|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - Russia plunged the Olympic movement into its worst crisis since the Cold War over the weekend, with rhetoric spewing forth from every corner of society damning the perceived bias against Russian athletes at the Salt Lake City games. Using epithets such as evil, lawlessness and robbery, a bitter country vented its anger at officials of the 19th Winter Olympics, which President Vladimir Putin characterized as "a flop" and the Orthodox Church called unfair. |
|
Now that the scandal-plagued Salt Lake City Olympics have ended, Staff Writer Irina Titova hit the streets of St. Petersburg to ask locals what they thought about the games and whether or not they were fair to the Russian team. |
 MOSCOW - Loggers in the Altai region of southern Siberia began a project of truly global scale this month: They are cutting cedar logs to be used next year to build the first Orthodox church on the world's highest, driest, coldest and windiest continent - Antarctica. The future St. Nicholas church, its builders say, would not only offer pastoral care to a handful of Russian researchers on the Bellinshausen base on King George Island but would also stand as a memorial to the 47 Russians buried on the continent over decades of exploration. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - A Chelyabinsk law student has taken a German journalist to court after he quoted a song written by the student in an article examining President Vladimir Putin's cult of personality. Mikhail Anishchenko has charged that Klaus-Helge Donath, of the Berlin-based newspaper Die Tageszeitung, defamed him in an ironic article titled "Kim Il Putin Lets Himself Be Celebrated," which was printed in May last year. |
|
President Vladimir Putin signed an order Saturday establishing 10 individual scholarships in honor of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Interfax reported. |
 MOSCOW - As most career officers celebrated Defender of the Fatherland Day, Major General Aslanbek Aslakhanov had a quiet day at home in central Moscow. He is proud of his career in the Interior Ministry, but he is also a Chechen. And for Aslakhanov, who represents Chechnya in the State Duma, Feb. |
|
MOSCOW - A U.S. television production company previously associated with exiled media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky announced last week that it has offered to buy Gazprom's controlling stake in NTV and the rest of what was once Gusinsky's media empire. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - As the old saying goes, money may not grow on trees, but the forestry and paper industry could generate as much as $100 billion per year for the Russian economy if the government steps in with major support, according to a report presented to the government on Friday by the Union of Forestry Industrialists and Exporters. Russia is home to 23 percent of the world's forests, yet the country accounts for only 2.3 percent of the world's timber and paper products. The country produced about $7.5 billion worth of timber and related products in 2001, with exports earning $4.3 billion, the union reported at a national conference held in Sykhtyvkar, a city located in the Komi Republic. |
|
 MOSCOW - A government plan to bring Moscow airports' state-owned infrastructure under the control of a yet-to-be-created federal agency, the Airports Administration, ground to a halt last week after civil-aviation authorities called off interviews to choose the agency's chief. |
|
Aeroflot Hires Volvo STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - The Aero Engine unit of Swedish truck maker Volvo said Monday it had won a deal from Aeroflot to provide the company with engines used in the airline's DC 10-40 aircraft. Volvo Aero said in a statement the order was initially worth $60 million and that it was the largest overhaul contract signed by the unit since 1998. |
|
The new Land Code is just a small part of an unprecedented series of reforms being undertaken to eventually introduce a Western-style land market in Russia. |
|
Due to growing cross-border investment, events in one market often highlight the significance of initiatives in another. The collapse of Enron Corp., the seventh largest corporation in the United States, is just one such event, as it accentuates the importance of a recent initiative in Russia. |
|
BUSINESS Week magazine recently labeled Gazprom "Russia's Enron" based on the fact that Gazprom's auditors, Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, signed off on some truly unbelievable deals in its audits. |
|
Why did Kenneth Lay do it? Pundits from every corner of academe are weighing in on this question. But the countless analysts who claim that the former Enron Corp. chairperson lied out of greed are wrong. After 25 years of studying and counseling self-destructive executives whose behavior was at least as abnormal as Lay's, I can guarantee that what drove him was far more complex. |
|
Still Too Soon LONDON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund will not start negotiations on new loans for Argentina before the country presents plans which will allow the bankrupt country to implement a sustainable economic policy, IMF Deputy Managing Director Anne Krue ger said on Monday. |
|
|
|
|
Editor, I attended the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and saw first hand some of the issues raised by the Russian Olympic Committee. I congratulate [Alexei] Yagudin and [Yevgeny] Plushchenko on their splendid performances in the men's figure-skating competition. |
|
TO a greater extent than any other armed conflict on the planet, Afghanistan's unfinished 24-year war has been shaped by rival foreign-intelligence agencies: The Soviet Union's KGB, America's CIA, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department and Iran's multiple clandestine services. |
|
POPULAR culture is always sensitive to what is going on in the world, and Russian popular culture is no exception. This is why the various controversies at the Winter Olympics have been so quickly turned into literally thousands of new jokes already. To be honest, I can't remember ever hearing a joke about Canadians before the last couple of weeks. |
|
Hey, did you catch that great article in the Financial Times this week? A sharp, independent analysis of the growing crisis with Iraq, a nuanced piece that took full account of European worries over U. |
|
|
|
|
JERUSALEM - The Israeli government decided on Sunday to keep Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, restricted to the West Bank city of Ramallah, while loosening the military cordon at his compound. The government said that if Arafat wanted to leave Ramallah, he would have to get permission from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. |
|
Mauritius in Turmoil PORT LOUIS, Mauritius (Reuters) - Mauritius gained its fourth head of state in two weeks on Monday when deputies elected a replacement for a president who resigned over an anti-terrorism bill he said gave too much power to police. |
|
Skiers Disqualified SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - Two cross-country skiers were sensationally stripped of their Winter Olym pics gold medals on Sunday after three athletes tested positive for a new blood-boosting drug. Russian Larisa Lazutina lost the gold medal she had won only hours earlier in the women's 30K classical race and Spain's Johann Muehlegg had the 50K classical gold medal he won on Saturday taken away. |
|
BERLIN - Bayer Leverkusen crushed title rival Borussia Dortmund 4-0 on Sunday to regain the top spot in the German Bundesliga. Bayer, seeking the first league title in its history, is now one point ahead of second-placed Dortmund, whose 12-match unbeaten run came to an end. |
Temp: 0°C partly cloudy 
Issues Archive