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BRDO PRI KRANJU, Slovenia - They talked about their daughters and mothers-in-law. They cracked jokes and took a stroll, laughing and gesticulating, along a tree-lined path at a picturesque Slovenian castle. They even exchanged invitations to visit each other's homes. |
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After a number of stops and starts, Russia appears to be at a decisive moment for reforms and the next few months will "map out Russia's fortunes for several years to come," outgoing U. |
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The lower the expectations, the easier it is to produce a good impression. With that in mind, Russia's media, politicians and analysts on Monday were quick to praise the first summit between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush near, Ljubljana, Slovenia on Saturday. |
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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - Reasserting Russia's interests in the Balkans, President Vladimir Putin made an unscheduled stop in Kosovo on Sunday after blaming ethnic-Albanian "terrorists" there for most of the region's instability. |
All photos from issue.
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The State Duma passed the Land Code on Friday in an emotionally charged first reading that saw lawmakers chant, come to blows, and whole factions march out in masses. The Duma voted 251-22 with three abstentions in favor of the Kremlin-backed code, which would allow the sale of commercial land and plots in cities and villages to Russians and foreigners. The sale of agricultural land is not provided for in the code and will be dealt with in a separate law. The legislation must pass two more readings in the Duma and then be approved by the Federation Council before it can be sent to President Vladimir Putin to be signed into law. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, whose ministry drafted the legislation, said the code would allow the sale of 2 percent of the country's land. |
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 As Belarus gears up for an autumn presidential election, two former employees of the Belarussian Prosecutor General's Office are accusing officials close to President Alexander Lukashenko of using a special squad to kidnap and kill opposition politicians and critics. |
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Amid growing expectations of a government reshuffle, President Vladimir Putin on Saturday appointed Igor Yusufov to head the Energy Ministry and Vitaly Artyukhov to lead the Natural Resources Ministry. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said the appointments were part of a fine-tuning of the cabinet. |
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VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - With 98 percent of votes tallied Sunday in the Primorye region's scandal-plagued election, businessman Sergei Darkin has been declared the next governor, narrowly defeating his most dangerous rival - "none of the above. |
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EU Information Center KALININGRAD (SPT) - The European Union opened a new informational center at Kaliningrad State University, the academic center of this Russian enclave in the Baltics, Interfax reported on Friday. The center will provide the region's scholars and students access to documents and information about EU programs and in so doing increase the momentum to integrate the region into the EU, a plan that has been recently bantered about both by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his European colleagues. According to the university's rector, Andrei Klemeshyov, the development of the center will become a priority of Kaliningrad's international relations. |
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 Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg made an introductory visit to St. Petersburg on his way to meet President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW - The president, the government and the State Duma's influential budget committee all agree that the 35 percent corporate profit tax will be slashed - the only question now is by how much. President Vladimir Putin on Monday threw his weight behind the government's proposal to cut the rate to 25 percent from 35 percent, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said after meeting with the president. With the crucial second reading of the profit chapter of the Tax Code slated for this Friday, the budget committee has agreed to cut the rate and cancel all tax incentives and holidays. The committee, however, is also pushing for a deeper cut, to 23 percent, a rate that the government says it cannot afford. |
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 The St. Petersburg Arbitration Court just wants to see a piece of paper. St. Petersburg food-processing giant Samson says that it should have legal control over the assets it placed with seven daughter companies that it created in the fall of 2000. |
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MOSCOW - The State Duma last week approved the second reading of the bill on reducing tobacco smoking - but a more apt title might have been on the absence of any limitations whatsoever. The changes made to the draft between the first and second readings over the past year are a textbook demonstration of the lobbyist's art, a display of prowess rarely seen in Russia but commonplace in the West. |
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Frozen-food maker Talosto took a gamble by launching the Maslenitsa brand before official registration - and lost. The company is now fighting in the St. |
