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Oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the wealthiest man in Russia with an accumulated fortune of $2.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's richest people released Friday. Seven other Russians - including two former Gazprom officials - are also counted, giving Russia the most billionaires on the list since Forbes first included Russians in 1997. The list is topped by Microsoft Co. founder Bill Gates, who has held the magazine's title as the world's wealthiest man since 1998. Khodorkovsky, who at 38 heads the country's second-largest oil company, Yukos, is in 194th place. The second- most-wealthy Russian, according to Forbes, is Vladimir Potanin, the president of the Interros financial-industrial group and the only Russian billionaire to make Forbes listings for a third time. |
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 In an effort to combat Britain's chronic teacher shortage, a London primary school has turned to an unlikely source of help to teach its pupils English. |
 Daring a foray into one of the most explosive areas of Russian history and identity - the so-called Jewish issue - Nobel Prize-winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Tuesday released a new book reflecting 10 years of painstaking research. The 500-page work, published by Russky Put and edited by Solzhenitsyn's wife, is the first book of a two-volume study called "Two Hundred Years Together. |
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President Vladimir Putin and Austrian President Thomas Klestil, who arrived in St. Petersburg with their wives for a two-day visit on June 23, described themselves as satisfied with the results of their meeting and the relationship between their countries, Interfax reported. |
All photos from issue.
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 Prince Michael of Kent fulfilled a promise that he made in April by bringing a group of British journalists to Russia this weekend in order to let them see for themselves what is happening here. "I wanted to give the opportunity to journalists to come with me, to be able to see the great difference of the life in this country," Prince Michael said at a round-table on Internet development at the St. |
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Vitold Kaidanovich, the general director of the Northwest Customs Terminal, was shot to death on Monday morning in his car as he pulled out of his driveway on the elite residential area of Kamenny Ostrov "An investigation has been launched, but it is too early to draw any conclusions," said Gennady Ryabov, City Prosecutor Ivan Sydorukh's senior spokesperson. |
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The Central Elections Commission announced on Friday that the second special election to fill the city's 209th electoral district will be held on Oct. 14, the daily newspaper Izvestia reported. The seat was vacated by Sergei Stepashin when he was picked to head the State Duma's Central Audit Chamber last year. |
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Air All Clear ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The State Sanitary-Epidemiological Inspectorate reported that the concentration of chemicals in the air surrounding the Tekhnolog plant "does not exceed allowable norms," Interfax reported Saturday. |
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Two Russian jets flew away from an attempted seizure by French officials at the Paris Air Show on Friday. The airplanes, an Su-30 fighter and a MiG/AT trainer, streaked into the sky to avoid being seized by a French Justice Ministry bailiff trying to enforce a French court ruling in favor of Swiss trading firm Noga, which claims the Russian government owes it $495 million. |
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By an overwhelming margin earlier this month, the State Duma approved the third reading of controversial amendments to the law on Environmental Protection that would permit the import of nuclear waste for reprocessing. |
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German and Russian foundations signed an agreement on Friday in Berlin to distribute 835 million Deutsche marks ($366 million) in compensation to an estimated 350,000 former slave workers for the Third Reich in the former Soviet Union. The payments, part of 10 billion marks ($4.37 billion) that Germany last year agreed to give survivors of Nazi slavery, will start being disbursed in July, said Hans Otto Brätigam, a member of the board of directors of the German foundation. |
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 MOSCOW - A secret telegram in the fall of 1916 from Russia's ambassador in London to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow assured that the newly created Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC) would be endowed "with an image of professionalism, solidity and prestige. |
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MOSCOW - Another deadline has come and gone with no resolution to an 18-month battle between two of Russia's most powerful conglomerates for control of a prized oil producer, prompting accusations of deception and threats of legal action. |
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MOSCOW - The makers of Russia's two best-selling air-defense systems will unveil a merger plan this week in what experts say is an attempt to prevent the government from establishing an even larger holding that would include their arch-rival. Top officials at the Almaz Central Design Bureau and Concern Antei on Wednesday will announce the creation of what is tentatively being called Air Defense Concern, sources at both of the Moscow-based companies said Monday. |
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THE consensus is that German Gref, economic development and trade minister, is the main force behind reform in President Vladimir Putin's administration. |
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THANK God they're only coming one country at a time. Over the last year, St. Petersburg has regularly played host to high-placed foreign dignitaries as President Vladimir Putin has been doing his best to promote his native city and, despite the traffic jams they invariably engender, visits of this type can bear economic fruit for Russia's former capital. |
