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MOSCOW - The presidential envoy for the Caucasus region said Wednesday that he had been approached by a senior Chechen rebel figure with a request to begin talks with Russian officials. Viktor Kazantsev, President Vla di mir Putin's envoy in the Southern Federal District, said on television that an aide of rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov wants to discuss the Kremlin's latest initiatives to end the conflict in the separatist region. "Akhmed Zakayev called me to say that after long deliberations he was asking for a meeting here in Moscow to discuss proposals made in the statement of President Vladimir Putin on Sept. 24," Kazantsev said. |
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 MOSCOW - Forensic experts of the Russian Navy on Thursday began removing remains of the crew from the wreck of the Kursk nuclear submarine, while officials said its twin nuclear reactors and missile arsenal posed no danger. |
All photos from issue.
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The Legislative Assembly passed the first reading of the 2002 city budget on Wednesday by a margin of just one vote. Twenty-six deputies voted for City Hall's draft, despite criticism from some deputies that it did not differ substantially from this year's budget. |
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MOSCOW - The State Duma gave preliminary approval on Wednesday to an amnesty that would free about 24,000 people, mostly women and minors, from the country's overcrowded prisons. |
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MOSCOW - It was a coincidence, but a telling one. This week, Russia's two leading liberal parties - Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS - gave out prizes to writers. Both competitions were organized by professional groups, and politicians were there for the sake of prominence and funding. |
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Nuclear-Waste Protests YEKATERINBURG, Ural Mountains (AP) - Environmentalists in seven cities along Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway on Wednesday protested plans to transport spent nuclear fuel along the route. |
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Responding to a request from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the federal government has put together a short list of priority projects it would like the organization to help fund, and three of the four are located in the Leningrad Oblast. |
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MOSCOW - Gazprom on Wednesday officially opened a giant Arctic gas field, underscoring the monopoly's readiness to supply gas to Europe, as well as its reticence to expand past its traditional production base. |
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MOSCOW - A group of Sibneft shareholders announced Wednesday that they have consolidated their oil, metals, aviation and other assets in a financial-industrial powerhouse called Millhouse Capital. The new British-registered holding is worth $3 billion to $4 billion, comparable to the country's largest holding Alfa Group, analysts said. |
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MOSCOW - The EBRD is in negotiations to buy a 20-percent stake in state-owned Vneshtorgbank, the second-largest bank in Russia after Sberbank. The government has for months been discussing privatizing Vneshtorgbank, which deals mostly with foreign trade, as part of a much-awaited overhaul of the rickety banking sector. |
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IN the aftermath of Sept. 11, the United States finds itself embroiled in two different battles. The first, waged on the plains and in the mountains of Afghanistan, pits the world's richest country (and most powerful military) against the world's poorest. |
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EVEN in these troubled times it seems that politics can bring people happiness. The State Duma's adoption of amendments to the law on advertising in its second reading has convinced me of this. |
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A FEW months ago, two public-relations consultants representing rival candidates in a key regional election met in the corridors of the State Duma. It is no secret that provincial elections are "made" by teams coming from Moscow, each of which long ago became a kind of wandering circus traversing Russia in pursuit of easy money. |
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NIKOLAI Aksyonenko and his Railways Ministry are under investigation. It's about time. The Prosecutor General's Office said Monday it has opened a criminal investigation into the Railways Ministry and Aksyonenko has been charged with abuse of office. |
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 After 3 1/2 years of club gigs, the local all-girl folk-punk band Babslei is finally releasing its debut album. While "Yeldyrina Sloboda" was originally due in September, the enhanced CD was delayed a number of times. The launch event is now set for Nov. 8, when Babslei will promote it with a concert at the Red Club that will also feature such bands as S.P.O.R.T. and Nordfolks. According to Babslei's founder and drummer Katya Fyodorova, the album was delayed because the video that the band shot in June was not quite ready. |
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 The St. Petersburg theatrical community is getting ready for the most important event of the year this Monday, when the Golden Sofit, the most prestigious theatrical award in town, will announce the winners in 14 categories. |
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Russia's two greatest opera and ballet giants - Moscow's Bolshoi Theater and the Mariinsky - used to go for years without paying each other a visit. But both have recently reconsidered, with mutual exchange tours becoming a regular event. This November, the Bolshoi brings the reconstruction of Boris Pok rov sky's production of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin," which will be shown on Nov. |
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The rumors about Tricky touring Russia in December died soon after they emerged. He is not coming, as despite all the love the British Council has for electronic acts, it is not prepared to support his 16-member entourage. |
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Believe us, dear reader, when we say that every week we try to avoid reviewing a Chinese restaurant. It is just that things have gotten to the point where it is impossible to avoid them. Finally, we had to give up this week and turn our attention to Jackie Chan, which has long been a favorite lunch spot among certain journalists who work nearby. At least Chan can claim a slightly more interesting name than most of its counterparts - the city already boasts a number of Golden Dragons, two Harbins and several Pekings. It even stands out among its neighbors. On the very same street, Kazanskaya Ulitsa, there is a Golden Panda a mere stone's throw away, and even closer, an establishment named simply "Kitaiskaya Kukh nya" (Chinese cuisine). |
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 A gleeful piece of wisenheimer computer animation, "Shrek" doesn't have much patience for traditional once-upon-a-time fairy tales: The only time one appears, its pages end up as reading material and then some in the hero's outhouse. |
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Serious Allegations JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesia's police chief denied allegations Thursday that officers working with illegal smugglers forced asylum seekers onto an unseaworthy boat that sank, killing 374 people. General Suroyo Bimantoro told reporters before a weekly cabinet meeting that "it is not true" that about 30 police officers in the town of Lampung coerced the passengers onto the boat that was headed for Australia. Senior UN officials in Indonesia on Wednesday called for the government to investigate allegations by survivors that police threatened to kill them if they did not board the vessel. Achmad Hussein Ali, an Iraqi who survived the shipwreck, said Wednesday that police armed with pistols and automatic weapons forced 418 passengers to board the boat even though several did not want to after seeing its poor condition. |
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 It has so far been a bad week for top seeds at the St. Petersburg Open. The past three days at the tournament have produced several upsets, with top seed Juan Carlos Ferrero losing 7-6, 6-4 to unseeded Rainer Schuettler in a first-round match, while fourth-seeded Tommy Haas lost 3-6, 7-6, 6-4 on Wednesday night in a tough battle with unseeded Andrei Medvedev of Ukraine. |
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Freedom of Speech? MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The World Boxing Council indefinitely stripped Australian Anthony Mundine of his ranking on Wednesday over controversial remarks the super middleweight made this week about the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Mundine, a Muslim, said on Monday that the U.S. |
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Issues Archive