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MOSCOW - The State Duma voted this week to reshuffle the chairpeople of nearly one-third of its committees, stripping the Communists of eight top posts and concentrating even greater power in the hands of centrist and liberal factions supportive of Kremlin policies. Infuriated by the decision, the Communists immediately stepped down from the two minor committees they had been allowed to retain and announced that they would form a shadow cabinet to develop alternative state policies. "The left-wing opposition is not planning to boycott the parliament, but it refuses to accept the crumbs of leadership ... that are brushed from the table by the Kremlin's lackey," Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told reporters. |
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 "Living a long life is not as easy as crossing a long field," is a favorite Russian expression of Maria Strelnikova, who, at the age of 112, is the oldest person in northwestern Russia. |
All photos from issue.
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 TVER, Central Russia - Boris says he was aware he was HIV-positive even before a test confirmed it. He remembers seeing someone else's blood in the syringe he was using to shoot up heroin. "I just knew I was infected," he said at the Tver Aids Center last week. |
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MOSCOW - The romantic image of an endless expanse of unspoiled forest taiga stretching across Russia is no longer true, researchers warned at the presentation Wednesday of the first atlas of the country's forests. |
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MOSCOW - Russian observers agreed this week that there was at least one bit of good news for Moscow in the radically changed Ukrainian parliament: Viktor Yushchenko's pro-Western party will not have a majority. His party did nonetheless win Sunday's elections for the Verkhovna Rada, and he has emerged as the only clear candidate so far for the presidential race in 2004. |
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House in Order MOSCOW (SPT) - In nearly two years since its change in leadership, the presidential property department has been busy getting its house in order - paying off billions of rubles in debts, consolidating its holdings and developing major new real-estate projects, department head Vladimir Kozhin said. |
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MOSCOW - Far from being a corporate-governance backwater, Russia last year became a regional leader, an EBRD official declared Thursday as the Federal Securities Commission presented the country's first federal corporate-governance code. The code, which is purely recommendatory, contains 10 sections addressing issues such as corporate behavior, forms of disclosure, internal financial controls, dividends and the formation and functions of the board of directors and board members' obligations and responsibilities. |
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MOSCOW - The recently formed Federal Migration Service said Tuesday that it has nothing against the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who work in the Russian capital, it just wants to make sure they pay their taxes. |
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MOSCOW - The cabinet, which is racing to meet a Kremlin-imposed deadline to submit legislation supporting small business to parliament, agreed on Thursday to raise the cap on small businesses that qualify for simplified taxation to 15 million rubles in annual revenues. The revenue cap, which should eventually amount to about $500,000 once the bill becomes law, is the highest in Europe and aims to quadruple the share that small businesses account for in the gross domestic product, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said. President Vladimir Putin has ordered the cabinet to send the legislation to the State Duma by Wednesday. |
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 MOSCOW - An Italian carmaker is gearing up to build Russian sports-utility vehicles at a 22-million-euro ($19.4-million) plant in Calabria, Italy, part of broader economic cooperation between the countries laid out during Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's visit this week. |
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MOSCOW - In a move described as premature by analysts and Svyaninvest management alike, the government Thursday approved partial privatization of the telecommunications holding and seven other state-owned telecom companies. Along with its 25 percent minus 2 shares in Svyazinvest, the government plans to sell stakes of between 5 percent and 22. |
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Banking on a Buyer ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The president of the International Bank of St. Petersburg, Sergei Bazhanov, announced Tuesday that the bank was in negotiations with a foreign firm to sell 20 percent of its stock, Inerfax reported. |
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HAIFA, Israel - I have a lot of critical things to say about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but not now. Now, since Sharon has declared Yasser Arafat "the enemy" and sent troops to occupy Arafat's compound on the West Bank, we Israelis must be unified. |
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WASHINGTON - Several months ago, Judyth Twigg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, briefed a dozen members of the U.S. Congress on the state of Russian public health. |
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THE scene was St. Petersburg over 200 years ago. Empress Catherine II, who fancied herself an expert in economic matters, penned a memorandum on metals exports and sent it to the Berg-Kollegiya, the governing body for Russia's mining and metals industry that functioned intermittently from 1719 to 1807. |
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WHITE House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has directed all federal agencies to purge Web sites of information useful to terrorists. Hmm. Seems logical. Maybe even obvious. |
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 Boris Akunin has been described as one of the most mysterious authors writing in Russia today. This aura of mystery is conjured up not only by his intrigue-filled detective stories set in the murky depths of the 19th century, but also by the more mundane fact that Boris Akunin is not his real name. Last Saturday, however, Akunin - who was born Grigory Chkhartishvili -made a rare appearance in Petersburg to talk about his works and future projects, giving journalists and fans a chance to see the man behind the myth. |
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 Controversial Canadian techno-punk artist Peaches is on her way to Russia, and she's bringing her sex-soaked act with her. Peaches - a cult figure in Berlin, where she is based - is relatively unknown, but slowly gaining prominence, in the United States and her native Canada. |
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It seems that NME Russia, a version of the respected British music newspaper adapted for Russia, has started to influence the pirate market for the first time since it was launched in September. Record piraters, who mainly specialize in classic rock, art rock and pop, have sniffed the interest in newer music and pirated a trio of NME's favorites, The Strokes' "Is This It" (with the U. |
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Writing positive restaurant reviews is much harder than writing negative ones. It is easy to carp and make jokes about bad service and sub-standard food, but there are only so many ways to say "delicious. |
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 A goal by Alexander Kerzhakov five minutes into golden-goal extra time saw Zenit past Krylya Sovyetov Samara into the semifinals of the Russian Cup on Wednesday at Petrovsky Stadium. About 15,000 fans turned out on a bright, cold evening to witness a dreadful match, illuminated only by two shots against the bar, one for each team. |
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Issues Archive