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 As first dress rehearsals go, it wasn't bad at all. Sunday's City Day celebrations, billed by one St. Petersburg official as a warm-up for the big 300th anniversary in 2003, did not perhaps amount to the wildest party in history, but there was certainly no shortage of events for city residents to watch, touch and appreciate. |
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Amid a cloud of contradictory predictions, Valentin Pashin, director of St. Petersburg's Krylov Scientific Institute, said Monday he is "99 percent sure" of success for the deep-sea mission to salvage the Kursk. |
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On the eve of parliamentary confirmation hearings for a Ukrainian prime minister, Russia's new ambassador to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin on Monday called for speedy resolution to the country's political crisis and stronger economic ties between Russia and Ukraine. "We want the decision on prime minister to be made as soon as possible," Chernomyrdin said at a news conference. |
All photos from issue.
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Whether irritated at not having enough trash cans or indignant at the underfunding of Russian science, few people other than politicians are able to feel that their opinions count, at least on a regular basis. But actress and St. Petersburg resident Alisa Freindlikh can now be assured that she can make her views a matter to concern the city's authorities, since she is now an honored citizen of St. |
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In an effort to defray the high costs of celebrating the biggest birthday party St. Petersburg has seen in 300 years, City Hall has drafted a price list for sponsors who wish to help foot the bill. |
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MOSCOW - Usman Masayev had just arrived in Argun on March 11 when he saw the bodies of four men who were killed by federal troops. The men were building a fence for a local heating plant when the troops came looking for revenge after a land-mine exploded. The unchecked violence did not deter the Moscow-based businessman, however, and he decided to invest millions of dollars into Chechnya's economy to revive enterprises that were destroyed in the war. Masayev said Friday that he and 14 other Chechen businessmen have put together $10 million to invest in four enterprises: a sugar factory in Argun, the biggest in Chechnya; a bread factory in Argun; and wine and vodka plants in Naur and Gudermes, respectively. |
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 MOSCOW - The Union of Right Forces transformed itself into a bona fide political party and elected Boris Nemtsov as its leader during a founding congress this weekend that lasted for an extraordinary 22 hours with breaks only for coffee. |
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Border Guard Suicide ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - An investigation has been initiated in Finland by Russian authorities over the alleged escape and subsequent suicide of a Russian border guard, 19-year-old Sergei Strochikhin, Interfax reported on Friday. Strochikhin, a 2001 draftee from Samara, had been serving at a border outpost near Vyborg, northwest of St. |
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MOSCOW - Top carmaker AvtoVAZ said Monday that its sales rose 10 percent in 2000 to 64. 2 billion rubles ($2.2 billion), but it still posted a net loss for the year of $136 million after writing off some $248 million in debts. At an annual shareholders meeting Saturday, minority shareholders failed to place any of their candidates on the AvtoVAZ board of directors. Shareholders also decided not to pay dividends for 2000 and voted down a proposal put forward by a group of minority shareholders to convert into ordinary shares their preferred shares, which haven't earned dividends in six years. AvtoVAZ board chairman Vladimir Kadannikov told reporters at the company's headquarters in Togliatti on Monday that "it was earlier planned to pay dividends, however due to writing off lots of debts last year, we had to repudiate a dividends payment," Prime-Tass reported. |
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 NEW YORK - Siberian Aluminum and other defendants have filed motions to dismiss a $2.7 billion case under the U.S. Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and argued that it should be transferred to Russian courts, the group said. |
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MOSCOW - Top savings bank Sberbank said Monday it is planning another share issue that would shrink minority investors' holdings in the company. Last week the bank completed a controversial share issue that diluted minority stakes and prompted a lawsuit. |
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Interros rendered the management of the St. Petersburg Krasny Vyborzhets factory completely powerless by blocking the group's entry to the building at Sunday's extraordinary shareholders meeting. |
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The government has vowed to improve Russia's dismal corporate governance record, often cited by foreign investors as enemy No. 1. But as Torrey Clark reports, that task is not easy in a country barely out of the crude asset-grabbing phase of its development. |
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No New Spending TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said on Monday it would be difficult for the government to raise budgetary spending on social welfare, just hours after he suggested it might do so as early as next fiscal year. |
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AS Macedonia's army bombed and shelled Albanian villages last week, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell flew to Africa. To the alarmed foreign ministers of Austria and Greece, who arrived in Washington just before he left - and just in time to read Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's latest declarations about pulling U. |
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THE Union of Right Forces - SPS - held its congress on Sunday. The main order of business was to unite a number of small political factions into a single party and to choose a leader. |
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It generally takes a little more than 22 hours to throw together a sensible political party, so perhaps it is unfair to judge the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, too harshly in the wake of last weekend's marathon party congress. On the other hand, this group has been functioning in the State Duma now for almost a year and a half and it is led by the cream of Russia's so-called liberal elite, so it doesn't seem that unreasonable to expect at least a decent image and a clear platform. |
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IN January, the Kremlin announced a "new stage of the antiterrorist operation in Chechnya" and transferred overall command from the Defense Ministry to the Federal Security Service, or FSB. |
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HUNTSVILLE, Texas - For three years I presided over the place where nearly all Texas prisoners spend their final moments behind bars. Most are released to a life outside. But many others come here to die. For some, even that is a release. As the senior warden at "The Walls" (as the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is known), I oversaw the execution of 89 inmates at the busiest death house in the nation. |
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In this building from the 7th (20th) of December, 1917, to the 10th (23rd) of March, 1918, was located the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, which was headed by the eminent Communist Party leader and Soviet statesman, the close comrade of V.I. Lenin, Felix Edmun do vich Dzerzhinsky. Although the Bolsheviks had come to power in Russia following the Oct. 25, 1917 Revolution, which overthrew the Provisional Government under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky, by December their control over the situation in Petrograd, not to mention the country as a whole, was still tenuous. The Bolsheviks faced serious opposition from many different political and social groups, including a number of other socialist parties who opposed what they saw as a hijacking by the Bolsheviks of a revolution that had been carried out in the name of the Soviets - the political bodies which claimed to represent the interests of the workers, soldiers and peasants in Russia and which had worked in opposition to the Provisional Government throughout 1917. |
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 They hang out huddled in small groups near metro stations, markets, and railway stations - crowded spots where it's much easier to beg, work, or steal. |
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Tourists Abducted MANILA, Philippines (AP) - A Muslim extremist group claimed responsibility Monday for abducting 20 people, including three Americans, from a luxury resort and said it was holding the captives on two islands in the southern Philippines. |
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Koch Earns LPGA Title CORNING, New York (Reuters) - Sweden's Carin Koch fired a 6-under-par 66 to win the LPGA Corning Classic on Sunday by two strokes from Scotland's Mhairi McKay and fellow Swede Maria Hjorth. |
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