to ensure maximum transparency" of Itera's business, the text of a press release circulated Thursday said. |
|
MOSCOW - The telecommunications industry is facing chaos after last week's Supreme Court decision to cancel a regulation limiting the geographical area in which operators can work. |
|
City in Line for $150M St. PETERSBURG (Reuters) - The World Bank said Thursday that it was considering a $150 million loan to St. Petersburg to make the city more attractive for investors and tourists. The bank's lending strategy for Russia envisages the $150 million loan to St. Petersburg in the 2003 financial year, but the bank may approve the loan earlier, said Julian Schweitzer, the bank's country director for Russia. |
|
|
|
|
Continuing what appears to be a worldwide trend of socio-political nostalgia, Italy's Northern League - like Israel's Sharon, America's Bush and, of course, those fun-loving iconoclasts Afghanistan's Taleban - is taking a bold leap backwards these days. |
|
I DON'T know how many times this newspaper has included the words, "Ever since the arrival of Viktor Cherkesov, governor general of the Northwest region . |
|
KHABAROVSK, Far East - Georgy Permyakov is 83 years old and so fit that he will spring to his feet and pound on his stomach to prove he still retains some of the strength of a former amateur boxer. He never drinks or smokes, speaks six languages and sleeps on the balcony year-round. |
|
LAST Thursday U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of the Bush administration's support for preserving the freedom of Russia's NTV television network, reiterating a concern that the administration had repeatedly voiced publicly. |
|
OVER the last two weeks, much has been said and written about the future of the Russian media group, NTV, without any consideration of the critical issue. NTV is on a fast and sure road to bankruptcy. The irony of the controversy surrounding the newly appointed management team is that NTV stands no chance of surviving as an independent editorial voice unless a viable business model is put in place. |
|
TIME not only heals, but makes friends of enemies, as Dmitry Rozhdestvensky will attest. It was just three years ago that Rozh dest vensky, the former head of Russkoye Video, was sent to jail, shortly after he refused to sell a controlling stake in the local television station Channel 11 to tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who in those days was in command of ORT. |
|
This week our readers write in about NTV and press freedom, issues that have been grabbing the headlines over the past several weeks. No True Freedom Dear Editor, I would like to add some words about the free press. I'm 47 years old, which means that I belong to the generation that, in its attempts to understand what was taking place in the world, tried to listen to Radio Svoboda and Voice of America, as well as to learn to read Soviet newspapers between the lines. |
|
|
|
|
With 2001 officially declared the year of Verdi by UNESCO, marking 100 years since the composer's death, it is no surprise that opera companies the world over have been clamoring to stage his works. Valery Gergiev has not missed out on the action either, and has already conducted a premiere of Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" in Florence, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky who was also responsible for the Mariinsky's production of Pro ko fiev's "War and Peace." And in July, Gergiev and singers from the Mariinsky will be putting on no less than six Verdi operas at Covent Garden in London - including the production of Macbeth which was premiered at the Mariinsky this Wednesday. |
|
 Weaving a romantic melodrama around the holocaust at Stalingrad was always going to be a controversial move, and predictably enough, the $80 million German-made "Enemy at the Gates" falls victim somewhat to its own indulgence. |
 Pierre Moerlen's Gong is intended to be the focal point of the SKIF5 festival, which opens Friday. The drummer extraordinaire, who has become part of rock history through his work with the French progressive rock band Gong and Mike Oldfield, will present his Russian outfit - which he calls "the best band I've ever had. |
|
Boasting wall tableaus of knights slaying dragons by fog-covered castles, alongside a meaty menu that would satisfy the most die-hard of carnivores, the "Montfort" restaurant promises to provide a "unique medieval experience" that will sweep you back in time. |
 While the emotive battle for ownership of the 250-year-old Lomonosov Porcelain Factory, or LFZ, ended last year with foreign investors in control, the fate of the factory's museum was resolved only recently. On condition that the collection itself would not be moved, the museum came under the jurisdiction of the State Hermitage Museum. |
|
Some say he was a musical genius, some say he was a fascist, but the festival established in memory of the late local new music composer and pianist Sergei Ku ryok hin has turned into a chaotic three-day long celebration of music and the arts. |
|
|
|
|
Flag Controversy JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) - With the possibility of an economic boycott looming, Confederate heritage groups called on people to accept Mississippi's decision to keep its state flag with the Rebel emblem. "The voice of the people has been heard. The people of Mississippi do not want another flag. Mississippians are proud of their families, this state and its rich history," William Earl Faggert, a leader of the state Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Wednesday. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People raised the threat of a boycott Wednesday after voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that would have replaced the Confederate symbol on the flag with a cluster of 20 stars signifying Mississippi's admission as the 20th state. |
|
 SAN FRANCISCO - Barry Bonds never speaks to the media before games. So why should Tuesday have been any different? Even though he was only one swing away from becoming the 17th member of the 500-home run club, Bonds still shooed reporters away from his private corner of the San Francisco Giants clubhouse, a personal sanctuary that features a leather recliner and accompanying television set. |
|
The Czechs came alive scoring three unanswered goals to upset team Russia 3-2 in the final match of the "Bolshoi Priz" ice hockey tournament Thursday night at the Yubileiny Sports Palace. The loss left Russia with six points, tied with Sweden, but Russia took the gold since it beat Sweden in their round-robin matchup. |
|
MOSCOW - A last-minute strike by Andrei Konovalov earned Russian Premier League leaders Krylya Sovietov Samara a 2-1 away win at Lokomotiv Moscow on Wednesday. |
|
Soccer referees don't have it easy: They get beaten, sworn at, kidnapped, abused in the press and are offered envelopes full of money by shady men. But the Russian Soccer League has a plan to make the lives of the men in black more comfortable: raising their wages to $3,000 a game. Premier League referees now earn only a seventh of that sum, or 12,000 rubles ($413) a month. The amount is a decent wage for most Russians and is considerably higher than the salaries many players earn in the lower leagues. If wages are raised as planned, referees could earn up to $6,000 a month. By comparison, an English Premier League referee earns less than half that amount, Pound900 ($1,290) a game. |
|
 LONDON - European champions Real Madrid and Germany's Bayern Munich will meet in the semifinals of the Champions League for the second successive season after scoring contrasting home victories over Galatasaray and Manchester United on Wednesday. |
Temp: 0°C overcast 
Issues Archive