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 Smolny kicked off the budget-debate season last week by submitting a 31-volume draft for 2002 to the Legislative Assembly that included increases in spending on education and health services by 56 percent and 32 percent, respectively. The city administration's proposal anticipates a surplus of 1. |
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VLADIMIR, Central Russia - Galina Sinitsyna has spent months trying to persuade the military to send her to Chechnya to kill rebels for money. Inspired by the sudden wealth of contract soldiers returning from the war zone, she wants to use her skills as a competitive shooter to become a sniper. |
All photos from issue.
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Palace Contract ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A contract for the restoration project at the Konstantinovsky Palace in the suburb of Strelna will be signed within the next week, Interfax reported Tuesday. Vladimir Khilchenko, president of the local holding company Faeton, told journalists that the contract would be signed before Oct. |
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MOSCOW - A Russian airliner carrying up to 78 passengers and crew on a flight from Israel exploded and plunged into the Black Sea in unexplained circumstances on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW - The black-and-white portraits went past one by one: 43 proud, blurred, smiling, serious faces and three blank pieces of posterboard, all with a small black line cutting across the left-hand corner. As the procession stopped outside the Ostankino television center, the portrait-bearers formed a circle, the photos facing inward. |
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Royal Visit MOSCOW (SPT) - King Carl Gustav XVI of Sweden will make a state visit to Russia from Oct. 8 to 14, President Vladimir Putin's administration stated Thursday. |
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 MOSCOW - Siberian Aluminum chief Oleg Deripaska, together with Sibneft chief Roman Abramovich, has extended his industrial empire by taking over top-10 bank Avtobank and leading insurer Ingosstrakh. None of the companies have confirmed the acquisition, but analysts and sources in the industry say it's a done deal and value it at $90 million. |
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MOSCOW - At the time, it seemed to be just another routine transaction. In May 1998, someone at Slavneft - an oil major jointly owned by the governments of Russia and Belarus - signed a letter that guaranteed part of a $6-million loan to a Finnish oil-trading company. |
 MOSCOW - Russia's two largest carmakers have taken diverging paths so far this year: one boosting production while the other has lagged. AvtoVAZ, which produces 70 to 75 percent of the cars built in the country, increased its output by 8 percent in the first nine months of this year to 570,000 cars, driving overall sector growth. |
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MOSCOW - Four U.S. steel majors have demanded that prohibitive import duties be imposed on cold-rolled steel from 20 countries, including Russia. The companies - United States Steel, Bethlehem Steel, LTV Steel and National Steel, which together control 69 percent of the internal U. |
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Gazprom Oil Deal MOSCOW (SPT) - Gazprom on Thursday signed a cooperation agreement with Roshelf and state-owned Rosneft to develop the Prirazlomnoye oil field, Gazprom said in a press release. The agreement proposes putting together a consortium with 50 percent belonging to Gazprom and its subsidiary Roshelf and the other 50 percent going to Rosneft. With 76.4 million tons of recoverable reserves, the field is Gazprom's biggest foray into the oil sector to date. The German company Wintershall was a partner in the project before Tuesday, when it announced a one-year moratorium on any further investment. S&P Confirms Rating LONDON (Reuters) - International credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's said Thursday it had affirmed Russia's single-B rating and revised the outlook on its long-term issuer credit to positive from stable. |
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 Over the past year, Anatoly Chubais has managed to guide his plan for reforming Unified Energy Systems well on its way to fruition. The government has approved the plan, a running battle with minority shareholders has fizzled out almost entirely and representatives of Russian financial and industrial groups are taking an interest in the opportunities that the restructuring process might offer. |
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IN Germany last week and again in Brussels this week, President Vladimir Putin raised the question of Russian membership in NATO with greater specificity than ever before. What he called for was not immediate admission into NATO, but for NATO to begin immediate discussions with Russia to work out the terms and conditions for Russian membership in the alliance. |
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IT has by now become a tiresome cliché to say that the Leningrad Oblast is more investor-friendly than St. Petersburg is. From tax incentives to reduced bureaucracy to just a general sense of cooperation, the oblast has consistently outshined the city in this arena for years now, making it a national example of how to court and keep international investment. |
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VLADIMIR Putin's main political virtue is his ability to be all things to all people. To some, he appears to be a Western-leaning, liberal reformer, while others are convinced he is reviving the traditions of the Soviet state. To some, he promises that order will be established without balking at the use of tough measures. |
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WE could be in for appalling news of the ways in which terrorists turn the fruits of our economic powerhouses against us: It's highly likely that some funds used to finance terrorist networks are being derived from the sale of products ripping off iconic American companies, such as Microsoft or Nike. |
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 Marc Almond has been busy lately. He released his 15th solo album, "Stranger Things" in June, and is touring with the reformed Soft Cell, the chart-topping duo with David Ball that brought him fame in the early 1980s with such hits as "Tainted Love" and "Say Hello, Wave Good-bye." He is coming to Russia this week, not only to showcase his new songs, but also to read excerpts from "Tainted Life," his 1999 autobiography and to start working on his "Russian" album, aimed specially at the Russian fans he has gained since his first visit nearly 10 years ago. |
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 Local opera-goers are eagerly anticipating the coming weekend, when the Mariinsky Theater will raise its famous blue curtain once more. The 219th season opens on Saturday with Yury Alexandrov's rendition of Verdi's "Otello," which premiered last June. |
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Leningrad has released yet another album, and is getting ready to promote it with a major show at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture. With "Pulya+," which appeared in stores last week as a double album, Leningrad is compensating for the damage done to the band's 1999 debut album by the Moscow-based O. |
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When I first heard this summer that the owners of Pizzicato were opening another restaurant, I was excited. I've long thought that all things considered - food, atmosphere, value, service - Pizzicato was one of the finest restaurants in town, coming up only a bit short in the category of "location," since it is more than a few steps off the beaten path in the basement of the House of Composers on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. |
 It was W.H. Auden who said that while some works of literature are unjustly forgotten, none are unjustly remembered. The Vasilievsky Ostrov Theater of Satire's decision to stage "Ariadne," a work written in 1924 by Marina Tsetayeva but never before performed, may be seen as a laudable effort to resurect this largely forgotten play. Unfortunately, judging by the theater's production that premiered last Tuesday, the neglect this work has suffered is justified. |
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 To see "Swordfish" is to recall another piscine reference, Virginia wit John Randolph's celebrated description of a corrupt but gifted political opponent as someone who "shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight. |
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Reporter Faces Trial ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban plan to put British journalist Yvonne Ridley on trial for illegally entering the country, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said on Thursday. "She will be tried because she broke the laws of our land and entered our country without permission," AIP quoted Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Mullah Abdur Rahman Zahid as saying. |
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Super Bowl Date Set NEW YORK (AP) - The Super Bowl will be pushed back a week and played Feb. 3 in New Orleans, a move caused by the terrorist attacks. |
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Issues Archive