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MOSCOW - When deputies filed into the State Duma on Wednesday for the opening of the autumn session, they returned to a newly renovated chamber and a daunting amount of work. Of about 2,000 bills awaiting discussion in the Duma portfolio, around 700 are scheduled to be reviewed by the end of this year, and 125 fall into the high-priority category. Among the priority legislation listed for discussion in the autumn session are the 2002 budget, land and labor codes and packages of bills on pensions, banking, tax and judicial reforms. Some are expected to have thousands of amendments because many controversial regulations were hurriedly passed in the final weeks of the spring session. |
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 VERKHNIYE MANDROGI, Leningrad Oblast - Five years ago, there was practically nothing and nobody on this site. Only a few locals even remembered the name Verkhniye Mandrogi. |
 Governor Vladimir Yakovlev met with leaders of the local international business community Wednesday to lay out the city's plans for attracting sponsors for its 300th-anniversary celebration in 2003. "St. Petersburg's jubilee must become an event of international significance," Yakovlev said. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - In a flurry of diplomatic activity by Russian leaders trying to find their place in the emerging U.S.-led coalition against terrorism, Moscow has focused largely on the volatile states of central Asia, whose neighbor Afghanistan is the most likely target of a U. |
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77 Russians Missing MOSCOW (SPT) - Seventy-seven Russian citizens remained among those missing and feared dead a week after the terrorist attacks in the United States, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday. |
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 The establishment of a Smolny-run electricity network has touched off a legal feud between city hall and local energy producer Lenenergo and, so far, the courts have been siding with the utility. The dispute began when the city administration created the St. |
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The Third Annual Baltic Development Forum Summit, billed by its organizers as a "conference on partnership and growth in the Baltic Sea region," will take place at the Tavrichesky Palace from Sept. |
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MOSCOW - The Federal Securities Commission on Tuesday presented the draft of a long-awaited corporate-governance code, aiming to bring local business up to global standards. "Our target is ... to make this document the unified standard for the securities market," commission head Igor Kostikov said at a news briefing after an official presentation of the code. The draft code presented Tuesday differed from what some stock-market analysts had expected. They feared it would be merely a collection of hundreds of instructions, that it would be binding for market participants and thus detrimental for the market. Instead, the commission presented a 70-page code that describes the principles of corporate conduct, sets rules for general shareholders meetings and defines the functions of a company board and executive bodies and procedures for their election or appointment. |
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 MOSCOW - A round table on banking reform Wednesday showed that the government has got its work cut out. What was supposed to be a friendly discussion between leading bankers erupted into a heated free-for-all, with participants struggling to get a word in edgewise. |
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MOSCOW - Trading of Baltika shares has been suspended as the country's No. 1 brewer undergoes a one-to-80 share split in an attempt to boost liquidity. Baltika halted trade Tuesday and expects to return to the market in a few weeks, possibly in early October, with each share revalued at about $5. |
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Microtalk Goes On WASHINGTON (AP) - Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department told the new judge in their antitrust case Thursday they are discussing a settlement, but neither side wants the court to appoint a mediator to oversee the talks. |
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IN times like these we all share the responsibility of strengthening international cooperation in defense of the values we share: freedom and democracy. That is why the organizers of the Baltic Development Forum feel it is essential to go forward with our conference on partnership and growth in the Baltic Sea region, which will be held in St. |
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ON Sunday, the three-day Baltic Development Forum opens in St. Petersburg, bringing together the major political and economic players in the Baltic region to continue the process of articulating and implementing an integrated regional development plan. |
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I'm matching the big boys one for one, and I must admit I am having myself some fun. Ani DiFranco SLAP! The guy grabbed the Righteous Babe by her wrist. Bang! The Righteous Babe jabbed her fist into the diaphragm of the offender. "Phtewff," whispered the offender's diaphragm sadly as winds abandoned it. |
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THE terrorist attack on New York has already been compared to Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Kursk submarine. Mikhail Gorbachev likened it to Chernobyl, which is probably a highly accurate analogy in terms of the shock and ignominy experienced by the U. |
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WE Americans living in Moscow are used to being a bit of a punching bag. Whenever Russians don't like what our government is doing, we hear about it. When the United States bombed Kosovo, we avoided speaking English on the street for fear of being attacked, verbally or otherwise, and we often got an earful even from friends, and even if we also thought the bombing was a bad idea. |
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 The organizers were hoping for no more than a few dozen visitors at best, but hundreds came to the Borey Art Gallery to see the opening of the Lesbian ConneXion/s exhibition on Tuesday. "We are very surprised [at the turnout]," said Dutch photographer Marian Bakker, who organized the Lesbian ConneXion/s with photographer Traude Bührmann, inviting lesbian photographers to create images that explore lesbian lives and lifestyle. |
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 Lev Dodin has expressed his wish to include all of Chekhov's plays in the repertoire of the Maly Drama Theater, and "The Seagull," which premiered last Friday, is the third to be staged after "The Cherry Orchard" and "Play Without a Name. |
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A new rock club opens on Friday, and it may well change the city's clubbing geography. Located in a two-story red-brick building right across from the Moscow Station, Red Club is much larger than any other rock club in the city. The main hall on the first floor operates as a concert hall and a dance floor, but there is also a second stage for smaller acts in the bar on the second floor. |
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In 1790, a traveling spice merchant named Barbazan paid to reconstruct the building at 49 Nevsky Prospect, the current location of the recently opened Radisson SAS Royal Hotel. |
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At the invitation of Valery Gergiev, the late Dallas Morning News music critic John Ardoin was given the opportunity to spend the 1995-96 season at the Mariinsky Theater. Not only would he observe performances, accompany tours and listen in on recording sessions, he would also write the first English-language history of the theater. The end result is the book Valery Gergiev and the Kirov: A Story of Survival, which also offers a biography of the maestro. Chapters alternate between the Mariinsky's past and that crucial season when Gergiev was appointed as artistic director. The book's ambitious structure is in no way confusing; the parallel reinforces the chronicle. |
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 The Philharmonic season in St. Petersburg opened last Friday with Verdi's Requiem. In the context of the terrorist attacks in the United States last week, conductor Yevgeny Kolobov's choice of work was not only appropriate, but also the only possible option, a work to remind us of the troubled times we live in. |
 "The Mexican" is all about misdirection. It is named not after a person but a pistol. Its best performance is not given by its pair of leads - who just happen to be two of the biggest stars going - but by someone else. And it wants ever so desperately to be successfully hip and offbeat, but it can't manage to make it happen. |
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NATO Cancels Plan SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - NATO on Thursday abruptly canceled plans to launch the last phase of its mission to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels, signaling possible trouble with Macedonian lawmakers reluctant to implement a Western-backed peace accord. |
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NFL Refs Ratify Deal NEW YORK (AP) - The locked-out National Football League officials will be back on the field Sunday when play resumes after postponing last weekend's games following terrorist attacks. |
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