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THE new federal law "On Amendments to the Russian Federation Law 'On Foreign Exchange Regulation and Foreign Exchange Control'" has been signed by President Vladimir Putin and comes into force on July 6, 2001. |
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Oleg Deripaska says he'll turn the creaking and sputtering Gorky Automobile Factory into a modern, profitable carmaker. He and the other young industrialists who hope to revitalize the aging manufacturing sector have their work cut out for them. Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times reports. |
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Euro Readiness BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - More Europeans realize that the euro will replace their national currencies next year - and they're worried, according to the results of a survey released on Monday. |
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THE Russian media's attention to the pope's foreign trips is intensifying as recent papal visits form a ring around Russia. The five-day visit of John Paul II to Ukraine has resonated widely through Russian society. This is in no small measure due to the fact that in making his trip to Ukraine, the pope for the first time disregarded one of his main rules and did not first win the agreement of the country's largest Christian denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. |
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SO what happened to former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's missing $4 billion? Can it be that Kremlin darling and Chukotka governor Roman Abramovich really has less scratch than former Gazprom CEO Rem Vyakhirev? And has Abramovich's mentor, the infamous Boris Berezovsky, really fallen so far that he can't pull together a measly billion dollars to save his reputation? These are just a few of the questions that have Russia-watchers scratching their heads as they read the latest Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people. |
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TELLING images. First, Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Alexy II coming to the support of Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Second, Pope John Paul II, at almost the exact same time, apologizing to 300,000 Ukrainians in their native tongue. And these images give us insight into what went wrong in Russia and the majority of the former Soviet republics, compared to their longtime "friends in misfortune" - the former communist nations of central Europe The difference between Alexei Ridiger and Karol Wojtyla is the same as that between the first Russian post-communist president and the former regional Communist Party boss, Boris Yeltsin and, say, the first post-communist Czech president and former political dissident, Vaclav Havel. |
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TWO days before presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin met on June 16 in Slovenia, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters that the summit will "not achieve anything much in substance, but the atmospherics of bilateral relations will improve dramatically. |
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THIS week's United Nations special session on AIDS is the latest sign that the international response to the crisis is gaining momentum. Pharmaceutical companies that once resisted the idea of discounting AIDS drugs for poor countries have recently relented. Governments of developing countries that hesitated to discuss AIDS are now showing new openness. |
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 St. Petersburg's White Nights have long been the occasion for profound reflection and literary ruminations. Such works as "The Bronze Horseman," with Alexander Pushkin's image of the poet working late into the night with only the gray dusk to illuminate his page, and Fyodor Dostoevsky's brooding and angst-ridden search for meaning in the perpetually lit streets, have become a basic part of the city's identity. |
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One of the great figures in the history of science is commemorated near the Tekhnologichesky Institut metro station, with the statue of Dmitry Mendeleev and the periodic table of elements that he established painted in its full glory on the wall behind him. |
 Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki calls St. Petersburg a Russian Jerusalem - in a cultural, not a religious, sense. He hopes that his oratorio "The Seven Gates of Jeruselam," dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Jerusalem and first performed in 1997, will have lasting resonance in a city that is nearly 10 times younger. |
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St. Petersburg residents like to get out of the city in the summer for a number of reasons - the center is overrun by tourists, the heat can be very unpleasant, and the hot water in your apartment can be turned off for anything up to an entire month. |
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Baby Killers To Go Free LONDON (Reuters) - The parents of murdered British toddler James Bulger were divided on Monday on the future of the soon-to-be-freed killers of their son - one voicing hate, the other appealing for calm. The tabloid Dai ly Mirror quoted James's father Ralph as backing the government's call for restraint. He said innocent people could suffer in any vigilante campaign against teenagers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables who as children killed the 2-year-old. His mother Denise told the Daily Mail, however: "I am consumed with hatred and anger and fear. ... I believe they are both still dangerous." She has already warned that there is no place for Thompson and Venables, both 18, to hide. |
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 Although Peter the Great designed the Peter and Paul Fortress to defend against foreign attackers, this weekend the beaches of the 18th-century structure were the site of a veritable seaborne invasion. |
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