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MOSCOW - One of Washington's most influential security experts has said that the United States could call for a total write-off of Russia's Soviet-era debt, even if the move stirs the ire of Western allies such as Germany. Richard Perle, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense under former U. |
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MOSCOW - Russian companies clinched one deal and agreed on another Sunday, the first day of the weeklong Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, France. But they failed to match several offers made by foreign companies selling "unauthorized" upgrade programs for Russian-designed aircraft. |
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MOSCOW - The Sukhoi Design Bureau doubled its net profit and revenue last year mainly on the back of several deals to export the latest modifications to its Su-27 fighter, the company said Friday. The Moscow-based bureau's net profits soared 109 percent last year to 445 million rubles ($15. |
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Oil pipeline monopoly Transneft plans to expand into crude production, possibly starting with a project in the oil-rich Timan-Pechora region of the Far North, the company's head was quoted as saying on Monday. |
 The government split its unwieldy telecoms monopoly into dozens of companies during the course of privatization. Now it wants to pull them back into seven super-regional holdings by 2003. Staff writer Elizabeth Wolfe reports on the progress. ARKHANGELSK, Far North - If the telephone cable to Naryan-Mar in the Komi republic breaks, no one is going to fix it. |
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ON July 1, Larry Summers - who ran the Treasury Department under U.S. President Bill Clinton - takes over as president of Harvard University. "A fitting choice," editorialized The New York Times. But fitting in what way? So far, Summers has been silent on the activists who seized his future office for three weeks to demand a living wage for Harvard service personnel. |
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MOST observers probably expected the wily former KGB agent to outsmart the Yale fraternity boy at this weekend's long-awaited summit in Slovenia. But few thought the victory of appearances would be so complete. |
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OF course it was no coincidence that President Vladimir Putin stopped off first in China before his meeting with the U.S. President George Bush in Ljubljana. The message was perfectly clear, and it is obvious that those to whom it was directed got the point. |
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"I LIKE old Joe," said F.D.R. about Joseph Stalin. Carrying on that self-deluding tradition of snap judgments, George W. Bush looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin, announced, "I was able to get a sense of his soul," and after two heady hours concluded he was "straightforward" and "trustworthy. |
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GOTEBORG, Sweden - As rioters battled police in clashes that left 43 people injured, European Union leaders struggled Friday to keep plans for expansion on track despite Irish opposition. The injuries came during sporadic clashes throughout the day as protesters threw rocks and debris at the helmeted troops with shields holding them at bay. |
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Car Bombs BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Two powerful car bombs exploded in rural Colombia on Friday, with the biggest blast -- blamed on leftist rebels -- wounding 16 people but causing no fatalities, police said. |
 With the death of 115-year-old Marie Bremont in France last week, Gayirkhan Iriskhanov, a grizzled cattle herder from the mountains of Dagestan, may very well have become the oldest person in the world. Alice Lagnado reports from Ki zil yurt, where she met the man who claims to be much older than his 112 years. It was 1871, and Imam Shamil, the legendary Dagestani warrior, had died after conducting one of the longest guerrilla campaigns in history against Tsarist Russia. |
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 Moskatelny Pereulok is far from being a busy street, but recently it became one of most crowded places in the city. The traffic, however, was quite unusual, with pedestrians dressed in 19th-century costumes, along with horses, geese, pigs and dogs causing most of the congestion. |
 This monument to Mussorgsky marks the house at 8 Shpalernaya Ulitsa where he lived for three years. Previously, he had shared an apartment with fellow composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, but this arrangement came to an end when the latter got married. Along with Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui and Alexander Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov formed the group of composers known as the moguchaya kuchka, or "mighty handful," who aimed to revitalize Russian music through nationalism. |
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TULSA, Oklahoma - Retief Goosen can now laugh about one of the greatest gaffes in golf history. He is the U.S. Open champion. The soft-spoken South African redeemed himself with rock-solid play to take a lead so commanding that he could afford another three-putt on the 18th green to win the 18-hole playoff against Mark Brooks. |
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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania - Leave it to Shaquille O'Neal to boil it down to another nickname. "Somebody told me tonight that we made history," O'Neal said after the Los Angeles Lakers won their second-straight NBA title. "We have the best record in winning a championship. So that's another thing I can tell my sons: The Big Historian. |
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